Mathew Gray wrote:
> Question for all of you out there. For your "for pay" products (not the
> freebies most of us will have up on a website) do you plan on using online
> (probably .pdf) methods, or traditional "paper n ink" product lines? Do you
> plan on mixing the two?
>
> I ask because we're currently involved in a discussion as to how best to
> market the items we produce. Some of us are thinking of a "lowered cost"
> passed on to customers by releasing via .pdf, and others are going more for
> the appeal of a "not quite as low, but still not much" cost paper product to
> put on shelves.
>
> Any thoughts from other list members on this?
>
> -Mathew Gray
> -------------
> For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
This type of discussion is seems old hat for me -- I've been in numerous
discussions about on-line payment for comics content as well as about the recent
Stephen King THE PLANT voluntary payment scheme.
The most important factor for online sales is to set the price low enough to
make piracy of your material more trouble than it's worth and still make
something of a profit. Other factors include determining what payment methods
you'll use and whether the material is downloadable more than once by the same
party.
A print module with a MSRP of 9.95 really earns the publisher about four bucks
from the distributor (rates may vary) -- a big chunk of that, perhaps half,
likely goes right to covering the printing costs. So you're making two bucks
per module (before art and design costs -- can't forget the art!!). Selling the
module online in PDF at 2.00 per would likely eliminate most of the piracy and
make you roughly the same money as a print version. You may get equal sales
results with charging three or four dollars.
However, depending on payment method, you may run into resistance based on
effort vs. expense, "it's too small an amount to run up the credit card
charge". A possible solution is to sell digital subscriptions; four, six or
twelve adventures delivered on a schedule of the client's choosing. If you sell
individual modules for three dollars four issue sub could run 10 or 11 dollars,
six costs 15 and an even dozen 24 dollars. If you were producing material at a
monthly clip you could also give the client a choice of which adventures he
takes as a part of his subscription if the paid for amount is smaller than
twelve issues.
Larger supplements become a serious issue -- at some point the cost to the end
user to print out becomes prohibitive -- though with digital delivery smaller
chunks aren't as annoying as possibly buying six or so print books about a game
region. If you were to sell a boxed supplement with a 64 page players' book, a
96 page DMs' book and a 64 page adventure book for 35+ dollars you could turn
around and sell it as individual components or discounted packages; DMs would
get the whole package for 12.00 and players would get their book for 5.00 -- if
the DM didn't print out copies for all his players.
Just off the top of my head -- more stuff, like Paypal or micropayments, will
likely come to me as the discussion continues
Richard
--
The Gallery
- http://webhome.idirect.com/~rpace/
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
