Transparency Agenda 76: Patreon, Dungeon A Day & Library Books

71 Days to PaizoCon: Monte Cook leaves 5E development

I know this has nothing to deal with PaizoCon, but I thought it was interesting.  Read about it here!  Talk to you later...

I need to do a Kickstarter project, but I have no ideas to to do... OK maybe only one or two ideas...

If you don't know what Kickstarter is, go check out there site and read up on it.  Best of all, check out  Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple - A Storytelling Game success story. This sells the concept of Kickstarter better than I ever could.  Don't worry I will wait until you get back...

...Ok back? Good. Now I have wanted to do something with Kickstarter ever since I flopped with my first try of getting funding for Obsidian Twilight. Even though this first one sucked with me, I know the power of a good idea and Kickstarter is a good idea.  So I have wanted to go back to do some cool and interesting.  But what should I do?  I have one rally cool idea, but a few factors need to be in place to do them to work, so I have to wait a bit.  But I still have the "bug" to do something cool.  I would like to possibly do Xao: Island of Iron and Silk as a project, but I don't know the interest level in NeoExodus yet ( I mean, I, JP and a few other people know it is a great setting, but not everyone else who plays Pathfinder knows yet).  So I am waiting on that.  Maybe I could do a cool monster book for NeoExodus or just Pathfinder in general.  Maybe I could do a Pathfinder version of the Chaos Effect book I did for OGL Superpowered (This is an idea that Monte Cook started with his Event Book line). I will have to see what I can think of that is worth doing.  Talk to you later...

Should I get a Wayne A. Reynolds’ cover for NeoExodus or hire Monte Cook to write something for it…

Well it looks like NeoExodus is moving along a lot faster and slower than I would like and something that came to me was looking over work. Should I spend A LOT of money and get a Wayne A. Reynold’s cover or should I spend that SAME AMOUNT of money and get Monte Cook to write something cool for the campaign book? Which one of these is the better choice? If I go with the visual strength of Wayne Reynolds, that can only help my product look even more professional. But at the same time since Wayne has done so much cover work for WOTC, Paizo and various other game publishers does that like water down the impact of a “Wayne A. Reynolds” cover? Or should I spend that money to assure automatic interest in the setting with the name Monet Cook connect to the project? Which one is the best choice? Which one gives me the most “bang for the buck”? Which is the most important to get more people interested in the NeoExodus: A House Divided?
OR…

Should I just use that money in a different way to help build support the NeoExodus transmedia empire in a different way by doing a webcomic with Jeff Warmester based on NeoExodus?

Better Yet…

It’s the end of the business year, so which one of the following questions are you thinking about: How you are going to spend that extra money OR how do you get some extra money from your business to survive the next year. The better questions is why aren’t you thinking of answers for both of them? Talk to you later…

Is Monte Cook worth 10 cents a word? If so, then how much is Wolfgang Baur worth?

While at my local gaming store, I was having a discussion with several RPG friends including the guys who operate Gamer Ingenuity, LLC and we started talking about the pay rates of well know writers.  While I do understand why people get paid, I do feel some people are VERY MUCH over rated.  The biggest overrated writer to me (in the non-RPG arena) is Warren Ellis. I have talked about Warren Ellis before and how I feel about him so I am not going to go over it here, but you get the point.  While we were talking Monte Cook’s name came up in the decision. We began to think about it, what would Monte Cook be worth pay rate wise in the RPG industry for both PDFs and retail bookstore sales?

I know Monte is the pinnacle of writers and creative people in the RPG industry.  His name alone on a project will help sales greatly.  I know for a fact that Monte can and has sold more than 200 PDFs on the day he releases a PDF.  How do I know this for a fact? Well when I released the original Power Corrupts for M&M Superlink, we sold 189 in the first three days that we released it and were #1 on RPGNow’s Top 100 list.  On day three of our release, Monte just happened to release an OGL/D20 fantasy product I can remember which one but it really does matter for this tale.  In less than a day, Monte blew past our #1 rating on day four, which had just hit over 200 copies sold, and in less than a day and he was #1 on the list.  If the book had a price of $10.95 and RPGNow was taking 25% (This is WAY back in the day) of the sale Monte made $1,644 in ONE DAY.  If the product did that well on one day I am sure it went on to sell well over 1,000 copies in its life time which comes out to be a minimum of $8,212.50.  And remember that was just the PDF sales, I don’t even know what his print sales must have been like.

