Sandy's Soapbox
POD is a popular concept in RPG publishing these days. Defined in a contrary way, POD is a method of producing books that are of average print quality, costing more per-book than traditional methods, with (if done right) a large $10,000 up-front investment.
It's also the best way for a small publisher to create books in today's market. It makes publishers lose less money. If "losing less money" doesn't make sense to you, don't enter publishing.
A recent article in the Washington Post talked about how big media companies bought up print publishers, then were dismayed at not getting double-digit returns on their investment. Quothe the article, "publishing is all about single digit returns".
The current book world strategy is to hope that the few runaway successes (the Harry Potters and the like) cover the costs of all the mid-list and lower titles. As one author joked, he was rare among his writer's circle-- his book actually earned back its advance.
So any discussion about publishing an RPG has to look at return on investment, cash flow, and risk.
If you want to print an RPG book as a start-up publisher today, you have three choices to make. You can publish it as a PDF, with a smaller market but no print costs. You can publish it as a conventional print book, with a larger market but high print costs. Or you can print on demand, which has the larger market of print but with lowered (but not zero) print costs.
POD vs PDF
First, a quick check of POD versus PDF. Cost to pay writers: same. Cost to print: almost the same. Ability to use existing retailer/distribution: priceless.
Oh, wait, wrong joke. Still, let's look at 'cost to print'. If well run, you only print POD books that are part of a short-term order. Even if the worst case previous, say 200 copies requested up front on speculation, you're out a few hundred dollars if none sell. As I often say, if you can't afford a few hundred dollar loss, don't enter publishing.
Amount of sales: POD = 10x PDF. Ah, there's the difference.
Some people figure they can put out a PDF and sell 14,000 copies, just like Monte Cook. But he's spent time building a name and reputation, he's good at marketing, he's made some interesting revelations about the value of releasing one big product rather than a dozen minor ones.
If you're a good author and diligent publisher giving full support to your products, in time you too can be a Monte Cook. He's the goal to aim for, but not the business case on which to base your cash flow.
If the PDF/print split reduces to whether you have a few hundred to try POD, and I'm arguing anyone foolish enough to publish an RPG can likely afford a few hundred, the issue isn't about cash.
PDF versus POD is really about time. If you make a PDF, you can list it with OneBookShelf, and it'll sell. It'll sell better if you do some marketing, of course. PDF marketing is nearly all done online, though, so it's a straightforward task for someone who, say, has a computer and internet connection and hence is reading this column.
(So if you aren't reading this column, feel free to ignore my PDF advice!)
Now, if you're printing POD, you will get your best sales going through a distributor or a fulfillment house (which in turn gets you into distribution). This requires setting up an account, which usually involves a bit more of 'business work' in setting up your company in a professional manner.
Setting up your company right is time well spent, yes, but it is time you have to spend. PDF can be 'fire and forget' (with likely lower returns), but in terms of risk, it's nearly zero.
Going back to contrarian, assuming you've made the print or PDF product, you're going to have to spend more time selling the print one than the PDF. Since time is a limited resource, this means you're spending time in hopes of making money. No money = a loss.
Meanwhile, with print, you have to market to RPG players who may not frequent the same web forums as you, so print advertising becomes a consideration (if only because some distributors only will carry your books if you buy print ads).
And, with a tangible product, you incur shipping costs and shipping labor on each sale. Plus you'll want to sell at Cons, which involves more time and work. So print involves more work, with potentially greater reward but corresponding more risk that the time and cash spent will not be returned.
For now, let's assume you want to take the plunge into print. Here is where POD shines-- for a publisher who has already decided to go into print.
How Many to Print?
The problem POD really solves is 'how many copies should I print'. It solves this in terms of cash flow, storage space, and risk.
In the 80s and 90s, a typical RPG supplement print run was 2000 copies. If these sold in the first 3 months, the publisher might-- might-- reprint it. If it took a year to sell them all, the publisher would walk away happy, and probably hire the writer later for a new book idea.
Today, 400 copies sold is a typical book goal. A good book will still move 1000-2000 copies, and of course major releases by the companies that can afford good marketing and good retailer support can, indeed, move tens of thousands.
Now look at conventional printing. Just calling up a quote from a non-named-here offset printer, I get 100 copies of a 64-page book costing $3.41 per copy. At 500 copies, the price drops to $2.26 per. If I order 3000 copies, it's $0.65 per book.
