Transparency Agenda Daily September 13th 2016 - Owen KC Stephens MUST be...

Transparency Agenda Daily August 2nd 2016 - 3PP Publisher Breakdown Rite...

Transparency Agenda Daily July 7th 2016 - Codename Indigo Donkey continues

Transparency Agenda Daily July 6th 2016 - Goodbye Steve Russell

Transparency Agenda Daily June 30th 2016 - Getting reviews for your products

Going transparent on The Demiplane of Gaming #48: ENnies!

Transparency Agenda #49: Retailers VS. Kickstarter!!! (+playlist)

The Demiplane of Gaming # 40: The Just Us League with guest host Louis Porter Jr.

Oh look I am a guest host on The Demiplane of Gaming!!! Talk to you later...

The PDF Rewards With "At Cost Print on Demand" for Supporters New Trend for RPG Kickstarters

I guess I am late with this one, but have people seen this post at Tenkar’s Taven: A New Trend in RPG Kickstarters? - PDF Rewards With"At Cost Print on Demand" for Supporters. Apparently our friends of at Rite Publishing where the first to attempt this and now Amethyst - Fantasy & Technology Collide is doing the same thing. OK I have to admit I am a little confused by this.  Not by what they are suggesting but why people feel this in “innovative” or a “new trend”?

We at LPJ Design send out our print books to people via CreateSpace / Amazon. Rite Publishing is doing the same thing but adding RPGNow.com in to the equation. 

So with us it is: LPJ Design > CreateSpace / Amazon > Donor. 

With Rite Publishing it is: Rite > RPGNow > Lightning Source > Donor. 

I don’t see the need or desire for the added step because RPGNow is going to charge Rite for this service of doing the POD books for them.  I use RPGNow and a PDF distributor of product and CreateSpace as my POD distributor. It just makes better sense to me to do that. I mean if RPGNow charged me 10% to do that “service” on a $20 book that’s $2 per book. If Lightning Source cost me $4 to print a book and RPGNow just added 50% more to my production cost of the book.

I mean getting the books at cost is a “good thing” (I assume they are charging people at the $6 RPGNow add-on versus the Lightning Source $4 cost) but are any of these books going to show up on the retailer shelves, meaning can retailers buy the book at cost during this Kickstarter?  I mean it is one thing to offer this to the limited amount of donors that support your kickstarter, but it is complexly different to offer this to your retailer where the margin between the wholesale and the retail, or even to distributors, can be where you make your money. Like I said before. I am a little confused about this whole thing. Talk to you later…

Transparency Agenda #34: With Ben McFarland!!!!

This time it is a little different with Transparency Agenda with the added excitement of having professional hobbylancer, Ben McFarland. This Transparency Agenda we are discussing the top ten from Paizo and some other interesting 3PP releated material. Plus you will get to see all the INTERESTING issues we have pulling this off using Google+. It is good we had a tech guy so close to help us out.  Talk to you later... 

Transparency Agenda #31: Legendary Games + Super Genius Games = ???

Transparency Agenda #30: Examining Top 10 3PP Sales on Paizo.com

So I started doing some research on looking at the sales data that Paizo.com provides each week in their email and I noticed some interesting things.  First off, I compared each week of sales from July 26 until last week’s email on September 6. Over those seven week there were a total of 70 possible different products in the weekly top 10 listing.  The following is a list of 3PP and how many products they had in the top 10 over this 7 week period (In alphabetic order):

• Dreamscarred Press – 3 products
• Kobold Press – 12 products
• Legendary Games – 17 products
• Minotaur Games – 5 products
• Necromancers of the Northwest – 1 product
• Pathfinder Paper Minis – 6 products
• Rite Publishing – 6 products
• Super Genius Games – 18 products
• Zombie Sky Press – 2 products

Now looking at this list, I am sure you already will have some preconceived ideas and concepts of who the most successful companies in 3PP at Paizo. On products alone, Super Genius Games, Legendary Games and Kobold Press have count for over 65% of the products on this list. While this is very impressive the really interesting part is looking over these numbers over time. 

