[OSRIC] Now has its own category on RPGnow!

[Mythmere]

...the audience is quite demanding in terms of expected value for money.

Because the audience makes purchasing decisions based on the 1981 value of the dollar.

[Mythmere]

Hmm. The Ronin Arts products don't seem to have made it into the category.

Nor did the OSRIC download itself.

[JCBoney]

The second part makes perfect sense in light of OSRIC's nature.

[Daniel Proctor]

I think Phil will get it straightened out in time. They changed several other categories also and he has alot of products that got mixed up in the shuffle...and when we are talking about the quantity of products Phil has it might take some time.

[rogatny]

...the audience is quite demanding in terms of expected value for money.

Because the audience makes purchasing decisions based on the 1981 value of the dollar.

Or because you can get the vast majority of OOP products in .pdf for about $5 and in hard copy for around $15 or less. (I got the 1e REF3 Book of Lairs in great condition for only $6 just this weekend.) Even the rare and "expensive" old products will still go for less than a new hardback for in-print games except in a few scattered cases.* I've said before to those demanding that WotC re-release OOP versions of D&D... It's not that they're afraid of competing with themselves; they're afraid of competing with Ebay.

That said, there's clearly an interest in new support for the OOP versions of the game, and hence a market for it, and it's nice to see the varied efforts of the various companies and designers as they put out products for the market.

There are now multiple outlets for the fan of O(A)D&D products...
1. Ebay and other used re-sellers,
2. Paizo and other legal .pdf'ers,
3. Producers of reasonably compatable new games - C&C and Hackmaster in the foremost, but also including to a large extent d20 producers who are attepting to attract the attention of the old-schooler (Goodman, Necro, Paizo, with their Rob Kuntz dungeons, etc.),
4. OGL products tailored to AD&D - mainly OSRIC, but also some of Rob Kuntz's product and Goodman's recent 1e adventure.

1 and 2 will always take up a large section of the old-schooler market. To me, the interesting thing will be whether and to what extent 4 surpasses 3. Category 4 products already have a great advantage in ease of compatability. If price point, availability, and quality can reach a point where it's silly not to buy the 4 products over the 3 products, I'm curious to see what kind of market these category 4 producers can garner.

*Off topic tangent - I've never understood this hobby's fascination with "newer is better" from an economic standpoint. About a year back, I got a used 6th edition CoC rulebook in great condition for about a third the price of what they were selling the new 7th edition books. Of course, the differences in editions in CoC are minimal at most. So why, why, why would anyone buy the new one?

[dcs]

So why, why, why would anyone buy the new one?

If you could answer that question, you would probably be poised to make a great deal of money. You would know the market!!

[T. Foster]

New books are shiny and pretty and make a noise when you first open them and smell like printer's ink. Old books are dingy and have greasy fingerprint smudges, dog-eared corners, coffee stains, and some moron former owner's underlining, highlighting, and margin-notes and smell like cigarette smoke, mold, and cat piss. Or at least that's what you have to assume you're going to get every time you buy something second hand, no matter if the seller described it as OMG NEAR MINT!!1! or not. If you keep your expectations low enough sometimes you'll be pleasantly surprised. Other times you won't.

[Daniel Proctor]

*nods*

Any interest?

Sure. Do you have any suggestions?

One thing I think is that we have to reach people who are not usually too involved in the internet scene. People who are proficient with the internet, but just don't use it for the purpose we do. There is a limited market on the internet and we need to tap into the more traditional crowd you would reach with hardcopy printings. I've suggested elsewhere, I think, that one step would be to distribute "What is OSRIC?" flyers, posters, etc at game conventions and game shops. It would not have to be high cost stuff, maybe a flyer that has some clean old-school art and a brief description of what OSRIC is, also with those little "tear off" portions at the bottom with the OSRIC website so people can take it home even if they don't have a pen and paper handy when they see the flyer. You know, game conventions often also distribute little bags of flyers, ads etc. with their programs. That would be a good avenue to try to get into in a large convention. At a local level we can do this ourselves at smaller cons and our local game stores.

