Please note that I realized I’d gotten drawn in to a straw-man argument in the comments of my first post about IPR, and the content of my second post about IPR. This was not my intention, and I realized it seemed like I was arguing a belief I don’t even subscribe to. So instead of continuing a dialogue that’s gotten a bit heated, I’m going to go back to what this blog’s about: transparency, and help for people dipping their toes into the world of indie RPG publishing.

I don’t sell things on consignment (with one exception). There are retailers who, when expressing interest in my games, are happy to take my stock and then send me money when someone buys. I understand that’s what’s best for the store, and that indie games aren’t a big draw in your typical FLGS, but unless I am certain that the store can move my product in a manner as timely as I can, then it’s just tying up stock I can’t sell myself. (The only place I sell on consignment is Modern Myths in Northampton, MA. The store is great, the people know their stuff, they (and the community) strongly support indie RPGs, and the owner is just as enthusiastic and knowledgeable about Blowback as I am. I know those copies are on the move. I don’t even sell on consignment at the FLGS in my town.)

Now, selling on consignment might be a good move if you have a really large print run; if you’re not worried about tying up stock you could otherwise sell yourself, it’s perfectly okay to let someone else put it on their shelf with the promise of returning it or else giving you money. (In this regard, small-press publishing is kinda like Carcassonne, if your stock = your meeples.) But as of the moment, I personally do not order print runs in large enough quantities to be able to make that bet.

That said, I love selling to retailers. I will knock off half the MSRP with a smile, even for a book or two (when some indie guys I know want you to buy 4+ for the discount). I want my books to be on shelves around the world, and get people to look at them who may not even have an idea what indie RPGs are. I am a huge fan of Leisure Games in the UK for bringing the American-dominated indie RPG scene to England and Europe with reasonable shipping costs. It’s worth it to me to take a hit on profit for the sake of the potential to nurture new playgroups and fan bases all over.

But Elizabeth! you say. Isn’t selling to customers via IPR the same as consignment? Yes and no. When selling to regular customers on the website, they take a 30% cut of physical sales; that is a totally reasonable and acceptable amount. It’s better than what I get from retailers, and product moves steadily, which is why I sell through IPR despite the fact it doesn’t purchase my product outright. I make a larger percentage than I would if I’d sold it to a bookstore, they get a larger amount of traffic because it’s (almost) one-stop shopping for indie RPG enthusiasts, and we all win.

When IPR sells my game to retailers for me, it’s giving me a wider network of retailers to work with, which excites me. As I said before, I love selling to retailers! Selling to IPR helps me reach the ones who don’t like the hassle of dealing with independent creators. They earn their distributor percentage when they do that.

When IPR sells my game to individual customers at conventions, they claim to be acting as a distributor and as a retailer. They don’t pay me up-front for the books that they bring, and I don’t get the same result of having my books on a sales shelf somewhere I’ll never visit. 9 conventions out of 10, I’m right down the aisle. A decent number of people who bought my games at the IPR booth at GenCon tracked me down to have me sign them, or because IPR didn’t give them the included folder with one-shot info. Sure, not everyone who bought my game there would have bought it from Design Matters, but as I said before, the stock would have been worth more than the profit.

But Elizabeth! You say again. The eyes on those games are alpha adopters! Even if they don’t buy your game, having it in front of those eyeballs is KEY! I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe I’m not an alpha adopter (I’d like to think so, as I’ve been playing Apocalypse World for two years now and it’s only just now been released!), but I don’t remember half the games I looked at. And again, having them on a shelf for four days in a crowded booth (two feet from the floor, in Blowback’s case; but like, it sold out anyway, and something’s gotta be on the bottom couple shelves, right?) isn’t really the same.

Not that I’m dissing alpha adopters. When io9 posted a picture of Blowback, even without contact information right there, the number of orders I got really surged. But then, that picture was taken at my booth, not at IPR. So there you go.

Long story short! Look at your choices when dealing with retailers, and go with what works best for you. I’m pro-retailers, pro-IPR-internet sales, pro-distributor, anti-consignment. Figure out your own positions and stick to ‘em.

I want to buy the game on account of Kenneth Hite’s remarks. I went to your website where I read the IPR discussion. I would like to buy the print version of Blowback at $28 hence I did not buy it on the spot at $24 in the paypal link available at the two scooter press website.

