Um, it depends on how many you want to sell and who to. A really cheap look and a low price might say "this is worth nothing" to the consumer.

I kinda dogged James Brown for having Death's Door look so crap (and seeing how gorgeous Blood and Bronze is it shows it's a decision, not an ability limit). So, I guess I'm dogging you a bit here. Paul did a great cover for it, but I guess colour printing adds to the costs even for just a cover.

Um, I'm not dead set against this but I need to be convinced.

why not make a feature of the script-iness though? Make it feel a bit distressed, with odd notes and so on. Like it's been hiked around hundreds of producers by a jobbing scriptwriter.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I don't think we've explored that lower price point enough. It's about right for an impulse buy.

Of course, the idea is that you don't lose money by pricing it lower. You make less profit on each one but sell more.

Indie games are getting more and more expensive. I think there's room for some cheap options.

Graham

You might want to bind them with treasury tags, or just staples.

Joe, sold P&P in an earlier version for like a £1 a pop at conventions, so maybe he has input on this?

In that market "extra cheap" is kind of redundant and the cover needs to look at least *interesting*.

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

or at least try.

The idea is partly inspired by Cheapass Games who followed a model of very cheap games for several years with great success. Now that was in response to the expense of board and card games, which is what they were producing. As graham points out the price of indie games is increasing and we haven't really looked at the sort of 'pocket money' games area.

Actual product wise, the idea is to have it look like a script, so some stressing etc. will be in order. It will not look as bad as death's door, i hope. It will be printed on 3 holed paper, A4 or US letter, and brass tacked top and bottom, as is standard for scripts as I understand it. I am going to post-it the sections and hand write those as well. The possibility of adding little notes in pen onto the finished product is something I would have to consider.

I think I can make it look different and interesting for the consumer. In the end I can always try this and if it doesn't work, then just go for a more standard format.

Edit: I am going to make a mock up for Conception to get some more feedback. I will take pictures and post them here and on the Giant Brain site as well.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Note that while Cheapass made a point of making their games on the cheap, in crappy boxes with crappy boards and crappy cardboard tokens, the artwork on the cover of the box was top-notch and the boxes themselves were neatly and crisply folded. I would strongly suggest that you go for at least wire binding, if not perfect or saddle stitch, and have quality black-and-white lineart on the cover. You might even find it cost-effective to do a lithographic printing if the book is very short. Although I find that doubtful it may be worth investigating.

I like the idea of the three-ring binder, but I think it will prove too costly to be affected with any great success. However if you can find a source of ring-binders that is willing to print some kind of logo onto the cover, it has the major advantage that you can then publish supplements as vacuum sealed loose leaves, pre-punched to be inserted into that folder and with a side-tabbed 'cover page' so that the reader can quickly flip to any supplement. It'd be like a collectable RPG, with the added bonus that the GM would have somewhere to store notes, NPCs and player character sheets.

Ash

These guys have some extremely impressive customisable ring binders, though they don't list prices on the website. That said, they have much lower minimum orders than I was expecting for such a product: http://www.impactbinders.com/

These guys are based in England and look like they'd probably be a bit cheaper, if only on postage. Not as attractive a range, but nice nevertheless. Especially check out their PVC overboard folders. These stand up like an A-frame and could therefore be used as a flipable GM screen! Nifty or what? I'm tempted to use that method myself! http://www.evans-graphics.co.uk

These guys actually quote prices, but it looks like it's for file folders without printing that you have to slip an insert into. If you buy in sets of 50 they still cost £2.10. That'll put a crimp on your production budget and no mistake :( http://www.duraweld.co.uk

If I find any more I'll let you know. Personally, depending on costs, I favour those overboard folders. They fold flatter than a lever arch and also make a handy screen, though they don't hold as much material.

Ash

The thing to be wary of is having the horrid combination of low production values that look like low production values. I guess sometimes it costs quite a lot to make a product that looks cheap but handles like a product that isn't cheap?

I recall Dave's reaction to one of the ashcans at the Ashcan Front at GenCon this year. I'm not sure which one it was but, in essence, it was a couple of A4 sheets of paper. Charge $10?! The game could have been fantastic but the production was so low that it never even got considered.

I'm not sure if I've put this across too well ...

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

If you are only really planning to sell this at cons on CE stands with a few special orders then what you are talking about sounds perfectly doable. But I really can't see something like this sitting in my FLGS or attracting much attention online.

What you are planning here is a bespoke piece of art, something that normally goes against the low cost you are aiming for. Bespoke usually means that you can charge a premium for it.

