Sandy's Soapbox
First, a step back. In the 90s, I convinced the branch of a book store chain to order my Chaosium book, Miskatonic University. I may have overconvinced them... they ordered 2 cases of it. I think I sold four copies at the signing. The manager still loved me afterwards.
To this day, I don't know if it was a good decision for that manager. But hey, it moved 2 cases of a book. The book did sell out, and a few months ago Chaosium put out a 2nd edition. With a new primary author, true, but I do get mentioned somewhere, so onto the resume it goes.
I suspect, for the manager, it was worth the minor cost as a nice break from the usual. And the draw of having a signing often helps get other people in. Since I, the signer, was working for free, it probably all balanced out.
But it did start me on the path to find balance. With even minor business decisions, you have to balance not just 'effort versus return', but also 'time wasted debating the issue versus potential loss'.
Put simply, you shouldn't spend productive time agonizing over minor decisions. It's better to do a bit of risk than to distract yourself from your core business.
If you're a retailer, for example, you have to trust your ability to make spot decisions when a new book or local author comes by. Spending an hour working out every possible scenario on a $20 book buy is time that would have been better spent doing, say, payroll.
Or even cleaning up. I'd suggest it's better to clean your store toilets to ensure happy customers than spending too long debating details with local authors. So, in this scheme, authors continue their streak of being very low in the totem pole.
From a publisher's point of view, though, this "small matters" issue comes most into play when discussing costs to find out about where to sell your darn books.
Will joining the GPA for $50 help you sell books? Will joining GAMA for $300 help you sell books? Joining the GIF for free? Being part of every relevant Yahoo-group? Joining your local Chamber of Commerce? Attending Origins, GenCon, GTS, Toy Fair, where does it ever stop?
Well, okay, the real short answer is 'join the GPA, and you will learn which of the others may help'. But as a former director for the GPA, I may be biased here.
The medium answer is to join everything once and then renew the ones that worked. This is expensive, particularly if you're starting out and have zero cash flow already. Even the ones that are free will suck up time.
In the end, you can spend all your time and money and do a lot of great strategizing and planning... and find you have no books. Making books takes time, after all.
But let's say you have a book. Where do you sell it? The term 'game stores' covers everything from Walmart to those game clubs that pretend they're a store to get the bulk discount.
The answer is either 'luck', 'experience', or 'targeting'. Luck, I can't help on. Experience is the slow process of listening to others, noting what they say, then seeing which are still in business five years later.
That leaves us with targeting to explore. For example, take Game Chef. We at Technomancer Press are publishing the 2006 Winners. And the Game Chef voting just finished this week, so the winners are finally announced (yay!) But what sort of shop will carry this kind of 'indie' works?
I used to swear by the GAMA retailer locator. Now, I just swear. As free services, it's great, but it's not very useful for targetting.
Back to the Game & Toy Manufacturer's Guide. Originally, I thought it was just a retailer listing. Oh, more fool I. She sent a sample to the GPA. Here's one of the sample entries, edited for space and privacy.
ABC Northwest
[address, phone line, fax]
Buyer: [egads, an actual name plus email!]
Prefers: E-mail or send sample
Looking for: Board Games & Card Games, Open to New Game Manufacturers and
Single SKUs
Works with 250 Stores
Valuable! A quick read says "do not pitch 'GameChef'", because they simply aren't looking for RPGs. *ding* Time saved for us and them! And if you were a card game publisher, your quick read would scream 'Contact ASAP!'. So yes, I decided-- based just on samples-- to pre-order this puppy.
The downside is it costs a staggering sum, where "staggering" can be defined either as 'more than free' or 'almost the same sum I spend each month at the comic shop, if you count going out for bubble tea afterwards.'
Mind you, buying comics with my 7-year old and reading them over bubble tea isn't a business expense, so the cash flow considerations are a little different. But still, in the scale of things, this led me to yet another business axiom:
Any expense under $100 is trivial and worth doing without excessive debate. But a lot of unanalyzed $100 expenses will bankrupt you.
A lot of popular management courses provide the answer of 'trust your judgement'. This, like 'experience', often means a lot of hit or miss until you figure out how to get hits more often than misses.
Every editor takes a small chance when they hire me to write. Every author I publish is taking a small chance working for me, and in turn I'm taking a slightly larger chance hiring them. I'm taking a chance plunking down a hundred for the G&T Guide, but it's a small chance (moderate sum, promising samples). Alison took a small chance agreeing that mention of her guide in this column might be useful. That book store long ago took a chance ordering books for me to sign. Retailers take chances with each book order they make.
There are ways to figure out chances, but for small publishing, sometimes the cost and time is such, you just have to trust your judgement. In the end, the market will reward good judgement, and punish the unwise.
So trust your judgement. Learn to relax to some degree, not to worry about little stuff. Accept that you will make mistakes. Seek out information, but do not equate learning with producing. Value your time as much as your cash.
There's really just one big chance a publisher takes, and that's the act of becoming a publisher. And for that, there is no cure.
Until next month,Sandy
sandy@rpg.net