I’m flattered that so many people want to give me more money, and it’s been suggested in my blog comments before that I put up a Donation button, so people can send me additional money if they want. Since this is ultimately a business transaction, I feel a little weird just letting people give me money for no additional product. Which leads me to: the Blowback: SPECIAL OPS team.

What is SPECIAL OPS?

It’s a group of people who, from time to time, will get sent mysterious jobs, exotic locations, and meet new people both nefarious and innocent. On top of this, members of SPECIAL OPS get backup from their team: they can, for example, request a dossier on Caracas, and I’ll do my best to oblige.

How do I join?

Donate $1 or more via the paypal button above. I’ve already been asked for a “recommended” donation: I’m doing this because so many people want to pay $28 instead of $24, so $4 is a good amount. But really, if you think the game (plus this service, I guess) is worth more than you paid, just give me what you think it’s worth.

When does my first training packet come?

Soon. Sooooon.

I guess I should have expected the instant response my post got, but I didn’t. Blowback has been, from day one, about transparency. I wasn’t looking for a fight when I made that post: I just wanted other designers, readying their first or second game, to be armed with the knowledge of the mistakes I made and things I learned. That was part of what I promised to do in my pitch for the DivNull Lark, and it’s something I take extremely seriously as a result. Otherwise I probably would have just kept my mouth shut. (Like that’s ever been good for the community.)

Fred said some interesting things, and I wanted to reply, but really, it makes a better blog post. So let me share what I was going to say to him here:

I’m not sure if these replies are going to be linked to the thing I’m replying to, so I’m going to quote. In it I explain why full color, why the “charged language” (ie, saying that IPR was “double dipping”), and explain why Fred’s view on retailer sales doesn’t match with mine.

When IPR was only taking a small cut (I forget the %) at conventions, it was walking away with so little profit after expenses (and at least one year before the forge breakup I think it may have been in the red) that attending conventions at all was in jeopardy. In part to address this, and in part to standardize the accounting so each convention wasn’t some kind of one off, it went to treating conventions like retail sales.

So IPR takes the retailer cut (dip #1) and the distro cut (dip #2). What would be better wording for this? Paying themselves twice? Increasing their net take by five times? If IPR is acting as a retailer, okay sure, but what distribution services are they providing me when I transport my books to the convention to hand to them personally? If I hadn’t given IPR stock that they could sell from their website after the convention is done, would they have refunded me that 11%, because they did zero distribution? Or is that the fixed take for con sales regardless of services provided? I’m not saying only take 11%, I’m saying that 46% is too much. There are TENS of percentages between there and here. One of them has to be more fair for both parties involved.

So, yes, if you’re making direct contact with a retailer, cutting out that distro step, and offering them 50%, chances are good they’ll go for it… If you can also give them free shipping, maybe. But a lot of retailers don’t want to deal with individual publishers, because that’s tine consuming. Distro and distro like entities such as IPR exist in the ecosystem because they are aggregators in both directions. For publishers they aggregate retailers — sell to a few distros and you’re selling to many retailers. For retailers they aggregate many publishers, and this is a big deal. Running a store is very hard, very time consuming work with a ton of risk. Reducing the time consumption factor is a big selling point for many stores.

Could you please name for me any of the “a lot of retailers” that you mention? I want to know about the retailers I’m missing out on, and whether their markets are big enough for me to be concerned about. Because, as I said before, a good deal of the books I’ve already sold are to retailers. I owe Leisure Games 24 books from GenCon that are going home with Graham Walmsley. I had a lovely talk with the buyer from Borders, who was very interested and not particularly worried about dealing with me directly as long as I got an ISBN. Not a single retailer carrying my books has requested free shipping. Like I said, I’m not operating on the scale that you’re operating on, but for my experience with the book I am currently selling it’s working quite well. And, barring a gigantic deal which would pay for an offset print run, I have zero interest in taking less than 50% of cover for any of my games, and would turn down a chance to do so.