I have included a PDF of the last 7 weeks of sales at Paizo.com available for you to download and look over, just click to get your copy.

Starting with July 26^th the top ten consist of:

• Dreamscarred Press – 1 product
• Kobold Press – 3 products
• Legendary Games – 1 product
• Rite Publishing – 1 products
• Super Genius Games – 3 products
• Zombie Sky Press – 1 product

August 2^nd the top ten consist of:

• Dreamscarred Press – 1 product
• Kobold Press – 1 product
• Legendary Games – 1 product
• Pathfinder Paper Minis – 1 product
• Rite Publishing – 1 product
• Super Genius Games – 4 products
• Zombie Sky Press – 1 product

August 9^th the top ten consist of:

• Dreamscarred Press – 1 products
• Kobold Press – 2 products
• Legendary Games – 1 product
• Necromancers of the Northwest – 1 product
• Pathfinder Paper Minis – 1 product
• Rite Publishing – 1 product
• Super Genius Games – 3 products

August 16^th the top ten consist of:

• Kobold Press – 2 products
• Legendary Games – 2 products
• Minotaur Games – 1 product
• Pathfinder Paper Minis – 1 product
• Rite Publishing – 1 product
• Super Genius Games – 3 products

August 23^rd the top ten consist of:

• Kobold Press – 2 products
• Legendary Games – 3 products
• Minotaur Games – 1 product
• Pathfinder Paper Minis – 1 product
• Rite Publishing – 1 product
• Super Genius Games – 2 products

August 30^th the top ten consist of:

• Kobold Press – 1 product
• Legendary Games – 4 products
• Minotaur Games – 2 products
• Pathfinder Paper Minis – 1 product
• Rite Publishing – 1 product
• Super Genius Games – 1 product

September 6^th the top ten consist of:

• Kobold Press – 1 product
• Legendary Games – 5 products
• Minotaur Games – 1 product
• Pathfinder Paper Minis – 1 product
• Super Genius Games – 2 products

Now if you have been paying attention looking over these charts did you notices a few things about 3PP. Let’s take these one at a time:

1. Over time it looks like the many of the established 3PP (Super Genius Games and Kobold Press) are being out sold by the new 3PP company (Legendary Games).
2. Minotaur Games, Pathfinder Paper Mini and Rite Publishing each seem on average to have a steady sell rate of 1 product in the top 10 each of the 7 weeks.
3. There are normally an average of 6 different companies on the top 10 list but last week there were only 5 companies listed.
4. Looking at how products actually sale (using Super Genius Games’ products and sales ranks), the initial week the product comes out there is great interest. But only after two or three week interest fades as new product is released.  
5. Based on Legendary Games sales cross promotion of product with other related Paizo specific does promote sales as does products that can be cross promoted with each other’s like Super Genius Games’ Talented line products .
6. Minotaur Games is the only one man shop 3PP who made this list. The effect of being a great game designer AND an access to Paizo’s “aura of influence” as an employee can affect your sales directly.
7. Even though Legendary Games PDF products have a price point of $9.99, customers seem not to be phased by it and still purchase in large numbers.

What do think about this? What gets you interested in buying a products? Tell me what you think! Talk to you later…

Transparency Agenda #023: Secret Plan X is revealed!!!!

Working on the Crown Council for NeoExodus

So I have been working on the outline for the upcoming Secret Societies of NeoExodus: Crown Council.  This is going to be a fun books for me since I get to show a group can be dangerous in and out of combat, which only makes the role playing experience better.  I think the tag line of "The covert nature and dubious morality of many of these clandestine missions led to their being described as the Imperial Janissaries run by Section Omega" only adds to their mysteriousness and their ability to cross over so many areas of influence in NeoExodus makes them only more interesting. In addition, I finally finished the Crown Council's personal icon which you can tell draws influence from the Imperial Alliance icon.  Best of all I want to add an organizational / business / political structure system to the NeoExodus settign starting witht he book and it looks like with the help of Rite Publishing's Way of the Yakuza it might have found an easy way to do that. I guess Jonathan McAnulty will be getting a call from me soon.  Talk to you alter...

