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So I was at the gas station this morning, and noticed they had a decal on it showing the break down of each dollar going into the going rate for fuel - processing, shipping, etc, and it got me thinking.
A friend and I have been having a debate over the price of PDFs lately with the recent WotC stuff, and his arguement is that they are heavily inflated in price relative to what it takes to print a book. My argument is that the 10-20% discount we see is only really factoring in the distribution changes, because the fixed costs of producing the content are still the same.
My question is, and maybe the Paizo folks can answer, without using a specific value (or say a single product cost me $10 to make), what's a reasonable percentage break down to make an RPG supplement? Art, layout, editor, writer, other stuff those of us not in the business have no idea about?
My question is, and maybe the Paizo folks can answer, without using a specific value (or say a single product cost me $10 to make), what's a reasonable percentage break down to make an RPG supplement? Art, layout, editor, writer, other stuff those of us not in the business have no idea about?
I'm not Paizo, don't represent Paizo, and have no insight into Paizo's production model or process, but in my neck of the publishing woods, we aim for ~$10/page in *some* of our composition models.
This covers most aspects of typesetting, proofreading and managing art and ads as well as the licenses, resources and labor necessary to conduct those activities.
It doesn't really cover copyediting or other editorial expenses, production models that use Adobe typesetting software (which, iirc Paizo and WoTC do use, specifically InDesign, and those licenses are not cheap). It doesn't cover putting the content online, sharing it out, paying for bandwidth for downloads, printing it or mailing it. It doesn't really cover spending hours getting all the orphans or hyphens squared away, In Paizo's case, it would not cover paying for the art/talent/writers (or talented writers!)
Now, on the complete other side of the coin, there are some typesetting systems which are totally free as GNU, which is great news for the hobbyist publisher.
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My question is, and maybe the Paizo folks can answer, without using a specific value (or say a single product cost me $10 to make), what's a reasonable percentage break down to make an RPG supplement? Art, layout, editor, writer, other stuff those of us not in the business have no idea about?I'm not Paizo, don't represent Paizo, and have no insight into Paizo's production model or process, but in my neck of the publishing woods, we aim for ~$10/page in *some* of our composition models.
This covers most aspects of typesetting, proofreading and managing art and ads as well as the licenses, resources and labor necessary to conduct those activities.
It doesn't really cover copyediting or other editorial expenses, production models that use Adobe typesetting software (which, iirc Paizo and WoTC do use, specifically InDesign, and those licenses are not cheap). It doesn't cover putting the content online, sharing it out, paying for bandwidth for downloads, printing it or mailing it. It doesn't really cover spending hours getting all the orphans or hyphens squared away, In Paizo's case, it would not cover paying for the art/talent/writers (or talented writers!)
Now, on the complete other side of the coin, there are some typesetting systems which are totally free as GNU, which is great news for the hobbyist publisher.
So we're like, what? Lookin' at around $10k a project?
I’d be interested in this as well.
Take this with a grain of salt but back in the ‘90’s I wanted to start a small publishing company for an RPG and for short story/novels. As such most of the prices that I was told back then are probably far different now. Still, while researching all this, and trying to write term papers at the same time, I was told, more then once, that it’s an equation of 50%.
Take the $10.00 amount you mentioned. A store sells it to you for $10.00; they got it from a distributor for $5.00 (technically the rule was 53% for whatever reason, but to keep the math simple we’ll go with 50%). The Distributor buys it from the publisher for 2.50.
So the math would be to add up all the cost making the book then multiplying the above. This is basically why Amazon can keep the cost down so much, in-fact they might be their own distributor. As for the PDF market I have no idea what distributor cost would be, rent space at paizo or rpgnow?
As to the cost of making the item a lot has changed since I looked into this.
Art: Both the easiest and most frustrating. Technically you have to commission the art at an agreed amount (have no idea what the going rate is today) but you can find artist at a lot of places. I’ve heard of some 19 year old kid making a comic book by writing a script and long descriptions of his characters that he commissions artist off the net to produce the actual artwork. But as I understand it he did a lot of contract work to make sure ownership and creation rights remained with him.
Paying for artwork is very easy, but getting an artist you A. like and B. is reliable that’s the trick. My mistake was in relying on friends.
Layout and Writing fell to me, and is the most work and time consumer, but even this today is easier with all the good programs out there.
Editor sort of falls into a something like art, commissioning someone or better yet get someone on staff, which leads to…
Other Stuff. When I wanted to do this I didn’t realize just how much of an actual business I was looking to get into. Half the time you’re dealing with the business aspect of the job rather then the enjoyment of creating something special.