Were the scale I’m operating at to change, my opinions and preferences might change as well, but that’s not related to the current reality of my situation in any way. What you’re saying is sort of like if I wanted to open a lemonade stand, and you were suggesting I go straight to the wholesaler to buy in bulk. I’m not trying to be Evil Hat here, I’m just being me and doing what my current life situation and business goals can afford to do. I’m not going to take out a small business loan for a print run. I’m not going to do Blowback in anything other than full color, because I was saying something very specific with the art and layout that is fresh and new and ;important. I knew what my sales margins were going to be when I changed the paper I used, and I accepted them. What I don’t accept is a daily visit from a retailer/distributor hybrid that is selling out of my game to tell me that no one is going to buy it at its current price point. Brennan was cool about it, and people stopped coming over to ask me about lowering the price after I suggested that IPR meet me halfway.

But when I told every person who approached me about the price that I would lose money on the game if I lowered the price, it didn’t stop.
When I sold out of the game at IPR, which I thought would have quieted the “no one will buy it” argument, it didn’t stop.
The visits ONLY STOPPED when I suggested cutting into IPR’s bottom line as well. And that’s fascinating to me.

—

So kids, if you’re one of the six people who’ve been reading along at home during the long haul to produce Blowback, you know I’ve already explained my profit margins. You know I researched every full-color-printing, landscape-making POD printer that worked in batches small enough that I can afford. I’m not stumbling into this without reasoned consideration, and really, ultimately, selling at IPR is the major mistake I regret. I’m fine with the pricing decision, and I’m fine with my current unit cost (although cheaper is always better, sure, but not always possible when we’re talking economies of scale).

Here’s what I’m not fine with. Indie Press Revolution. Someone who didn’t want to get involved in another internet fight emailed me this evening and reminded me about a forum thread they posted in, that regarded IPR. This person laid out a pretty similar financial argument to the one I laid out in my previous post: but their book was black and white, smaller, cheaper, a supplement to a very popular game. So it had a much lower per-unit cost and it still wasn’t financially viable. When the author mentioned this, they got dogpiled with a bunch of reasons why IPR not being right for them wasn’t IPR’s fault: the book was a niche product, the book was a supplement for an old game, the author didn’t promote the book enough.

I come along with a book that has pretty widespread appeal, brand new, lots of buzz, that I have been promoting the crap out of for well over a year. And it’s still my fault, not IPR’s fault, that IPR is taking more money from my product than I am at convention sales.

Which, I mean, it is. Because I let them. And I’m not letting them any more. That’s all I’m trying to say here. You do the math and figure out what’s best for you. But don’t do the math and let someone else tell you what’s best for you, because people who don’t know your business goals or artistic goals or business model can only engage with you and offer advice from the perspective of the position they’re in. Which may not even be in the same area code as your position.

Bonus PS: when checking out 3 different people buying Blowback at the Design Matters booth, they all mentioned “I saw it at IPR, but came over here to buy it. I figure you probably don’t get shit from resellers.” I love it when people do everything they can to get money into the hands of creators.

I’m going to be honest. And I’m going to talk about my experience using a service as a consumer, and I’m talking to fellow designers just figuring this stuff out as a peer.

I sold 32-35 (I forget the exact number) copies at IPR. This was a lot! This was more than I sold at Design Matters. I’m gratified to have sold so many, especially with concern over the price— I upped the price of Blowback to $28 for the convention. Numerous people told me— both from IPR and Design Matters— that my price point was entirely too high, and I was missing out on sales, and no one was happy with having to pay that much. Since Design Matters is total profit-sharing, I listened to Kevin and Nathan and lowered the price to $24 on Saturday. I did not lower the price at IPR, which made me feel extremely awkward; but since they take an additional “Retailer” fee on top of their normal cut at conventions, I was earning 44% on the cover price. The last time someone asked me to lower my price from IPR, I asked if they could reduce the retailer fee, and quite understandably, they couldn’t. But let’s look at the math:

Blowback MSRP: $28

IPR’s cut of a sale at GenCon: $15.68

My cut of an IPR sale at GenCon: $12.32

My cost per book: $10.50

Total profit for me, per IPR sale: $1.82

Now, you may be saying, “But Elizabeth! The shipping costs. IPR ships a zillion books to the convention, and they have to pay for that. And they have to pay for the people working the booth, too. You’re not accounting for shipping cost or sweat equity.” And that’s fair, under normal circumstances. But I brought all of the copies of Blowback to the convention myself, and I do appreciate everyone taking the extra time to ring up my books alongside the Dresden Files. But really, other than sending people over periodically to ask to lower the price of my book, I didn’t really get any special service or outstanding attention that I feel was worth more than the physical copy of my book.