Now here is some more mathematics for you, if you take the $8,212.50 amount divided it by the amount of pages let say 96 you come up with $85.55 dollars per page he made.  Now divide that number by 500 words (Bet most of you didn’t know that 500 words is the average amount of word per laid out page) and you get 18 cents per word.  So at 10 cents a word, Monte would be a STEAL! 

But then we started talking about other writers like Wolfgang Baur, Ken Hite, Chris Pramas, Sean K. Reynolds, Erik Mona, Jason Bulman, Bruce Cordell, Matt Forbeck, Keith Baker and John Wick.  Are they worth in actual sales that amount they charge?   Just something to think about next time you are looking for a freelance writer for a project.  Talk to you later…

[RANT] If one more person tells me you can’t make money making RPGs, I am going to punch them in the [BLEEP]ing mouth!!!

How many times have you heard this one: You can’t make money in the RPG industry. 
Basically ALL THE TIME!!! And who do you hear it most from? People who have failed to make money in the RPG industry.  But here is the question you should ask yourself, Why the [BLEEP] should you listen to any [BLEEP]ing thing they have to say?  All they have [BLEEP]ing proven is that THEY CAN’T MAKE MONEY IN THE [BLEEP]ING RPG BUSINESS.  Not you. 

The RPG Industry is full of failed RPG companies, right? So is the [BLEEP]ing real business world!!! One out of ten businesses fails their first year; one out of ten businesses fails in the next 5 years.  This fact is well known to everyone, so why do we think it would be any different for RPG companies? It isn’t dumb [BLEEP]! The RPG industry and companies are no different than any other industry or business, no matter what some people think or feel.  The reson it looks so severe in the RPG industry is because the RPG industry is so [BLEEP]ing small!!!  Anything you do looks a hundred times more extreme to us. 

If you look at RPGNow.com, there are over 500 publishers listed there right now.  I am willing to bet you 85% of them are out of business or have not released a product in over three years.  Those are people who tried to get a RPG company off the ground and as they found out the hard way, 90% of those FAILED in the first year. Out of those remaining 10% of them, 90% of them FAILED in the next five years.   So at RPGNow you can “guess-timate” that there are only 75 to 100 publishers who are actually active RPG companies.  You can even add Monte Cook and Malhavoc Press to that list also.  The last thing he released at RPGNow.com was Dark Tidings on January 27, 2009. 

There are a several companies that are not just making money, but actually making a profit and expanding their business. Take a quick look: Green Ronin just celebrated their ten anniversary and now has the DC Comics license; Paizo is now tied for 1^st place for top selling RPG; Fantasy Flight Games and Privateer Press started off as RPG companies and expanded into new gaming markets; Mongoose Publishing started off as a D20 RPG company and now has a decent sized staff and various game lines; White Wolf has had ups and downs but still remains in business with it various business arms including PSI and RPGNow.com.  Plus many, many more… Don’t ever let someone else tell you that you can’t be successful in something. Especially if they failed at doing it.

The real funny part to all this is that video games got this same story told to them in the beginning.  Now there are dozens of Hollywood studios fighting over video game properties that want to make movies about.  Why have so many RPG companies just accepted that they will never make money? Because deep down a lot of them are losers and they know it they just don’t want to admit it out loud.  Not me. Not LPJ Design! We are valuable. Not just because I say it. Because I do something to prove it by putting out products people want AND do buy. 

What is the Conan line that is so often quoted to you by gamers all the time: Conan, what is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. Do bad many of us don’t act like that when dealing in people who are trying to drag us down and tell us we are going to fail. Everything you get in life good or bad is because you worked for it consciously or unconsciously. Back to work for me, I have to make LPJ Design more profitable. I hope you are doing the same.  Talk to you later…

Controlling cost and what things are worth…

When I started in the PDF publishing business back in 2001 there was an unwritten rule that PDFs cost roughly 10 cents a page.  A decade later that price is 18 cents to 25 cents per page.  Now have PDFs improved over this period of time? Oh yes, the quality of PDF publishing has grown into its own with many people trying and doing thing that 10 years ago would be business suicide.  Most PDF publishers have been doing PDF publishing about four years. There are very few people who have been at this for a decade. The only two I know are Gareth and me.  Monte Cook was only at it for eight years. 