Anyway these are some ideas I think would be realistic as a low cost first step.

[PapersAndPaychecks]

I suppose I think that the trick with marketing the dead tree version of OSRIC will be to give other people a reason to distribute it for us. Perhaps a profit motive... there's an opportunity there for someone to take advantage of the bulk purchase discount from Lulu, order a few dozen copies, and then sell dead tree versions of OSRIC at some price reflecting what it would cost to order it online with P&P.

There's probably not enough margin in that to attract retailers, though. Does anyone have experience with marketing to game stores?

[jgbrowning]

Does anyone have experience with marketing to game stores?

If you plan on selling to retailers you'll need to price based upon (for me) a 33% take on the MSRP. I work through a consolidator who warehouses, ships, and markets my products for around 7% of the MSRP which is a good deal for someone of my size. If you plan to try and sell to retailers, you're going to have to price your product at least triple your production costs to simply break-even.

Distributors and retailers will not touch a product that is being sold cheaper elsewhere. Hell, just getting picked up by a consolidator (more the less, a distributor) isn't easy now a-days.

joe b.

[AxeMental]

Does anyone know the cost breaks for a POD like Lulu?
For instance, if Lulu will sell you 1 book for 10 dollars (mailed to the author), what would it charge the author per unit for 50, 100, 500, 1000 for that same book? And at what point is it worth switching from a POD to a real printer (I remember one POD who specialized in magazines said he couldn't be competitive after 2000 units).

[PapersAndPaychecks]

If you plan on selling to retailers you'll need to price based upon (for me) a 33% take on the MSRP. I work through a consolidator who warehouses, ships, and markets my products for around 7% of the MSRP which is a good deal for someone of my size. If you plan to try and sell to retailers, you're going to have to price your product at least triple your production costs to simply break-even.

Distributors and retailers will not touch a product that is being sold cheaper elsewhere. Hell, just getting picked up by a consolidator (more the less, a distributor) isn't easy now a-days.

Meh, that's out, then.

Could we market to gaming clubs or societies? Do you have those in America?

[Mythmere]

If you plan on selling to retailers you'll need to price based upon (for me) a 33% take on the MSRP. I work through a consolidator who warehouses, ships, and markets my products for around 7% of the MSRP which is a good deal for someone of my size. If you plan to try and sell to retailers, you're going to have to price your product at least triple your production costs to simply break-even.

Distributors and retailers will not touch a product that is being sold cheaper elsewhere. Hell, just getting picked up by a consolidator (more the less, a distributor) isn't easy now a-days.

Meh, that's out, then.

Could we market to gaming clubs or societies? Do you have those in America?

Not that I know of.

[Mythmere]

Still, we could eventually take the book off Lulu if we see a good marketing plan from someone willing to spend $2.5K on printing 500 books, if that will result in its being sold in traditional bookstores and gaming stores. Figure total cost runs to $3K for the printing, that's $6 a book, triple that and you've got $18; you could sell them for $20, frankly, still undercutting the rest of the gaming market in a big way, and have everyone along the chain paid nicely.

The only difficulty is finding someone who's willing to risk the initial cash on 500 books. The math would probably be even better for a softcover.

So I wouldn't rule that out. Anyone who decides to print it for distribution has a fair amount of built-in publicity already, and zero costs for the book's art and content. Plus, at LEAST 50-100 of those 500 books are going to go immediately to people in the internet community. Put in a page of advertisements for other OSRIC publishers at the back and you've got another small piece of change to offset the risk.

The only thing is, you can't use Lulu as the printer. They charge more than a real printer/binder. For example, I doubt TLG is paying more than $5.50 per hardback unit based on their pricing schedules.

[PapersAndPaychecks]

I really can't see an offset printer being interested in a print run of 500... 5,000 maybe.