Soapbox: About the Industry

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by Sandy Antunes
Jun 05,2003

Buy This Book

So, RPGNow is carrying my book on e-publishing, cleverly titled ePublishers Guide. Okay, it doesn't say it's my book alone. In a move I heartily applaud, John Nephew and Monte Cook get more press release time in it. Sell those copies!

I wrote the Marketing and Budgets & Staff chapters. Making a fact-filled book (as opposed to creative work) with multiple points of view is difficult. As usual, I thought I'd give you all a look at the behind-the-scenes process.

We'll look at the issue of, say, game pricing.

My first submission:	Price your game at a good price.
Editor feedback:	Please elaborate.
Me:	When pricing, your price should be at least five times your cost.
Ed:	Substantiate this, please.
Me:	GPA folks suggest...
Ed:	Could you flesh it out, be more descriptive?
Me:	Lo, in the past half decade a new form did arrive! And as epublisher tottered out from the ruins of the dot-com womb, many did ask, Hark!, how will we determine our price? And the industry standard, nay, business standard was "set your price at least five times cost, or your business shall snuffeth." But this was predicted using the typical distribution discounts and with orthodox printing costs, not epublishing. Thus heretics did say, prices would be free! But after you factor in the slightly higher margin to the publisher, the fact that there are still creation and artwork costs doth suggest a more accurate business case should be looked at, thusly...
Ed:	Never mind, I'll get Aldo to write it.

Which, in a roundabout way, is why the book is good. I've given free advice to many people in and out of this industry. Sometimes they've even wanted it. At the same time, the largest flaw I see in most starting publishers is that they grossly underestimate the amount of cash they'll be sinking into getting their first product out.

So now I'll just be referring people to this book. It has all my advice-- this time fact-checked by the editor and proofers (for example, Mark Arsenault had some great criticisms of my first draft).

And, it has other people's viewpoints. And other people's hard numbers. So for information and perspective, it's a pretty solid work.

And finally, it's $20 (for 80 pages, 16 contributors, also available as POD). A person that sees $20 as a barrier to starting their own publishing is a person who needs a hit with the cluestick. $20 is nothing. That's the cost of a couple of FedEx'd contracts.

The one consideration that I think the book didn't cover is that it's damn hard to lay a yardstick against gaming industry pay rates. It was always an issue how to assess the budget for owner-creator works in particular.

One approach was to use 'industry standard' rates (3 cents/word for writing, etc) and assess time at minimum wage. Using that, starting up and putting out your first book will cost you at least $3000. The other alternative was to use typical gaming startup rates: 0 cents/word and $0/hour for the creator's time. Total cost to get out first book: a couple hundred in accounting and web hosting. You can see this would give vastly different estimates on how much you need to fund your first book.

So, outside of the book, the one piece of advice I'll still give people (and still be ignored over), is "Don't undervalue your own time and sweat." Publishing is fun and a nice ego trip, but it's also a business. Make it pay.

Oh, and buy the book.