Louis has a post up about getting started in PDF publishing for under fifty bucks.  Go check it out.

I got my start as a PDF publisher because of the podcasts Louis did called the “RPG Publishing Gauntlet”, so I have benefited directly from LPJ’s advice.

Let me lay out for you the details of the first product Skortched Urf’ Studios ever released:  More Mighty Than Steel.

I spent exactly ten bucks on this masterpiece!  Five bucks went to the writer (Dennis Mohr) and another five bucks for the stock art cover I got HERE. (It looks like the prices have gone up a bit since then, so the same piece of stock art today would set me back $12 bucks. That would bring the total for this PDF to $17 as opposed to the $10 I spent.) So ten bucks for your first very short PDF, not bad.

I ran a report on OBS and it shows I have sold 78 copies of this PDF.  Our first PDF was profitable almost from the very beginning!

Now lets look at what happens when you don’t ruthlessly control costs, and let yourself spend too much on a PDF.

I let Anthony go hog-wild on the artwork for this baby.   It looks great, but lets examine the cost on this PDF.  I spent $50.00 on the writing (By Eric Karnes) and a whaopping $500 on art!  Sure, that sounds like a lot, but it really comes to about $25 bucks per piece of full-color artwork; a real bargain when you take into account the quality of the illustrations.

The OBS report shows 42 sales of this PDF.  (Smaller overall market for D20 Modern vs. fantasy stuff.)  So run some quick numbers and take out OBS’s 35% and I made not-quite $150.00 bucks on this PDF.  I am still $350 bucks in the red on this baby.  Looks like I may never get my money back.

Unless….

I sell the images I already own as stock art!  Remember, I have about $25.00 bucks *per piece* into the art.  How many pieces do I have to sell to make up the delta? About 25, right?

Each of these Sketchbooks sells for $9.99, and each has about 8 images, but to make the math work lets just say I make one buck per image when they sell.  So if I manage to sell 25 of each Sketchbook I have broken even.  Lets look at the numbers.

Modern figures #1 has sold 36 copies on OBS.

Modern figures #2 has sold 34 copies on OBS.

Modern figures #3 has sold 30 copies on OBS.

Modern figures #4 has sold 31 copies on OBS.

I have net sales (after OBS takes their cut) of $653.25 on those four sketchbooks.   Without the stock-art sales I would NEVER get my money back on Mia Famiglia, but factoring them in I have a great looking product, great stock-art that I can re-use and sell to other publishers who get access to the artwork for as little as ten bucks.  I think that iswhat we call a “Win-Win” scenario!  I’m not getting rich on stock art sales, but they do allow me to access another revenue stream that helps keep Skortched Urf’ Studios profitable.

“They call it Black Fry-Day without the first clue what really happened. Good Friday of 2012,the year the Mayans said the machines and theanimals would all rise up against mankind. That’s the day the world died.”

Cruel Evolution is the frist release for the Salughterhouse Earth setting from Chris Filed and Otherverse Games. Presented here are a host of Post-Apocalyptic Mutations, new Player Species, new Feats, new Spells and a source book dripping with flavor as it recounts the horrors of the aftermath of “Black Fry-Day” and the new world inhabited by the few survivors left to see it.

The Earth died on “Black Fry-Day, and the survivors went to war in the ashes. A new world demands a new generation of warrior; magic and rage and desperation and un-dying hope have all conspired to breed a new era of heroism. Welcome to Slaughterhouse Earth.

For sale now at OBS.

I have a new release from Chris Field just about ready to go up.  There seems to be a slew of new releases that hit on Monday’s so I am holding off until Tuesday to release it.  I’ll do the flip book tonight and have it ready for release.

I’ve been writing more and more lately, and find it easier to work from a very detailed outline.  I even did a mock-up in InDesign with image boxes and various sized text fields representing two pages for this section, three pages for that section etc.  Helps me wrap my head around what a finished product will look like.

I am expecting a lot of artwork back in the next two weeks, which will allow me to get several “on-deck” projects released.It should be a good April-May for the release schedule.

I wish I didn’t have to spend so much time at my “real job” so I could focus more time on writing and publishing.  Of course, I am also very happy to even have a job (let alone a “real” one!) in this economy so I guess I had better not complain.   But still, I do aspire to make publishing my full-time business in the future.