Pricing is a touchy subject due to the fact that it is an individual choice for each publisher and due to the flexibility of the market has not really been able to get it under some control.  The market normally finds some way to control pricing but there is always some type of elasticity to make pricing flexible. The PDF market is similar to what the iTunes apps market must be like: lots of small to medium sized players and few major players and pricing that is everywhere all over the board.  eBook publishing is starting to see the same issue of pricing.  With the cost of pixels coming down each and every day the issue of pricing will become more and more important over time.  What should things cost? What people are willing to pay for them.  And if you don’t like that, then you shouldn't purchase the product. And yes I am talking to you.  Talk to you later…

Stop revving your engines, and just go somewhere…

OK this is a little bit of a rant for a friend of mine who is very talented, but sometimes can be a really assclown to execution of something. Being a PDF publisher for so long I always get questions from people who want to get into the RPG industry. The question I get the MOST often is, “How do I start?” My answer is “Stop revving your engines, and just go somewhere”. Too often people TALK about wanting to be the industry and don’t do any actually work. Too many people do that. What you NEED to do to be successful as a RPG publisher is actually do the work AND put something out for sale. That is it. Just put your nose to the grind stone and just do it. Stop with the bullshit reasons why you can’t, and just do it. But what of you don’t know how to do it? Then figure it out. It not rocket science. Do what you think is best and try it. If it doesn’t work figure out what you did wrong and don’t do it again. Look the only difference between Monte Cook and you is Monte is motivated to work. That is it. Just motivate yourself and do it. So are you motivated, then you are half way there. Now come the sweat and hard work. Talk to you later…

18 months ago Malhavoc Press released last PDF product, Dark Tidings. Is Malhavoc Press out of business?

I just have to wonder. I was looking at products at RPGNow.com and I noticed that it had been 18 months since anything had been put out by them.  While I do know about DungeonADay.com (hell I am a member), I just am wondering is Malhavoc Press as company dead? Has Monte just moved on from the concept of doing a RPG business and now is an occasional freelance for Kobold Quarterly and Paizo? What do you think?  More importantly, would you want to see Malhavoc Press return to making RPG material?  Talk to you later…

As a writer what sounds like the better deal: Getting paid 2 cents a word or 5% of the total sales?

The answer to this question all depends on one simple little thing; how “good” of a writer are you? If you are just starting out, then 2 cents a word is a good rate. No matter what happens, you get paid and that is you end goal. If you are Monte Cook or Wolfgang Baur, well you are going t sell at a certain level for the life of the product, so that 5% could be some serious money if done right. It is a very simple question right? How much are you skills worth? How much are your skills worth now OR in the future? How badly do you need the money now OR in the future? How well do you market yourself now or in the future? How much to you have invested in the product you worked on is the better question. Too many people look for the easy short cash without realizing what the long term effect it might have on them. Being a freelancer, the name of the game is marketing one’s self so you can become more popular over time which in turn makes you more money. What you think you are worth is up to you. What you think you can earn over time is really up to you. What are you doing with that knowledge and how can that help you in the learn term? Just something to think about next time you are accepting a new writing position. Talk to you later…

The financial mathematic of making a profitable RPG product for FREE…

So a few weeks ago I spoke about Monte Cook’ DungeonADay.com site and How to do it if it was free.  So I  have been crunching the actual numbers and this is what I have come up with to do my own version of DungeonADay.com with a little spin on it:

Writing focus & Writing Cost: Unlike DungeonADay.com which is a daily updated traffic site, we are looking to do updates to this website twice a week (Monday & Thursday) or three times a week (Monday, Wednesday & Friday).  Also unlike, DungeonADay.com we are using the Adventure Path structure as our focus and basis for this new website.  We plan for our Adventure Paths to last only for 13 weeks. Each day that we do and update will be an encounter that links into the larger story the website is telling. We are planning for each of the encounter updates to be 1,500 words in length with a one cent a word rate.  So that comes to either $30 or $45 a week for this project.  Figure it out for the full 13 weeks and you get a total price of either $390 or $585

The web hosting: SubHub is exactly what I would be looking for.  After joining DungeonADay.com and looking around it for all the great stuff it has inside for gaming fans (and there is a lot of great stuff inside) I think this will fit me nicely.  The price breakdown that SubHub provides is somewhat reasonable at $97 a month.  $97 a month comes out to $22.55 per week for a 13 week total of $293.15.