3rd 4-star review for NeoExodus: A House Divided Campaign Setting

It's a solid 4-star trifecta with our latest review for NeoExodus: A House Divided Campaign Setting. I am glad to see this review was by the world famous Pathfinder reviewer Thilo Gaft. Even better, Thilo also placed the NeoExodus: A House Divided in his top 10 Pathfinder products for 2011 in Rite Publishing's Pathways #12. So as you can see this book is SOLID and ready for your players!  Make sure to pick up your copy of NeoExodus: A House Divided Campaign Setting as soon as possible   Talk to you later...

If you are not using Kickstarter, READ THIS POST!

If you are STILL not sure about using Kickstarter after seeing the successes from Rite Publishing, Open Design and even us at LPJ Design, take a second and read through the updates for the Order of the Stick Reprint Drive.  If this doesn't get you motivated to start a Kickstaer project, nothing will.  Talk to you later...

What I thought was a niche, wasn't really a niche...

I was talking to Steve over at Rite Publishing about the whole Kickstarter concept basically trying to figure out what I have done wrong in the past to not get the kind of response I was looking for with my Kickstarter projects.  In the middle of the conversiation he said something to me that was shocking and a little surprising, at least to me. I was taking about the attempt I had made at Kickstarter with Obsidian Twilight and I thought it was in the perfect niche to get funded. Steve said something that kind of took me back about Obsidian Twilight:

Me: I "thought" I had passion of Obsidian Twilight and it was niche enough, but that didn't do well. On kickstarter at least.

Steve: No to me. It was not niche. It took two mainstream ideas and put them together and Pathfinder to me is mainstream. Its also about catching the attention of the social networks and everything else.

What? Did Steve just say Obsidian Twilight was mainstream and NOT niche? WHAT? This comment shook me to my core. I never thought of Obsidian Twilight as mainstream, let alone thinking about Pathfinder as mainstream. They are both niche right? Wrong. They ARE mainstream. Now A Place Beyond Hell (our Post Apocalyptic Fantasy Cthulhu Survival Horror sourcebook for Pathfinder) is a REAL niche.  After this little talk with Steve, I might have to rethink what I would consider niche is.  Maybe more focus, a more narrow of a view is what I need. Kind of like from spotlight to flashlight now to a laser.  Always more focused, always more intensity.  Maybe one day we will go back a re-Kickstart Obsidian Twilight to add on all the stuff we wanted to and make it ever crazier than we did.  Make it more focused and ramp up the intensity.  Just somehting to think abotu the next time you are working on a project, is this niche enough?  Talk to you later...

Pathfinder Product of the Day - Pathways #7 (PFRPG)

Pathways #7 (PFRPG): Pathways #7 (PFRPG)

Pathfinder Product of the Day - #30 Haunts for Objects (PFRPG)

#30 Haunts for Objects (PFRPG): #30 Haunts for Objects (PFRPG)

If I am so busy, why isn't more of my work getting done...

The one thing that can be an issue with working as a PDF publisher, is how the "real world" interferes with my "business work". This in turn makes my life very busy which in turns means I don't get a lot of sleep. I used to only get 4.5 to 5 hours a day, but I have increased in to 6 hours now after having my son.  Over the last few weeks I have been only getting 5 hours and it is finally starting to show on my face.  Everyone who sees me lately is like, "Louis go take a nap." But with so much going on, it also is hard to organize what is going on. At least in my head.  JP Chapleau has done a bunch of work that I need to look at including the NeoExodus Campaign book, Magic of the First Ones, and some other stuff I can't talk about. We also have several writers working on the new Legendary weapons of NeoExodus and with all this going on I have created a new advertising campaign for NeoExodus (see image in this blog) and have started developing a new product series of Pathfinder inspired by Steve over at Rite Publishing. Plus I have the NeoExodus Novella Kickstarter project to get ready and look for more artist (like always). Lots of balls in the air and I have to find a way to catch them all. Talk to you later...