[ProArtist] Trying to develop a new RPG publishers model...

[Gamerprinter]

First off, these are long posts, more an essay really, so I've decided to break it up in pieces over several posts at the start of the thread - so excuse my walls of text provided.

Secondly, I thought of posting this in the Publishers Discussion Forum, but this idea really concerns cartographers specifically, moreso than just to RPG publishers, so I thought it better posted here.

Trying to Develop a New RPG Publishers model...

In traditional RPG publications, a cartographer is hired on a per commission basis like a freelance artist. Based on pre-agreed pay rate, conditions and deadlines, by contract the cartographer creates specific maps and is a promptly paid after completion. This is both traditional and the least amount of risk to the cartographer, as no matter the success of a given product, the cartographer is already paid. Even if a given publication product is a marketing failure, the cartographer is still paid up front, however, if the product is an overwhelming financial success, the cartographer is not entitled to any further payments. (Most of the commission map work I do, falls under this production/payment process.)

Another traditional but less common method of payment is through royalties, which is based on ongoing and total sales of a given product over its lifetime and is generally paid in miniscule amounts, so that appreciable amounts can be achieved only with many months or years of continuous sales success. A royalties payment model works best when a product generates a high amount of sales, which consequently is not the expected results for most RPG publications - making this payment method largely undesireable.

Wolfgang Bauer's Open Design Project works using the patronage system, where the contributors, designers and intended end-users pay for the development of a product up front, using a design by committee process, the final product is kept in a closed market exclusive to the patrons that paid for the project ahead of time, and generally not sold to the open market. While a viable production method, this involves "too many cooks" and little potential for greater sales as the marketplace is a closed one, neither of which interest me.

Those cartographers creating their own publication products are generally limited to map packs for print or VTT usage and map symbol collections, but tends to include very little textual content beyond key lists for various locations in a map. These products are generally created by one-man cartographer/publishers, and not created by publishing team efforts. Marketability based on comparison with such products at various online RPG sales platforms like RPG Now seems to be limited to the $5.00 price point and historically are not big-time money makers.

The only other known method of RPG publication is to become a publisher yourself, take on all the risk, develop all your own material and farm out to freelancers, whatever you can afford - however, the latter is often too great a cost for the start up third party publisher, so this really means doing everything yourself. Although I have been developing my Kaidan RPG for Pathfinder in this way, it is slow in development, heavy on risk and very time-consuming. It also minimizes how many products I can make available, thus minimizes the total profit margin overall.

I have been trying to develop a new and different RPG publishing model that spreads the creative efforts between a capable team effort, thus able to create more content and more products in a shorter amount of time, maximizing overall marketing efforts. In this method, the cartographer becomes an active partner of the publishing house. All members of this team equally share in the profits throughout the sales process.and usages for the given maps.

[torstan]

Certainly a topic that interests me. I'll chip in once you've laid out your initial discussions.

[Gamerprinter]

I approached Johnn Four of Roleplaying Tips Newsletter with this idea, whom I have had ongoing professional relationship as a digital printer/lamintion service provider in trade for ad space in his newsletter and blog over the last four years. He has been a good industry contact in the past for me, so I put the idea into his capable hands. (I did this back in October 2009)

As a possible suggested piece to base the idea on, I linked Johnn to my June 2009 Challenge Winning Entry - the Assassin's Lair. Here was a specific mapped location useable to any Assassin/rogue player character, it has a unique twist and plot hook in being a magical device (Amulet of Cerene) that allows the user to teleport to an extra-dimensional hiding place, in the Lair itself. The device, teleport and extra-dimensional space is the unique plot hook involved.

I created a multi-page PDF file that included the map reduced to letter size scale as the first page, then a numbered location by location map key describing every room, followed by 18 pages of the map sliced into multiple 7.5 x 9 printable sheets of the entire map at 1 inch = 5 foot scale. This was the basic idea put into raw form.

As can be said of any endeavor, especially ones that are intended to be marketed, "timing is everything," and I couldn't have picked a better time to approach Johnn Four, specifically on this idea. Apparently Johnn has been collaborating with Mike Bourke (Yax) of Game Mastery Blog over the last year developing an online course to new RPG publishers on how to become one and make it a successful career, including best to pursue publishing goals, how to find freelance help, how to market the products, even assisting them in setting up blogging and Ecommerce sites. This online course has been selling $500 per year memberships.

While both Johnn and Mike have successfully produced their own publishing products over the years and have the expertise in offering such a paid-for program based on professional experience, however, they currently do not have an active publishing project to use as a guinea pig to test there theories on and to use as examples in their course. My publishing idea will be their textbook example - so the efforts by Johnn and Mike in marketing such a project is taking on a greater life of its own, as this project is intrinsic to their online course as well.