Artwork: Stock art which I have TONS of it so no issue there.

Cartography: After experimenting with my Fantasyscape line I decided that I will be handling that myself so I save cost on that.

So the total to do this little project for 13 weeks would be $683.15 (for twice a week) or $878.15 (for three times a week). 

Now, the BIG difference between this site and DungeonADay.com is that we are giving this site and content away COMPLETELY FOR FREE.  If I am doing this for free, how will this site make any money?  Now it is time to think like our friends at Webcomics.com and what I have read in How To Make Webcomics. 

First off, I have to know what is the minimum amount of money I need to generate per day to make this whole idea profitable.  So for twice a week version we will need to make $7.51 a day; while the three time a week version we will need to make $9.65 a day.  When you break it down like that it does not really seem like a lot of money.  How will I be making that money?  Let’s see…

Advertising: There will be ads from Project Wonderful where I will do a two skyscraper ads (160 x600 pixels) that will cost $1.50 a day to advertise on each ($3 total); one letterbox ad (728 x 90 pixels) that will cost $2 a day; six half banner ads (234 x 60 pixels) that will cost $0.50 a day to advertise on each ($3 total)

RPGNow Affiliate Store: I have an affiliate store that was created by RPGNow.com and I am able to sell my products (and other RPG companies products).  RPGNow.com gives me 10% of whatever I sales that I generate at that site. So if I wanted to make $4 a day from the affiliate site I would need to sell $40 worth of product a day.  With all the traffic I would be generating from the interest in this site, I do think that would be an issue. 

And with those two little things I could generate a whopping $12 a day which would come out over 13 weeks to be $1,092.  Subtract the $683.15 (for twice a week) or $878.15 (for three times a week) and you get $408.85 (twice a week) or $213.85 (three times a week). Proving this could be a profitable venture. 

Now here is the fun part that many of you have not even thought of yet.  I could collect all the content we have written (39K words for twice a week or 59K words for three times a week) and make a PDF version and sell it at RPGNow.com for $7 or $9 each.  Better yet, I can go Print on Demand with Lulu.com and sell them for $18.99 or $21.99 each. Since we covered the cost of the site with the advertising and affiliate store, all the rest is PURE PROFIT!!!!  Once again, all of it is PURE PROFIT!!!!!  Who would have thought you could make all that money giving stuff away for free?  Looks like I have some work to do.  Talk to you later…

How much money would it take to make a Dugeonaday.com free?

Continuing on with my Free Dungeonaday.com theme, I wanted to break down what it would cost to do something like this for a month. So let’s get started, first off webspace.  

Let’s assume you have a website already built and let us say you are paying $20 month (I know this is high but we are just estimating here so just go with it). Let say you are going to have this run for at least three months so the total is $60. For this little experiment, we are going to ASSUME that you will do all the HTML coding on the website too.

Next, how many days will we update? I think a Monday through Friday schedule is reasonable so we are going to estimate 22 updates per month (Math Breakdown: 5 times a week times 4.3 weeks in a month =  21.5 and round up).  Now we move on to per day word count.  Well if it is too long no one will read it online, if to short it will not cover the encounter properly, plus the real issue is stat blocks can eat up a lot of text.  Let me handle the stat block issue first with the use of the use of the online Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document. Since we are on the web we can tell what monster they are fight and link the stats of them to Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document. Problem solved and no increase in word count needed. I estimate 500 to 700 words per encounter will cover what we need daily. For the month we will need 11,000 to 15,400 words. Since we are keeping this budget tight let set writing to 1 cent a word for a total of $100 to $154 per month. Let expand that for three months and now we get $300 to $453. Let’s just say $460 for three months and be safe. Now the total price is up to $520. 