I'd say if your aim is to get it out to people cheap, sell it as a PDF and let people make it look like a script themselves. This means that you can create a one off original and add the post it's and wear and get it looking great. You add a section on your site where you challenge people to send you pictures of thier own attempts to make it look better (which you attribute and put in a gallery on your website).

Add's a little more interaction to the product that way :-)

I don't think the 'pocket money' market is that important if your product is not sitting on a store shelf. Most of us bring extra money to cons and expect to spend it. Sure you might be interested in a specially cheap game to use up your loose change (people treat Ashcans this way), but then you are competing with bring and buy stalls, second hand games, free handouts and the like.

In a game store, in contrast, I often browse the expensive stuff, hem and haw, and then pick up a bunch of remaindered and cheap things. Games that promise full gameplay at the price point of two boosters of something like Pirates (around 5 pounds) would definitely interest me.

And please no ring binders. I use them extensively for games stuff I write myself or print out and they all, without fail, end up with torn holes and pages falling out. They drive me crazy!

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Like the title says, I suggest hole reinforcers

Ash

Yeah I have many packets, and user them on the more stressed pages, but I'd hate to be sold a game I had to use reinforcers on!

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Hehe true. Sadly, short of plasticating every page, I don't think there's a good workaround. I have the same trouble with comb-bound and wire-bound books.

Ash

Reading over this feedback seems to be a stronger no than yes with a bit of swithering. I am coming back round to producing it properly, still with the script feel though. I can totally see the argument from the properly produced point of view. I will ponder it further.

Reel Adventures is likely to be very short, maybe 30 pages at most, and I feel bad charging too much for it. I think I will split off that discussion into another post thought.

By the way David I don't think Ashcans are good value for money but that is another discussion altogether.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

I'm not that keen on Ashcan type games myself, truth be known, because they tend to be unsatisfying, leaving out too much for my tastes. I prefer a bigger book to a smaller one, cheapness aside.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Iain, there were lots of threads about pricing on the Forge over the years. The general upshot was:

a. Everyone has different opinions about price.
b. ...which contradict everyone else's opinions.
c. ...and threads about pricing never reach a consensus.

For example, you see David's post about spending money at conventions and game stores, above? My experience is the direct opposite to his. I buy expensive things in game stores and I'm very careful spending money at conventions, making me much more likely to go for cheap options.

The only way to find out whether it'll work is to try it. Nothing's stopping you from, say, mocking up a few of these books and seeing how well they sell.

If they sell well enough to make the lower price point worthwhile, keep doing it. If they don't, raise the price and, perhaps, change the format.

Really, try it. I think you'll be doing us all a favour: we'll find out whether that lower price point is a viable option.

Graham

I was speaking to Paul earlier and I think he is right in that I should make the first product for my own imprint shine as much as possible. Now I am not abandoning this idea, I still think it has merit, but for Reel Adventures I am going the more polished route.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Iain,

FWIW, I think you're better off boing for a properly bound book for this. But if you can keep the per-unit cost down, that £5-6 price point leads to sales at cons like DM. It appears to, given the number of Umläuts I sold at DM.*

But at the end of the day, what percentage of sales will DM and Games Expo account for?

If you want a cheap price for impulse buys, then as Tim says, I'm totally not seeing how a $6 PDF isn't the perfect thing. For the price of a beer you gat instant delivery anywhere in the world and you can print it and make it look however you like.

Also: Hand making those Umläuts was a pain in the fingers. I REALLY don't want to do that again.

* I attribute most of the success to that price point. And the fact that it's awesome.

The simple answer is some people don't like PDFs, amazing but true. I never buy PDFs. I can't read them on screen without my eyes going funny, I don't have a cheap printer to print them on, and I don't like piles of loose or stapled games anyway. I'll buy an actual printed and bound book over a PDF any day. Now I'm not typical, but I'm not unique either.

Its probably not a significant enough share of the market to base major publishing choices on though

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

David,

The thing is though, that you can't get a small, cheap printed book into a readers hands easily and cheaply.

A £5 book with £4 postage is very not in the cheap market.

So you can't give a buyer a cheap (£5) book except at Cons. If you're looking at getting into retail, you're looking at charging more than £5 for the product, because once the distributor and the retailer take their cut you'd probably find that there was no profit in a book at £5 in the low volumes we're talking about. So then you're talking about charging £7 RRP to make any money and you're back to the start.

Point well taken Rich.

Personally I'd buy a £7 book over a £5 PDF any day, but that's just me.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

...that it'd be a £2.50 PDF.

Sure people who just don't like PDFs still won't buy it, but I'd imagine you'll reach more people with a pdf only product that you would with a print only one you're only able to sell profitably at cons.

I totally agree, though both is better

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/