I traded a few emails with Chris Field about some upcoming projects.  We both have some very cool stuff in the works!

I stopped by my local game store several times over the last few weeks looking for a few of the new Traveller releases like High Guard, Belstrike, and Scout.  They didn’t have them.  In fact, since I purchased the main rulebook from the same store, I have not seen them re-stock it.  I find that a bit unsettling because they are one of the very best game stores anywhere.  Everything is computer inventoried, shrink-wrapped and they order regularly.  (I know this because when I worked at Games Workshop in Trade Sales this shop was one of my customers; they ordered GW product twice a week and I never had to “up-sell” or probe for forgotten items like some retailers that would cast an eye on the sparse rack and guess at what had been sold since the last time they ordered.)  This same shop has changed their hours to open and hour later and close an hour earlier due to the recession; apparently hobby gaming has taken a hit and it is really affecting their bottom line.

That is why I keep dropping by to see if I can find the Traveller releases I need; I would rather give them the money than Amazon or some other store.  Well, I finally just broke down and got them off RPGNow.  (High Guard and Scout, anyway) I am working on a project that requires me to see what Mongoose has already done so I don’t duplicate it as well as to use the expanded rules for ship design etc. I printed them off at work on the duplexing color laser printer (Shhhsshh, don’t tell the boss!),  and headed to Staples to have it spiral bound.  I find that way works great for reference material.  I am going through the books now, and was very interested to see some of the ideas I had already addressed in certain ways.

Susan Boyle.  Go check out my post on the other site for my thoughts on her performance.

I took off Wednesday to attend the Tax Day Tea Party in D.C.  The weather was cold, rainy and miserable; but it was a great time.  I am working on a longer after action report, including video I took.

After work I plan on heading over to the new Games Workshop they opened in VA at the Fair Oaks mall.  I don’t know if it should really be called “new” as the one at Potomac Mills closed; so this feels more like a “move” than a “new” to me.  But it is on the way home, so I am taking my daughter over there tonight.

OK, putting on the publisher hat; I read over on Louis’s blog about how PDF’s only sell a hundred copies, so you have to factor that in when paying for writers and artists.  I couldn’t agree more!I have a few products that I have done right; controlled costs and made plenty of money on.  I have others where I got stupid and will probably never make my money back.  (But the artwork is kick-ass!) I have a slew of products that I frankly should have put a bit less money into; and they might be profitable now but are still slowly building towards breaking even.  I keep a spreadsheet of my releases with what my costs are and the total sales.  I color code it so red lines are not profitable, green lines are.  (And Yellow is almost profitable; so I know to promote these titles to get them over the hump!)

I just ran a report and I have 9 PDF’s that have sold over 100 copies.  (Not counting Free20 PDF’s)  Nine out of about a hundred products.  I have 26 Products that have sold over 70 copies but not quite 100 yet.  The rest range from a few copies to hovering around 50.  (There is a big range between stock art, bundles and standard PDF’.)   My biggest selling PDF sold 248 copies. (The only PDF I have that has broken the 200 barrier, aside from the free ones.) So after all that I think the most a typical PDF can be expected to sell is the 100 copy mark.  I think 50 is a better number to be on the safe side; if you can be profitable at fifty copies (or less) then you are in good shape.

Our first major release has hit a snag.  One of the freelancers had to bail out of the project.  These things happen; at least he was up front and professional about removing himself.  It would have been far worse had I just been fed a bunch of excuses and delays.  In fact, I would still hire him if things clear up in other areas.  I have a few other freelancers working for me, but have decided to step up and start doing much of the “heavy lifting” myself.  I mean I am motivated and excited about certain projects; and while I want my freelancers to be just as motivated it is human nature to focus more effort on something that is “your baby” rather than something that is just a paycheck.  I think that’s why I like working with Chris Field so much; I don’t usually tell him what to write; he does his own thing and I publish it.  Sure, he has done plenty of work the other way, but when a writer is excited about the project it becomes less “work” and more passion.