EDITED TO ADD: that’s not true. Brennan is helping me look into lower-cost alternative printers and I appreciate that hugely.

Actually, I just did the math with a calculator, and I feel bad for lying during the convention. I told the IPR folks that I couldn’t lower the price of my book to $24 because it’d go below cost. That’s not entirely true.

Blowback IPRSRP: $24

My cut of an IPR sale at GenCon: $10.56

IPR’s cut per sale at GenCon: $13.44

My cost per book: $10.50

My profit per sale at GenCon: $0.06

So yeah, not entirely accurate. But close.

“But Elizabeth!” you say once more. “Design Matters was what had you so worried! Their crazy profit-sharing insanity! You expected to lose THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS! Surely IPR was better than that!” Not exactly.

First, you must remember I am prone to panic before conventions. Those numbers were based on selling all 150+ copies at Design Matters, which included some of the ones I set aside for preorder and wasn’t bringing to the con. In reality, my share of the Design Matters booth brought me back $619, and my direct sales at the Design Matters booth totaled $644. So that’s a good margin.

Blowback MSRP: $28

My cut of booth sales, divided per sale of Blowback: $25.79

My cost per book: $10.50

My profit per sale at Design Matters: $15.09

“But wait!” you say, hopefully for the final time. “What about diminishing returns? You would have lost money if all those IPR sales happened at the Design Matters booth instead!”

Good point. So let’s look at the hypothetical situation in which I sold, let’s say 60 copies at Design Matters. That alone would have increased Design Matters payouts to approximately $723 for a full share, which would make me $14.45 per book. Still not stellar, but better than between $1.82-$0.06 a copy.

EDITED TO ADD: and with all the pressure to drop the price of my book, at one point between the 2nd and 3rd time someone asked to drop the price to $24, I gave IPR more books because they’d sold out.

I give these numbers not because I have some beef with IPR. Brennan is one of my favorite people in the world, and was running the IPR booth for the final time this year. Darren Watts, the new owner of IPR, has been nothing but gracious and good to me, and I really enjoyed hanging out with him at Dreamation. But as production values of games go up— and as IPR continues to double-dip by giving themselves a retailer discount while taking the IPR cut— it’s basically untenable for a truly indie unit to debut a game at a convention via IPR. The Evil Hat folks did a great job and moved a hell of a lot of copies of Dresden Files, and while I would not go so far as to call them The Man, I’m hard-pressed to think of them as “indie” much any more. (Although, if it’s like previous years where IPR doesn’t take the retailer cut if you work the booth, I completely understand why Evil Hat was happy to debut Dresden with them. It’s just a shame there were so few other indie folks with new games afforded the same opportunity. And really, it goes back to the argument of sweat equity: you’re getting a huge amount more per book when you work the booth than when you don’t, so those people are already being compensated.)

So here is my advice, fledgling game designers excited about having a release for GenCon 2011. Only you can decide whether the halo effect of IPR is worth the cut you take in profits. Blowback was, I feel, a fairly anticipated game, and it only sold 10ish more copies at IPR by walkers-by than it did at Design Matters, which was sandwiched between kilts and hentai over by the women’s restrooms and required a compass and a heart of steel to find. I did get an interview out of it, from a woman who’d seen it at IPR and didn’t even know about it beforehand. That was awesome, and if I notice a sales bump when the interview goes live I will make a new post factoring the buzz in.

But really? I’d rather have 32 copies of my book I could sell right now for full profit than an extra.. $58.24 after cost?.. in October. And that’s why I’m going to stop selling my books at conventions through IPR.

My favorite parts: lots of long meals with fascinating people, the White Wolf booth— dude, hate all you want, but those guys are fucking rock stars and I love them. Indie dudes act like White Wolf is The Man, but they’ve been indie since before indie was cool. And it was great to see Justin DJing like a MACHINE. And definitely, I loved talking to Cassie Krause of Red Moon Medicine Show, who’s gearing up to design her first game. That makes me SOOOO happy. I love to see more women designers getting their hands dirty.