Next, artwork. This one is easy, STOCK ART!!!! Hit up RPGNow.com and get a few collections of stock art.  I would not spend more than $50 for stock art.  That should get you several different ones and be more than enough (Let me suggest LPJ Design's Image Portfolio of stock art if you need somewhere to start).  So now that brings your total to $570.

Also with artwork, you might need maps for the dungeon your visitors are exploring.  That one can be handled with a pen and some graph paper.  If you don’t think you can handle this because you can’t draw straight line, get a ruler. Writing, art, website, stat blocks and maps.  That looks like you have covered everything important that you will need in the first three months for a grand total of $570 or $190 a month. At a cost of spending only $190 a month you could have your own Dungeonaday.com  type website. 

Now this sounds like a great idea to do, but then you realize doing this website would break my Number #1 business rule: DON’T LOSE MONEY!!!!

So what do you do to not lose money? You find a way to turn this site into one that makes money for you.  A lot of you are saying and thinking the easy way, “Then why don’t I just have subscriptions?” You could and you would have to direct compete with some in the market who already dominates that space. Think of it as trying to sell your own MP3 player in a market which Mac and the iPod already control.  How successful do you think you will be?

But if you are free, at least you can get the people to come by and check you out.  There is no “friction” to stop them from examining your site to see if they like it. This could be your important selling point.  Imagine this as your marketing: It’s just like Dungeonaday.com, BUT FREE! How do you depend against free?  Now how do you make money having a free site?  Just follow the webcomic model:  Everything on the site is for sell.  You sell ad space on the site (See Kobold Magazine for this). You direct sell items and products to customers that can get anywhere (exclusive versions of products). You give away digital wallpaper with donations to the site (Girls with Slingshots does this VERY well).  Be inventive!  Think of it this way, are you going to let $190 ($6.23 a day) is keeping you from being a RPG Publishing Superstar?  So get to work.  Talk to you later... 

What if Monte Cook's Dungeonaday.com was Free?

When I first heard about how Monte Cook created his Dungeonaday.com website I thought it was a great money making idea.  For Monte he would be able to create great exclusive daily content for those that were subscribers.  It was a great way for Monte to build a unique fanbase for his writing.  Best of all for Monte it created some regular monthly cashflow for his business.  Everything about it was a "Win - Win".  I liked the idea so much that I wanted to to something like it for my business.  I thought about what I would do, how I would build it, how I would develop it, how much I would charge subscribers, and all the stuff like that.  I kept going over and over this whole idea and two things kept popping up as issues:

1. The price to charge subscribers and 
2. How much money could the site really generate. 

Question #1 was directly dependent on question #2 and ice versa. So after all the thinking back and forth, I thought what if I did the exactly same thing as Monte Cook, but instead of charging subscribers we gave it away for free and generate money like the webcomics business model?

Webcomics.com (originally for free) now charges for the premium content they create on their site. Basically all the information that they were giving away for free originally could be found in their book, How to create Webcomics. When they were giving away the content for free many people kept asking those same questions OVER and OVER.  When the content was premium, the message of what they did and how they did it charged.  It became more specific. It was community building. It was tribe building. When it was free, it was quick entertainment that people could take or leave at no cost to themselves.  Now with their subscription wall of $30 (I must say this was the best $30 I have spend to acquire some great business ideas and knowledge) they can't just give you the same old stuff you could read in any book, you paid for premium content, they have to give it to you. Like Dungeonaday.com.

The content at Dungeonaday.com and Webcomics.com is an 8 to 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best and 1 being the worst, of course) and people are paying for that level of quality.  But when it is free, you have to find a way to make up for the cost of creating 8 to 9 level  of content with out being able to depend on subscribers.  And how is that done?  The way I see are reducing the physical format (Both Dungeonaday.com and Webcomics.com are in digital only formats), level of quality of the item (Webcomics in general normally four panel or one page daily comic strips, while standard comic books are monthly 23 pages in length) and getting advertisers to generate the monies that the subscribers normally would.  So if Dungeoneaday.com went to a free model, would the quality go down to save time and money? Or could the large number of new people coming to the site to see what new thing was released be enough to generate income in the way of advertising to offset the cost of doing it? There are people who do it Brad Guiger with Evil Inc., Dave Kellett wit Sheldon, Kris Straub with Starslip and Scott Kurtz with PvP and have done it for years.  The only question you have to ask is could you do it with RPGs? I think I might have to find the answer to this question.  Talk to you later...