While any good publishing idea will be pursued actively for the best chance for success, being that Johnn and Mike need this project for their own purposes, the willingness to go above board in successfully marketing such a product is with a greater incentive, than on its own merits.

I think this is a good thing, and am lucky to introduced the idea, at this time.

[Gamerprinter]

After several months time with different ideas, including a possible Rogue Resource product for D&D 4e, of which I developed my Thieves Guild map series - the new publication idea is taking a new direction.

Monte Cook's Dungeon-a-Day project has proven to be very successful, so much so that there are several "Dungeon-a-Week" productions being created by smaller publishers - this is the basic idea that John, his partners and I are looking to pursue. But of course we are looking to do things slightly different with nuances to add more value to such a product, so this is the plan...

Starting in a few week, I will be creating a Map-a-Week, for different preselected types of locations. In actuality I'll be creating 3 maps per week, each a different instance of the basic single map in various life stages - as a new construction, as an established site at the height of its use (fully furnished), and an abandoned ruin as found in typical dungeon adventures. My job will be more than to create maps, rather each map will be accompanied by its own twist or unique plot hook. (Such as I have done in my Assassin's Lair map.)

Once all three maps are created I submit them to Johnn and Mike, who, without collaboration (at least in the first draft) each creates a complete organization and agenda utilizing the created maps for each of time-slice versions of the location. They intend to write 10 to 20K in textual content to develop these as complete encounters with backgrounds, and intentions for its use. By not collaborating Johnn and Mike each create completely separate and unique factions with unique ways on how the mapped locations are used.

This way each location has an extended life that can be used throughout an ongoing campaign - start, height and ruin, combined with two complete user-base for each map, thus creating five different products out of each map.

The goal is to have several weeks worth of maps precreated and defined before initial publication begins, at which point bundles comprised of different maps are shared by the writer-designed organizations and agendas and useable as components ready for the home GM to build his own adventure out of the pieces. Many of these bundles will use the same maps again, but with different organization/agendas, and different usage combinations to get more than five products out of each map.

Working a Map-per-Week schedule should give us 50 maps per year at least, and with its three iterations, 150 maps in total (per year), as hopes this project will continue in perpetude.

Their goal is to create a product with a viable $15 price point - as a three way split at $5 is the kind of needed incentive to market on a practical basis. They believe $5 products are fine for the one-man show, but a publishing team needs a higher price point.

While the products would certainly be sold on RPGNow, it will be agressively marketed through Johnn Four's weekly newsletter and blog site, as well as Mike Bourke's blog site (both have in excess of 20,000 subscribers each.)

As mentioned above, Johnn and Mike offer a training course for would-be RPG publishers. With that they have several score sponsored blog sites offered by associates and students who have graduated into publishers themselves - all seeking viable content to promote and make sales with. Meaning, profit sharing relationships with those publishers will offer a wider marketing effort across the internet.

The profit sharing discussed so far would be: publisher resellers would get 50% of sales, with the remaining 50% shared equally between myself, Johnn and Mike.

My ultimate goal here is for cartographers to be able to make more money, by becoming active publishers, rather than freelancer artists per hire one map at a time. I will be starting this work in a few weeks, and will continue to post as results, successes and failures become evident.

GP

PS: that's it for now, start chipping in.

[Gamerprinter]

Being that both Mike and Johnn are true business men, they have already begun to create numbers based on expected sales at various levels. Though I will present them below, I have to clarify that this was as an Email to keep me informed, but its really a conversation between Johnn and Mike. Unfortunately, at this time, I don't know all the variables they describe in their computations, however, here are the numbers...

At 1 map per week:

50 (maps) x 5 (iterations); x0.65 = $162.50 to be shared, times average sales.
Sell an average of 50 copies: $162.50 x 50 / 3 =$2708.33 each
Sell an average of 100 copies: $5416.66 each
Sell an average of 200 copies: $10,833.33 each
Sell an average of 300 copies: $16,250 each

If the production schedule is too aggressive, and its lowered to 1 release per month, then the numbers at 300 copies is only $3900 each.

There are also two propositions on how bundles can be packaged and estimated sales are given, also that these two propositions are not mutually exclusive, and both can be marketed simultaneously, providing further combinations of sales (these are the numbers that confuse me).

However, combined (in Mike's numbers) sell an average of 300 copies and include an additional $27,950 in profits each.

That's presumably $44,000+ each annually (??!!)

I will try to get the numbers nailed to so I can explain more fully (one I understand them as well.)