My not-so-favorite part: the AWESOME HOTEL we’d reserved a room in was less than awesome. It was supposed to be connected to the convention center via a walkway, but the walkway wasn’t finished yet. And a lot of the amenities advertised weren’t finished yet, either. Booo!

The buzz: Dude. Dude. I am totally overwhelmed by the interest, enthusiasm, and general warm fuzzies Blowback is getting from all over the convention and beyond. Here’s just a small taste:

“I endorse Blowback. Slick, cool, bleeding edge, modern. And other words.” – Cam Banks, Editor & Developer, Margret Weis Productions

“Blowback, by Elizabeth Shoemaker, was literally the only game I came to the show already wanting to leave with. Why? First, I have a design crush (as the Romulans say, “I admire her mind”) on Elizabeth going back to the first time I met her, when she demoed It’s Complicated for me — seeing an improv romantic storytelling game using the relationship map as essentially wargame space was genius. (And the It’s Complicated core mechanic is essentially “Red Rover.” Gosh, what a tightly braided, beautiful design.) Second, I love Burn Notice, and Blowback is essentially Burn Notice: The RPG. Third, I want to rip off all her mechanics for Night’s Black Agents.” -Kenneth Hite, famous, multi-ENnie-winning game designer: Trail of Cthulhu and many others

Also keep an eye out for my interview with Mags from All Games Considered!

Shreyas and I are hopping in the car on Tuesday and headed to the biggest game convention in North America. We’re with the hipster-chic Design Matters, booth 2100. For those of you playing the home game, Design Matters is a curated collection of new, innovative, and exciting indie RPGs available in a relaxed, pressure-free, demo-free environment only at GenCon. (If you’re itching to play one of the games you see at the booth, Design Matters keeps staff on hand at Games on Demand!)

Come check it out, and pick up:

Annalise: Final Edition from Nathan D. Paoletta of ndp design
Blowback, by Elizabeth Shoemaker Sampat of Two Scooters Press
Dread House from Epidiah Ravachol of Dig 1000 Holes Publishing and Emily Care Boss of Black and Green Games
Happy Birthday, Robot! fromDaniel Solis
Hell 4 Leather from Joe Prince of Prince of Darkness Games
It’s Complicated Revised from Elizabeth Shoemaker Sampat of Two Scooters Press
Labyrinths & Lycanthropes by Joe Prince of Prince of Darkness Games
Mars Colony from Tim Koppang of TCK Roleplaying
Mecha from Heroic Journey Publishing, presented by Red Moon Medicine Show
Swords Without Master from Epidiah Ravachol of Dig 1000 Holes Publishing
The Dance and the Dawn by Dev Purkayastha, presented by ndp design
Time & Temp by Epidiah Ravachol of Dig 1000 Holes Publishing

Design Matters will also be the Gen Con home of the Diana Jones Award nominated Kagematsu, by Danielle Lewon of Cream Alien Games.

That’s a hell of a lineup, so come say hello! Blowback and It’s Complicated Revised* will also be at the IPR booth, but we’re physically present at Design Matters. So if you want to avoid small talk with me, IPR’s the place!**

* We will have a small number of copies of Mist-Robed Gate. If you want to buy one, you’ll have to track us down and ask.

**Sometimes I hang out at the IPR booth when I’m not at my booth, because I get lost easily and like to stay around people I know. My apologies if your attempts to avoid me fail.

Buy it at the Unstore!

Game Text and Editing: $0

I wrote the game myself. Ryan Macklin provided some excellent structural advice, but due to poor communication on my end, our schedules got all fucked up and I wasn’t able to fully avail myself of his editing prowess. More’s the pity, but the advice he gave me radically changed the structure of the text for the better. Additional editing was farmed out to my heroes Vincent Baker, Graham Walmsley, and Jonathan Walton out of the kindness of their hearts. I sent out the PDF with preorder, with a note that asked readers to be on the lookout for typos and inconsistencies, and they responded with unimagined vigor and usefulness. Smartest thing I’ve done with this project.