Funny you should post right now. This last weekend I was having a beer with some of the group members talking about what we wanted to do next game wise. The talk led to Pathfinder and the OGL in general. The newest guy in the group, my nephew all of 23 and just getting into role-playing says to me. “You know uncle Andre you should publish you own game. You have so many cool house rules, or maybe do something under the new Pathfinder OGL” My group of old timers blinked at him, looked at each other, then started laughing. I think it was Stewart who asked mid laugh, “What is it that makes every gamer want to publish his own game?”
I felt a little bad for laughing at my nephew, he really is very enthusiastic about doing something along these lines and besides I realized that the reason every gamer wants to do this is because unlike computer games or board games, RPG’s work off our own creativity. Thus, while I’m older now, and wiser (I hope), my nephew has gotten me thinking about perhaps starting a small RPG company. I’m not giving up my day job, not in this economy, of selling the house to do it, but I do want to give it a try.
First things first, however. And the First thing I want to know is how much I don’t know. So any feed back from those in the know would be great.
I hope what little I could offer was of some help VagrantWhisper, and I do hope nothing but the best in your efforts.
TTFN DRE
Take the $10.00 amount you mentioned. A store sells it to you for $10.00; they got it from a distributor for $5.00 (technically the rule was 53% for whatever reason, but to keep the math simple we’ll go with 50%). The Distributor buys it from the publisher for 2.50.
To clarify, in my neck of the woods, we aim to keep our labor costs for basic pdf production to $10/page. This business model is not the same Paizo's, rather, we produce pdfs, and in many cases print runs, for hundreds of clients, who in turn hundreds to thousands of subscribers, depending on the product, the labor cost does owe *a lot* to economies of scale.
To put it another way, I'm talking about labor costs for a large distributor (think Miller, who brews all the Miller beers, plus things like Hamm's or Pabst) versus your local craft beer / microbrew. Sure, they're both beer, but they really are different products.
I'd also like to expand on something else I mentioned. If you, as a hobbyist, want to produce a free pdf, all it costs you is your time. There free typesetting systems, capable of producing print quality pdfs, out there as well as art within the public domain.
Go a bit deeper down the rabbit hole and look at Kobold Quarterly (which I dearly love). Baur has 10 people on the production staff (based on credits in KQ), with some pulling double or triple duty as editors or contributors. He also wrangles a slew of authors and artists (can't just plan for this weeks/months/quarters pub, your looking 2-6 issues ahead, depending on frequency of publication). Some of the art he pulls in either from public domain or licenses. Of course, Wolfgang Baur has serious gamer chops and can pull in a lot of top-tier talent and special features, which help drive subscriptions and "news stand sales".
From here we can take swig of the bottle and look at a Paizo, who maintain four different product lines (not other product tie-ins, like the miniature line) with monthly and bi-monthly publication dates.
I guess what I'm getting at is this: the final PDF represents a significant part of your end product, and the labor/production costs are non-trivial, especially for small/smaller-run products. Paizo and KQ, in my opinion, offer a fantastic return on the sticker price.
I'd like to point out that the 'price per unit' for producing a print product varies highly depending on the size of the print run and other factors. (This is in addition to the fact that you can divide the writing cost by the number of units.) So there is no consistent breakdown, and the more popular a product is (and therefore the more of it that can be printed), the lower certain production costs are.
This is in contrast to the breakdown of gasoline you saw at the fueling station, which is produced on a massive scale, and doesn't have a research budget still attached.
This is in contrast to the breakdown of gasoline you saw at the fueling station, which is produced on a massive scale, and doesn't have a research budget still attached.
Definitely what Ross said. The accounting for a gallon of gas really isn't comparable to even a book, since there are so much higher fixed costs (as opposed to variable costs which are per unit), let alone a PDF.
Quick example: Let's say all the money it takes to get a PDF ready for sale costs you $100. You price the PDF @ $10.
1 person buys it, costs are 1000%.
10 people buy it, costs are 100%.
20 people buy it, costs are 50%.
50 people buy it, costs are 20%.
For Paizo there are other factors:
1) They have to have fixed prices, generally speaking.
2) The price has to correspond to the print book cost, which is more like a fixed cost, once they determine the print run.
A "cost decal" would be interesting to see, but it would be constantly changing depending on sales, etc, and be very different for different products.
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Ya, that all makes sense for sure.
I imagine that with items that are fairly consistent in layout and content, say something like the player's guides for the adventure paths, the budget could be allocated fairly consistently.
My talents lay elsewhere in this world so my understanding of publishing and content developement is limited, but I imagine that coming up with a budget for an RPG product that will have a decent ROI is actually pretty tough to do.
There's a bit of information on the prices for RPG's from Sean K Reynolds on his website here.
This is some interesting reading.