So I am doing some of the writing myself.  But since the first big project will be 100+ pages long, it will take a while to get done.  I started doing a shorter project over the weekend I hope to finish up this week.  It will include a ‘new’ class, a few ships, some equipment, weapons and armor along with some fluff that should make for a nice addition to a Traveller campaign.

There has been lots of talk about WOTC removing PDF versions of their products from various online sites.  They even had an interview with CEO Gregg Leeds where they go out of their way to say that “We don’t plan to sell PDFs at all, and are looking into other options for the digital distribution of our content.”

Folks, PDF stands for Protable Document Format and is owned by Adobe.  Is is merely *a way* to share information.  (One of many, many ways.)  The Kindle fromat is another way, text or word documents, Flash streaming video etc. are all *ways* that information can be shared.  WOTC is saying they have no intent to remain with the PDF format as the means of digital distribution of content.  I suspect they will opt for a DDI subscription-based model that allows access to their IP without giving any ownership of a document that can be posted to sharing sites.

As publishers we use PDF because it is easy, widely used and accepted by our customer base and efficient.  That may change in the future.  I am not a *PDF* publisher; I am a digital content publisher currently using the PDF format.  That may change in the future.  (Imagine if the next Kindle e-book reader was full color, and only cost $49.95.  Would that change the playing field for publishers in our field?)

WOTC has decided to move from PDF to another as-yet-undisclosed format for presenting digital content.  We all may do the same in the future, though I hope we don’t do it in quite so ham-fisted a fasion as WOTC has managed.

So apparently some folks were putting up the Players Handbook II on file sharing sites, so WOTC (via their Hasbro Overlords) have decided to pull all their PDF’s from various online storefronts.

My thoughts…

Dumb, knee-jerk reaction to an ongoing problem.  I mean has anyone ever heard of Napster?  iTunes?  File sharing has been going on since the internet discovered porn, and it isn’t going to stop.  Does WOTC really think that some l33t h@x0r is now going to give them money for a dead tree version now that WOTC has sued a few folks and removed their stuff from RPGNow etc.?

I suspect that WOTC will introduce their own electronic sales site in conjunction with their “Digital Initive”.  Why let others get a cut if they can produce their own site and make more ca$h?  Look for DRM laden releases to hit soon-ish from a WOTC storefront in my humble but ever-so-accurate opinion.

What does this mean for the PDF market?  Will all our sales suddenly come crashing to a halt?  Is the market doomed?  Nah.  Look, the folks shopping for PDF’s expect two things; digital copies of the books they can get as “dead tree” products now from WOTC, Mongoose, Goodman, Kenzer etc. and the nich stuff that supports games in ways print products simply can’t.  Just because WOTC will be selling their own books from their own storefront doesn’t mean the entire digital marketplace is somehow doomed.  Far from it.  If WOTC decides the digital market is big enough to warrant their own storefront, that means to me they see the market growing.  Sure piracy is an issue, but I feel it is a side-issue or an excuse to pull back from the other markets they were using and moving the sales in-house.

And lets be honest, if I owned the deep catalog if intellectual property WOTC enjoys, and had Hasbro writing the checks, why wouldn’t I launch my own online storefront in conjunction with the “Digital Initive”?  What is OBS/Piazo bringing to the table to entice me to give up 35% of the gross? So now maybe they offer an online store for people signing the new-and-kinda-sorta-improved GSL to sell products along side official D&D material without being lost in the Go-Jillions of new releases (made up mostly of computer generated hottie stock-art) on OBS sites. (Yes, I know OBS wants to be “The Place” to get all the RPG material electronically, and they are doing a fantastic job of it, but from WOTC’s standpoint I think they see where they can offer their own products without the “competition” of other publishers.)

I think WOTC has screwed up just about every facet of the 4E release.  This is not helping the old company reputation.  (Especially the issue with people no longer being able to access copies of products they already purchased.)  I think I see where WOTC is really trying to exert some serious “Quality Control” over products that are marketed as compatible with D&D.  (And can we really blame them with some of the utter crap that came out for 3E?  Really?) But they just keep fumbling the ball and pissing off the very people who would like to support the brand. I think the short bus needs a new driver, but I really do see where they want the bus to go in the long run.  But being the 400lb gorilla in the room they can get away with it.