GP

[torstan]

Interesting read. A couple of notes to start with. The Open Design model has changed and will now publish the results of the patronage projects. So there's a profit in the model after the initial outlay. Rite Publishing use this model too. So the project is fully funded by patrons who in return get direct input into the product. Once the product goes on sale - the publisher gets the profit. It's low risk (you only start projects once they are fully funded by patrons) and you have clear profit at the end. However you are required to put a lot of work into fostering your patrons to maintain a support base.

As for the map a week/dungeon a day model. I agree that Monte's site did very well from that. However I find that it quickly outpaced the rate of play. The people on the site fell behind. While Monte was writing level 4, most people hadn't got through level 1. I stopped subscribing after a while because I wasn't using it.

I think that you run a similar risk with map a week. If you have a core following, they are unlikely to buy a new map every week. They won't be using that many maps and you'll saturate your market. However, those maps will still exist on the web and people will pick them up and use them over time, but the number of people that will buy a new product every week will be low. I'm not sure that changes the overall numbers as I think you'll have a large number of people who buy one or two of them.

I'll be interested to see if the accompanying writing is enough to push a $15 price. That's the price of a full adventure, or half of a major supplement. I'm not sure you're providing as much play value as half of PHB III so I'll be interested to see whether there's a market for it at that price.

My take on the market is that I can re-sell the maps that I have published with Rite Publishing for a low price (around $2 a map). This way I get paid up front for the work, and also on an ongoing basis when the maps are sold through RPGNow. There's no risk, but the reward is low too. However with a library of battlemaps people can buy, the revenue is a steady trickle. The downside is that the irregular nature of the commissions means that I don't update the products on a regular basis which means I have trouble creating brand loyalty and regular customers. Also, the fact that each map was created for a specific adventure means that they are idiosynchratic and so perhaps less useful for DMs for their home games.

[Gamerprinter]

I don't disagree regarding the $15 price point - I think that's kind of high, but those are the goals of Mike Bourke and Johnn Four. The numbers however are based on a low amount of total sales; from 50 to 300 maps sold for each one, and they have a loyal subscriber base = 40,000 members, so the likelihood of getting 300 sales is not out of the question. I think $10 is a better price point, but we'll have to see. For now, I'm the team cartographer, and you know that I can generate maps pretty dang fast, so unlike Monte's cartographers, I should be able to meet the 1 per week deadline - also as mentioned these maps are targetted to the 4e market - which I know nothing about, except there's a lot of them.

I like the original idea better, which was to create three maps describing the growth of a particular organization, as in the Rogue's Resource Guide which would have included a Beggar's Guild, Thieves Guild, Assassin's Guild, with ideas of doing a series for wizards, druids, rangers, fighters, bards, etc. It could even be broken down into in Elven Thieves, Elven Rangers, etc.

Looks like the negotiations between Rite Publishing and Dementia 5 is almost complete - so Steve will allow me to publish the remaining adventures for Kaidan: the Gift, sometime next month.

GP

[torstan]

Well just because I'm a scientist and pedant by profession you should be careful with the 40,000 number. My guess would be that there's significant overlap between those subscribers so you're probably looking at around 25,000 subscribers or so. However that's just a factor of two. Continuing to play the devil's advocate - you're saying that you'll release one pack a week - each with 20,000 words of content? That's a lot of words for those guys to be generating a week, laying out and publishing. That's a hefty schedule to have set out but if you can stick to it then the rewards should be really good.

Another note - in your maths you say 50 * 5 (iterations)) *0.65. I think you mean 50 * 5 (dollars each per map pack) * 0.65 (percentage of sales from store vendor).

I agree about having themed locations, but I'll be very interested to see your products when they come out. Certainly post about them in the enws section and I'll have a read through. Are you planning to release them for use with vtts - or primarily as multi page pdfs?

Good news on the d5 stuff. Kaidan has been waiting to be published for too long. I'm really pleased Steve was able to help out.

[Gamerprinter]

They suggested that it would take 2 to 3 weeks to get each product out, but with overlap, it might arrive at 1 per week, after the first several publications are released.

While their separate 20K of subscribers might be overlap, Johnn Four's RPG Newsletter is twelve years old. Mike Bourke of Game Mastery is exclusively a 4e blog site. Johnn's sites are more general RPG than 4e specific, with that in mind, they variance between their subscriber base is probably wider.

I've sent Johnn an Email suggesting allowing RPGNow having exclusive sales for the products which knocks their sales commission from 35% down to 10%, which would allow us to sell the products at $9.95 (being more palatable to buyers) and with the discounted commission, we earn practically the same amount of money at $3.00 each. More sales would be had at $9.95 than $15.

GP

[torstan]

Yes. I was thinking about it and realised of course it's easier tohsve a sale than bump the price up. When's the first one going to go on sale?