Printing: $27.50 (as of this date)

This is just simply the costs to print prep materials for conventions and playtests. Since the actual print run money is not coming out of the $1000 (more on this later, including the stupidest thing I’ve done with this project!), I’m not counting it here.

Art: $211

This is the most money I’ve ever spent on art. Hell, just the font family I used for the text cost as much as the art. If there’s one thing people are saying right now about Blowback, it’s that it looks great. I’m really proud of the gorgeous full-color interiors, and the only thing that made them possible was the amazing photography collection at iStockphoto. Now, I’m probably a bit biased because I’m a contributor to iStock and the site has been a significant source of income for me over the last six years, but they beat every other stock photography site I’ve looked at for cutting-edge, outside-the-norm, artistic photography. I was showing the layout to my friend Eppy, who exclaimed at one point, “You found a HOSTAGE SITUATION in stock photos?!” Oh, I did. I did indeed.

Layout and design: $0

Something else I’m proud of: as with all 2SP games, the gorgeous layout and ornamentation is all in-house. Shreyas and I worked hard, sketched stuff, I told him what I wanted and he figured out the templates to make it work. Then I actually massaged the text, figured out what went where, etc. Shreyas made all of the fantastic hexagonal/halftone ornaments you see throughout the text.

Playtesting: $160

This includes the admission to two cons and gas to and from Dreamation. I’m including it because this is where a lot of the initial playtesting got done, and it was instrumental in the development of the game. (I’m not including lodging for Dreamation because we’ve got a place to stay in Morristown.)

Promotion: $486

This is $446 for a booth buy-in with Design Matters for GenCon and two exhibitor passes, and $40 for media for a trailer I didn’t have the time or energy to put together. This was a mistake, of course.

Total: $884.50

The other approximate $120 went into unforeseen expenses with It’s Complicated temporarily, and will probably be paid back into online connectivity and iPhone support in the fall.

So what went wrong?

I said I’d talk about printing more, and let me tell you: I really fucked up. I’d decided a while ago to price Blowback at $24, since the per-copy cost to me was about $6. Well. I got the proof for It’s Complicated back, and it looked great— but the paper I’d chosen, while perfect for IC and its relatively sparse use of color, really would not have worked for Blowback and its really intense layout. Since the quote I had was based on using the same paper as It’s Complicated, I contacted Kim at 360 about upgrading my paper to the next heaviest weight. Well, turns out I was already using their best standard paper: the next rung up is 80# matte coated. Gorgeous paper, but it ups my  per-unit cost from $6 to $10.

But I look at the prices of comparable books coming out (mistake #1), get cold feet about Blowback, (mistake #2), and decide to keep the price at $24 despite a nearly-doubling per-unit cost (mistake #3) out of concerns that people wouldn’t buy the book if the price were closer to $30.

Which has lead to an ulcer-inducing nightmare of frustrating math. I’ve gotten a ton of preorders, but the more preorders I get, the more it takes up the print run I was planning to do. But if I increase the size of the print run, the preorders I have won’t cover the cost of the print run. And normally I might be able to move some money around, but new expenses are cropping up literally daily, since I’m getting married in nine days. Oh, and I have to have the final PDF with the final order in by Monday.

Is the game profitable?

On top of my giant pricing mistake, when I signed up for Design Matters I was completely scatterbrained and forgot that they do 100% profit sharing at GenCon instead of direct sales— despite the fact that I had a long talk with them about it two years ago at GenCon ‘08. That’s completely my fuckup. Unfortunately the difference between what I could potentially make back on direct sales and what (if growth patterns bear out for DM2010) I could make back through 100% profit sharing is approximately $1200. That’s a ton of money. Since this whole experiment is one in transparency and “Hey! What does it look like when you make a game on this budget, and what does the profit look like?” it screws things up a bit. That said, I think Design Matters is fantastic and their model is great for ensuring that edgier games which might normally be risky to bring to a big con get the eyeballs and promotion they richly deserve. It’s just easier to say that when you’re not looking at your own bottom line, which makes me feel like a money-grubbing jerkface.

Long story short: in a hypothetical world, could Blowback made a profit? In its sleep. In this specific world, can Blowback make a profit? God only knows.

Character sheets: Professional and Civilian
Operation plan (for use by the team and The Agency)
The Agency’s Job worksheet