Monte Cook’s Dungeonaday.com Covert Master Plan to take over…

Well maybe not. But I have been looking at Dungeonaday.com and SubHub.com (the service they use to deliver their subscription service) and I realized something. You could use this for creating magazines. And I don’t just mean basic online versions of magazines, I mean actual bookshelf magazines. The process works like this, five days a week you release 1,000 word articles on topic (for this sample we will be doing OGL material). You charge $8 a month for this. Over the weekend you collect the week’s worth of material and lay it out using InDesign or whatever and convert into a PDF. Based on 5K you should have at least 10 pages worth of material. The following Monday you place the PDF up for subscribes for free then sell it at RPGNow.com for $2.50.

At the end of the month you collect all the PDFs together, which should be about 40 pages worth. Now you approach OGL publishers and you tell them you will give them one free 1 page ad if they submit 1,000 words for next month’s magazine. You accept 24 pages worth of ads you now have a 64 page magazine. A 64 page 8.5 x 11 book will cost $7.10 which you will mark up to $9.99 and make $2.89 per each copy you sell. Best of all since you use Lulu.com they are free for you to print. Basically you have sold the same content in three different ways and earned income form each of them.

Now let’s look at actual money numbers:

If you get a writer to work on this at a rate 1.5 cents per word (Not great, but good if you have never been published or you need some extra cash this month), this comes to $300. You purchase two Shaman StockArt stock art packages for $16. Then you need to find a layout person who works good, fast and cheap. You offer him $50 plus 5% of the PDF sales and everyone should be happy. So all in all this should cost you roughly $375 right out of the pocket. You break down total sales percentages as so:

• RPGNow.com: 50% or 125 PDFs ($2.50 – $0.12 for the Layout Person – 0.88 for RPGNow.com = $1.50 each PDF sold)
• Subscriptions: 35% or 16 Subscriptions ($8 each Monthly Sub sold)
• Lulu.com: 15% or 19 books ($2.89 each book sold)

Now this seems like a lot to sell until you remember a few things:

1. The RPGNow amount of 125 is spread of four PDFs not just one. (Remember these are the weekly ones that are being sold.)
2. MOST IMPORTANTLY: The second issue that you do will FREE and not cost you anything!!! The advertisers provide you with the content from the next month. 24,000 words worth of content. You just repeat the 1K word for 1 Page offer again and keep on going and the rest is pure profit.

If you use SubHub to host the subscriptions that is an extra $97 you need to generate from this or use Yahoo for free. Now with the numbers I gave you, there are ways to cut cost and corners (You could do all the writing ala Monte or get volunteers for cheap or free to pad their writing resume; You could do the layout yourself like I would) but as you see it is possible to make money at this if you do a little creative thinking. Think about it. Talk to you later…

Green Ronin is NOT a PDF publisher and here is why…

Green Ronin is a well respected and loved RPG publisher. Their staff is top notch and some of the best minds in the RPG industry and publishing business. Fans have supported their various gaming line in local retail stores for years. They have won awards in the field of RPGs and proved themselves to be a great RPG publisher and a top company to retail stores. And that is why Green Ronin is not a PDF publisher.

Green Ronin is a RPG Publisher who makes PDFs, but they are not PDF publisher. They do love PDF sales, but they are not it core focus of their business. The problem that most people seem to forget that there is a distinct difference between what a RPG Publisher is, and what a RPG PDF Publisher is. While they are very similar in just about every fashion, but here are some points that specially separates them:

