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…

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…

Open Design to Write Official Paizo Adventure

The influence of Paizo and Pathfinder extends further. Read about it here!!!

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…

Christmas is over, back to work...

Well now that Christmas is over, we have to focus on the upcoming projects we have planned for 2008. While 2007 has been a great improvement over 2006, we are looking to expand is several different ways to raise LPJ Design into being in the Top 5 PDF companies. With our renewed business relationship with Paizo and e23, we fell that this will only help increase our over all sales. Also with this our expanding focus on Print On Demand materials with the use of Lulu will only help to raise awareness. On top of all this, our upcoming business partnership with Wolfgang Baur and Kobold Quarterly is going to open up all new avenues of success for us. So once again 2008 looks to be even busier for us. Talk to you later...