Publishing, the bad with some advice.

Being a publisher can be rewarding but there are some things that come with it that are downright bad.

With great power comes great responsibility.  You are the boss (or one of the bosses), you need to make sure contracts are done, and then fulfilled.  Monies, work product, printing, editing, playtesting, PR, art and much more.

There is a lot of work attached to making a product.  The hours get long and keeping that in mind the pay gets lower per hour, if you even get paid.  During my years of publishing during the d20 era I never saw a dime.  To be fair, I did get some things at no charge like costs to go to cons etc…. but I never received any money for any of the work I did.  I loved doing it so I was not angry but when monies stopped coming in from devious distributors and my credit cards were used and no reimbursement came in my overall income for publishing 30+ books was a negative of more than $10,000.  This is not to scare you but to make sure you clearly know what you are getting into when it is all on the line.

Few things that can make publishing sting less:

Publish in PDF, it is a less expensive market to get into and it is a set channel of distribution and you can track actual sales.

Print on Demand, again no financial costs to print and the quality is so high right now they are doing print on demand card games!

Do as much of the work as you can yourself that keeps costs down and hopefully will let you see some profits sooner.

Kickstart it if it is a big project, you have all the power if you already have the funds to pay artists/writers and to print the book before it is completed, it is a financial and emotional stress reliever.

Ask for help, you will be surprised how freely advice can be obtained, names of good printers, names of good writers, artists etc….

Market yourself, get a name and a logo and start making yourself known.

Next, the ugly.

Week in Review 6/26/13

Let's see...hope to have the anthology announcement this week.

Finished the side project, have no idea when that will be up.

King of Thieves boardgame is getting a boardgame hero to wear the logo and an upcoming con!  Also we have some of the game art here and working on samples to show people.

Boardgame #2 is getting a meeting to discuss plans for it.

Going to get to do some fiction writing this weekend.

Bluffside for C&C is moving ahead.

Fall of Man, looking good, some great ideas, we are thinking an October Kickstarter launch.

Sam the Hanukkah may move to a December launch, when something like this is so art dependent, we need to have a moving target for a launch.

Samurai Sheepdog will be getting a little free C&C adventure up soon on RPGNow.com, a fun little two hour one shot/con adventure.

Week in Review 6/18/13

Congrats to all those who won Origin Awards this year!
And hope all who attended had fun.

Package arrived in England today with the bookplates, for The Awakened, that is the longest trek after it gets back here.
Confirmed our backer exclusive (for 6 mos) story will be ready in a few weeks!

More Awakened info soon ™.

More art incoming for King of Thieves.

More discussions about the Fall of Man RPG Kickstarter.

I might of gotten the very talented Tony Szczudlo his first non Hal gig-I am working as a liaison/agent for him.

Publishing-Is it an advantage?

OK, so now I talk about publishing, it is rewarding and crappy all in one!

The good:
You get to make the calls (good or bad), you want double the art in your book, go ahead it is your book,  want no art and make a statement, it is up to you.  The thing you need to remember is every decision has consequences.  Sales may not be high with the lack of art or sales will need to be huge due to the budget of all the art, so really think about those decisions more excel sheets, less cool factor.
Now saying that sometimes you need a cool factor--Thunderhead Games made a name for itself for a few reasons, one of them was we were the first to hire Monte Cook after he left WotC during the d20 bubble, now it was for a prestige class but we were first.  You know who got Todd Lockwood as well, yup, this guy.  That was worth it for both because of the PR we got as well as some instant street cred.  Would I do it again, if need be.  Maybe.
With PDF self-publishing being at the up and front now it is a huge boon to make stuff fast and inexpensively and the biggest advantage--more variation, because the entrance is inexpensive, the more likely people will be willing to write and develop that odd book, which if it was print only, you may not of ever seen the stuff available.

A great example is SGG, they have so much stuff, it is small brilliant pieces of work, these works most likely would never have seen the light of day if the PDF market was not around.  To have missed out on these would truly be a shame.

So it is great to be your own boss and get done what you want to and also work with whom you want to but remember if you are paying people you will need to make some money.  So keep it all in mind, you will need a healthy balance in order to be successful and able to keep making those games you want.

There is nothing more satisfying than seeing your products coming out and getting praise for the great cover you had done etc....

Next Publishing: The bad.

Week in Review 6/10/13

Well it isn't con crud but I am sick, so that myth about cons may be true.

OK, onto the interesting stuff!

Salty Bay Con was busy, for a first year con I was impressed lots of games and excitement abound, if you live in the Tampa Bay, FL area and like RPG's, boardgames come check it out.  I really liked the idea where they had some games to borrow and play, it let people experience new games at no cost and brought in new fans for those lines, brilliant. 

The Awakened did well, and we reveal soon more items for that setting.  I am hoping the publisher, once the funds are in will get the eBook together ASAP and send it out for the print run, I am hoping to surprise backers by having it ready earlier than the stated delivery date!

Fall of Man is moving along and I met Frank Frey who wrote Twilight 2000 and I am going to put the line manager in touch with him because I think he would be a great resource for that line.

The boardgames and Sam the Hannukah Dragon have no real movement this week from my view, but I know stuff is being worked on in the background.

I am slowly working on a project with Jim Pinto, but now the KS and the con is over I am going to try and focus on it before other stuff get closer-timing is everything!

I will also write another piece about publishing soon, I promise.

Week in Review 6/3/13

Less than 5 days left in the Awakened Kickstarter-CLICK HERE TO PLEDGE

Fall of Man RPG announced and will be a Kickstarter soon, had a long meeting about it Sunday.
CLICK HERE FOR FACEBOOK PAGE

No updates on either boardgame
No updates on Sam the Hanukkah Dragon

Bluffside for C&C is at the editor for a GenCon release.

The Awakened Interviews Available!

Slamfist Media was kind enough to interview Clinton Boomer and myself, here is a link to the front page!

CLICK HERE