on 2/13/01 6:40 PM, Max Skibinsky at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I totally agree that local shops are usualy not very cost efficient. However
> IMHO first time
> publisher should not try to do all things at once ( print product, do it most
> cost efficient way,
> solve related logistics and warehousing problems). Even if they will get lower
> margin on first
> product, they will get *vast* learning experience in the process and do better
> on next one. But
> trying to keep too many balls in the air could be really hard and depressing
> for person who just
> entering this business.
Thing is, you can easily pay twice as much as you ought to for your
printing, and thus waste your initial capital. The price Clark suggests ($1
per copy for a run of 3000 of a 32-page booklet) is tolerable, but higher
than you ought to be paying, in my experience. It's probably better than
you'll find at your local printer. We did a run of 2000 of a 32-page
adventure (Four Bastards, for Feng Shui) last summer, and the price was
about $2000 including shipping (which was about $200) from the printer in
Michigan to Minnesota. You might easily spend $3000 or $4000 using a local
printer for the same job.
And they might not tell you that for $4100 they'd give you 5000 copies
instead of 2000. Always get quotes on a range of quantities, even if you
know how many you want to print, so you can see where the economies of scale
kick in. The price breaks vary from one printer to another. Heck, at our
favorite printer it used to be cheaper to not just per unit but in total
cost to print 2000 than 1500 of a book because they would use different
presses only on the longer runs. (The web presses also had to be multiples
of 16 pages, unlike the sheet-fed presses which could do multiples of 4.)
Logistics and warehousing can be addressed on more of an ad hoc basis --
learn as you go forward, gaining efficiencies and saving money as you go, or
finding win-win strategic alliances with people who are impressed by what
you've proven you can do. The money you sink into your first printing is
gone. If you've set yourself up not to make a profit, by paying too much
for printing, you won't be able to afford a reprinting.
When I analyze a project, I work out a spreadsheet with the fixed and
variable costs, and I get a matrix that tells me such things as when I break
even on each possible print run size, and what total profit I get if the
print run sells out. You often find that a modest increase in your print
run may move your break-even point up by 5% or 10%, but increases your
potential profit on sell-through by 50%. Obviously there's a point where it
makes no sense (if your print run is way beyond what you can expect sell in
a given time frame, or if the cost of warehousing exceeds the increased
profits over the time you expect it to take to sell), but it's really
important to get a range of numbers and work through them in hypothetical
scenarios. Risking another couple hundred dollars on a larger print run
might give you the chance of making another couple thousand in profit. If
it turns out there's no way you'll ever sell those copies, however, you'll
be throwing away the money (but please recycle the wasted books, for the
planet's sake). Tough call (and boy have I made the WRONG call a few times
in my day!); make sure you have the most information you can get before you
make it.
Eric Rowe makes a lot of good points about quantity. I should add a note
about adventures like Four Bastards (and books that have had even smaller
print runs): I don't really aim to make a profit on a booklet like that; I
aim for it to break even. Its purpose is not to make us money per se, but
to support its game line and to stimulate our backlist sales in general.
It's like advertising that largely pays for itself. As a company that's
been in business for 11 years now, with something like 100 titles in stock,
we rely on perennial sales of existing products (their bills paid in full
long ago) to cover our monthly expenses and keep us in the lavish game
publisher lifestyle to which we've grown accustomed. ;) Four Bastards may
break even, but the additional sales it generates of the $30 Feng Shui
hardcover rulebook will butter our bread. If you're starting a D20 venture,
you don't have that luxury; you're not making a profit on high-margin sales
of the core D20 rulebooks--WotC is. You also don't have a catalog of
product keeping your shipping volume high and your overhead costs per dollar
of sales low. The expectations you should have of D20 materials, as we do,
is that they need to be profitable in their own right. For you as a new
publisher, it's necessary so you can stay in business; for us as an
established publisher, we need a margin of extra profit to justify the
opportunity cost of putting effort into a line that doesn't directly support
one of our proprietary lines. (As the Penumbra backlist grows, this may
change somewhat, as sales of new products stimulate re-orders of older ones
that are still available.)
Arranging printing is one of the most expensive single things you'll do.
Best to do it right.
------------------------------------------------------
John Nephew voice (651) 638-0077 fax (651) 638-0084
President, Atlas Games www.atlas-games.com
