Matis Masters's page

First of all thank you all for your complete answers. This has given me a lot to think about. Ssalarn, Creighton Broadhurst, Malikjoker, Interjection Games again, thank you for your time.

I'll not address each comment one by one, but from what I've seen, its really hard to get noticed out there, and you guys had to spent years to get there publishing non-stop. Actually I think I'm going to buy a lot of your stuff that its really good.

You guys gave me amazing real numbers, thats priceless for me, and there is very little published in respect of that, I think if this trade is to take off, that sort of information should be more openly shared. Wouldn't it be great to create some sort of 3PP Non Profit, just to release information that could help newcomers, and make our markets bigger? Just a thought.

So here is my latest question. I'm currently working as a web developer, and I've been able to save some cash. I would love to work full time on this, as most of us around here, and I'm willing to work hard for it. Because of that I want to think of the best way of investing something between, 5k and 10k dolars into it.

By your answers reputation, and number of publications seems to be a defining factor. So, a few options:
1) would you say its better to spent part of that cash into a few months producing small content just to get my feets wet, lets say 40% of it, and then do a final the rest?

2) do you believe that maybe its better to put it all into one big publication, try to hire high profile people to help on the production, and marketing, and create a really nice kickstarter?

so slow injections through time, or big injection at once?

Keep in mind that actually we haven't published yet, so I'll do some experimentation before in any case.

Do you have any other ideas?

I've heard what was said about we not being marketers or artists, but somewhere I read that people come for the art, and stay for the content. So assuming there is some investing money, would buying custom artwork, be a good way to start on hard?

Thank you so much! I hope this conversation helps a lot of the others out there doubting about the same things.

1) For exact sales numbers, you could try asking the 3PP selling sites how many sales the average company gets. It really does vary based on what you're doing, though. I've heard that anything that sells more than 100 copies is something of a hit. (Stuff that gets crowdfunded on Kickstarter is a bit different, and can get a LOT more sales - but should also be relatively sizable.)

2) Yes, but the higher the cost, the better it needs to be. For example, Frog God Games routinely publishes stuff that costs over $100, but consists of absolutely fantastic stuff. In my experience, I think larger products may, in a way, be more likely to be successful - people who might hesitate to pick up a $2 PDF might jump at the chance for a $35 300-page hardcover. (Especially through crowdfunding, which can reduce a lot of the risk. Though, it also helps if people know who you are, first... XD)

3) All over the place. Visibility is a key aspect of getting sales. (It helps if you send stuff in for reviews, too. A good opinion from a notable reviewer like Endzeitgeist can help with your visibility.)

4) I know it's not a full-time job for everyone. Probably not most 3PP people, even. So... uh, don't quit your day job, unless and until you know it's safe to do so. Think of it as a second job, not your primary one.

5) Depends on the product. I remember that for the Northlands Saga Complete, they weren't even breaking even until somewhat past their initial funding goal (but did manage to surpass it nicely). Of course, that was kind of a huge book. You'll definitely need a publisher to note the exact timeframe.

6) Some people ask for illustrators here on Paizo.com.

Thanks for the advice!, I really appreciate you taking the time on each question, I'll follow your suggestions in trying to get the numbers, thanks!

Hello, sometimes I've seen people commenting here that are part of Third Party Publishing companies, so my question is mostly for them, but obviously all the help is welcome. A friend and I are thinking of going the road of self publishing, under the assumption that we have several things in the works that could easily match the quality of the d20pfsrd store items we've seen so far, and we have all the skils needed to create content like that.

We both have our day jobs, but would like to think and try projecting our lives towards creating our own publishing company. Following that thinking, we found several ways of getting funding to our company, mostly from the public sector programs, but in any case they always expect to have at least some form of business plan.

In order for me to be able to create realistic business plan, I would need some information, that has proven hard to find. If you could help me to answer this questions, or point me in the right direction, that would be great.

How many 3PP sales are made a Year? from d20pfsrd? from driveThruRPG?
Is there market for publications with pricepoint over 5 USD? 10? 30?
What are the best channels to promote the publications? Paizo Forum?, Other 3PP?, Facebook? Twitter?
If you have self published:
Is it a full time job for the main participants?
How much time did it took you to break even?(reach a number of sales that was enough to pay your costs)
How is your preferred way to engage/find Illustrators? freelancer.com? envato.studio?

any help, on any of those points would be appreciated, even if you point me to an article, or links to read about it.
Thanks

Reading this post somehow gives me hope there is interest for a real API here, which is what I was looking for. The starting post is like 3 years old though so it would be nice to know who does still have interest on it, and who would like to help in anyway they can, even if you are not a programmer you could help.

But first of all, there have been several different things suggested here, so I would like to point out what I think will make more sense to start with, and from there it could be easy for anyone else to continue building on top of it.

Main objectives:
1 - Have all the Pathfinder SRD content in a database using the database structure that paizo is already using
2 - Create an online service API, with endpoints for accessing all this data from any other tool(digital charactersheets, web spellbooks, character builders, etc)

What do we need to achieve Objective (1):
- Contact paizo to see if they would be willing to share with us their DB of the SRD, or at least the architecture.
- Plan B: If they would not be willing to help, we can create the structure ourselves and scrape the SRD. Its a lot of effort, but it can be done gradually, starting with small things, like the drawbacks and traits, then moving to feats, spells, and from there classes and archetypes, and so on, and so on.

What do we need to achieve Objective(2):
- A free hosting service(we can use heroku for starters)
- Once free hosting is not enough I myself can commit to pay for the 75 USD monthly that are needed, until we can have some donations or so in-place to pay for it.
- We need developer/s to create the first simple approach of the API. There are several techonologies that could make this really an easy task, after having the database.

If we could achieve these two objectives, what would be the benefit of having this online?
- Other tools like Character Builders could hook up this API and enhance their services by offering searchable list of spells, drawbacks, clases, archetypes, or anything we offer from our database.
- Having this API being open source will give other developers the opportunity to help enhance the API and continuously create new functionality for it
- As we move forward, we could document the standard database structure, and schemas, that other people can use when they are creating third party rules for the system, allowing this API to also serve third party content.
- Having standards for third party contents means that it will be easy to review, and playtest third party rules, characters, archetypes, traits, etc. So the community would greatly help into having third party content of a higher quality, the same or even better than paizo itself.

To be honest I could try to do all that myself, I'll just be a lot slower, but having seen that there is a lot of people interested, It gives me hope that I could have some help and we could all benefit.

So if there is someone out there that still wants to participate in something like this, please let me know, send me your email, and we can coordinate to work together.

My email is matismasters@gmail.com feel free to contact me directly if you prefer.