1. RPG Publishers what to sell to retail locations who in turn sell to consumers. RPG PDF Publishers want to sell direct to the customer. Simply put, RPG Publishers is Barnes & Nobles; PDF Publishers are Amazon.com.
2. RPG Publishers put together manuscripts that are sent layout then to printers who print them. The RPG company pays for the print run, the printers sends them to the RPG warehouse that ships the product out to their distributor for sale. PDF publishers put together manuscripts that are sent layout then PDFed and uploaded to sell online. In some cases the create of the PDF can be done for free by the use of free PDF creation programs like CutePDF or PDF 995.
3. Due to printing cost, RPG Publishers need to do larger page count products to make the product cost effective, since the large the book the more you can charge. While PDF Publishers can do this also, they can also take a larger book and separate it in into smaller individuals PDF products. Green Ronin seemed to do this with their Advanced Race Codex series.
4. Pricing is normally the real difference between RPG Publisher and PDF Publishers. Often RPG Publisher will use the guide of 50% of the printed cost and that is the price PDF version. Originally the “accept” pricing structure for PDF was 10 per page, but that has changed over the years but pricing for PDF fall in the range of $2 - $8 each.

As I said before, Green Ronin is a RPG Publisher who just happens to make PDFs. Their main goal is to get the physical product in to retail stores. Monte Cook with Malhavoc Press is a PDF Publisher, who just happens to make books. Monte started off testing the PDF waters with The Book of Eldritch Might and went on to do collected bookshelf version of his PDF products with Sword and Sorcery and now with Paizo. Monte’s main goal is to get the information out to the fans no matter the format. DungeonADay.com is a great example of that.

Now with all this said, Green Ronin has release M&M Caper #1: Little League, the comments of Marcus King during the WOTC PDF fiasco more than proves they are fans of the format and see it future potential to help them become a stronger company. Adamant Entertainment, Malhavoc Press, Rite Publishing even LPJ Design are PDF Publishers. Green Ronin is a RPG Publisher who makes PDFs. Remember, there is a difference. Talk to you later…

Stealing back from Steven, whom he stole back from me, which I stole from Wolfgang and Steven...and now Monte Cook.

OK, the title says it all on this one, so if you can't understand it here is the short version to get you caught up:

• Wolfgang Baur came up with the idea of doing patron projects for his RPG Business.
• Steven took the patron project idea, modified it and applied it to his products for his RPG Business and product Lands of the Jade Oath.
• I took Steven's modified patron project idea and modified it again to create my own patron project for Obsidian Twilight.
• Then Steven took back my modified modification of the patron project and started using it for his upcoming Pathfinder Compatibility License patronage project.

But now, I am modifying the modified modification of the patron project (Thanks to Monte Cook) and now we have...

The Ultimate Modification of the Patron Project Stolen (I mean Liberated) idea! Here it is:

You do the patron project (like Wolfgang and Steven) but you base it on a multi-payment system (like LPJ Design) but you put it online at a subscription based website (like Monte) so people can look at you developing the product from the ground up. And since this is a business blog, I have to show where and why that is a good idea to do business wise, so here goes:

Instead of charging a one-time $50 for a person to get behind the scenes and see what is going on and get access to the patron project, you charge the person on a low subscription fee (like $4-10 per month) and give them all kinds of new stuff each week or twice a week, (Every day can be a bit of over load to me but Monte does it well) but keep it up for only one month (30 days) after that take the released material down. So the longer you stay a subscriber the more you get and at the same time people who just come in for one month can’t just grab everything and bail for the low monthly price. Now on the business side, you can keep this site going on forever if you keep releasing product and material for it and when you get ready you can collect parts of it for PDF and Lulu.com based products.

This program would work very well if you wanted to do a “living campaign” like Living Arcanis or Pathfinder Society community. You could submit adventures to subscribed members in this fashion and have they play them at conventions of whatever. I think I could build the NeoExodus: A House Divided and Obsidian Twilight living campaigns they same way. Well I guess this is going to be a busy summer for me. Talk to you later…

Paizo hires Sean K. Reynolds for Pathfinder

Looks like Paizo is planning to make itself the new TSR/WOTC. With another bold move of smart business, Paizo hires Sean K. Reynolds to work for them. Monte is already doing work for Paizo, and so is Wolfgang. I wonder what other superstars of 3.0/3.5 will find their way to Pathfinder. Only time will tell. Talk to you later...

Monte does it again!!!

Looks like Monte Cook has created another new and interesting PDF/book for D20 called Book of Experimental Might. Monte really knows how to draw interest and do great products, plus it does not hurt he help write the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide, but I digress. ogo check out his latest book. I am picking it up on Saturday after I get paid. Talk to you later...