If an expected sale is 400 books, and conventional printing is not economical for under 1000 copies, what to do? 400 books above would run $1300. But 500 copies is just $1100. And for only $1900, you'd have 3000 copies-- all set to sell them all and make your fortune!
And now you also have to add in shipping per book. And warehousing, because they have to sit somewhere until sold. Warehousing isn't negligible... if it sits in a fulfillment house, they have a limit on how much they store. Commercial warehouses or U-Store-It places charge per month.
And keeping them in your basement gets tiresome has its own issues. In my own house, there's risk of flood damage or cat's claws. And by the fourth book, you'll find you're out of room.
If you could only print just copies you know are purchased, your warehousing drops to zero. Your cash out of pocket is minimized. And your risk of having unsold inventory is nearly zero. This is what POD does.
It's all about cash flow. POD means you don't burn cash on unsold books, and you reduce your up-front investment. Marketing will still burn money, yes, but you can bootstrap your marketing costs by doing internet and guerilla efforts to get some initial sales, then use earned money to try and boost sales.
And, as stated, POD has reduced your storage needs. Ultimately, this means POD has reduced risk, in the cash flow sense of having all your money tied up in unsold stock, in other costs like warehousing, and in minimizing your losses should your product flop.
POD also doesn't keep you from runaway success. A good POD outfit can handle printing huge quantities if a big order comes in, and POD can fill a stopgap order while you quickly get a conventional print run done if you truly need thousands of copies. What's not to love?
Not a Be-all End-all
If your distributor does flooring or your fulfillment house wants a decent stock to try and move, you'll still have to cough up print costs for 200 books. Print involves more finicky work with layout and there's printer jargon to learn to ensure the books look good. You have to cough up for a decent cover.
The cost of the printed cover on nice stock can often be as much as all the interior pages taken together. Don't argue, just suck it up... covers sell books.
Per-book costs will be higher for POD compared to conventional publishing, so your per-book profit is lower. However, your cash flow is positive and that is far more important to business survival than per-book profits.
Print qualities varies from different POD outfits. At this point, the technology is advanced enough that a good POD book isn't distinguishable from a typical conventionally printed book, though, so we'll just leave this as a cautionary. Go with a good quality POD press, and you're fine.
And, as mentioned, you have to set up your business formally to do POD, just as you would for conventional print. But this isn't a bad thing-- you should always set up a proper business to do business.
In-House POD
Earlier I mentioned a $10,000 up-front cost. This is for doing in-house POD-- owning your own printing setup. The typical set is 'printer, trimmer, binder', with other gear available. Two approaches are available.
You can get a Xerox DocuTech or other all-in-one printer. These allow you to hook up a computer, tell it to print a book stored as a PDF, and out chugs perfectly collated pages. You trim them, attach a cover of suitable cover stock (often printed seperately in bulk), then bind them. You're done! Just like a visit to Kinkos.
Oddly enough, this gear can fit into a conventional basement. You can buy it new or used and it's easy to operate. It does mean you're spending time making each book, but the per-book cost is very competitive. All you pay for after buying the gear is paper, toner, bindings, covers, and maintenance. Plus, again, time time time printing and shipping books.
The second approach is to buy a web press and do conventional printing, where you print in larger sheets, cut, and bind. This is the approach that pioneers in in-house printing like "Inner City Designs" (publishers of Fuzzy Heroes) and "Guild of Blades" (publishers of several variants of existing games) use to keep many slow-but-steady-sellers constantly in the market.
This second approach often makes for nice books and more flexible design options, but does take more skill, takes more time, and leaks more oil. So I'm not going to recommend this for the unwary.
The business case for in-house POD is that you have shorter turn-around times for 'idea' to 'market', because you do not have to fit into an outside POD print house queue, nor wait for printing and shipping. In addition to reduced lag in fulfilling orders, you have greater flexibility on order size.
So the up-front cost is more, the per-book cost is slightly less than an outside POD house, and you are more nimble. It takes much more time, so at this point you're specifically investing in the hopes that you can bring many products to market in an effective manner. You're adding risk in hopes of hitting it big.
(And if that last sentence doesn't raise warning flags, you haven't been paying attention to any of my business advice!)
Finally, with your own printing press, you can try variant designs and form factors on your own because, hey, you own the fricking printing press. There's a 'fun' factor to this.
With your best hope being single-digit returns for publishing, if you aren't having fun, you need to reevaluate why you do this.
Until next month,
Sandy
sandy@rpg.net
