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Old 12-10-2015, 06:33 AM   #731
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Default Re: Report To The Stakeholders

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Originally Posted by Owen Smith View Post
EDIT: maybe the problem is Discworld is too British as a novel series. How popular are the novels in the US, I have no feel for it.
I dunno. I do remember there were a number of Americans on the old alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup. My recollection is maybe not as many as non-British Europeans, but they were represented.

(Non-British Europeans, there's a thought. I'd expect sales of GURPS Discworld in the Netherlands to be pretty good.)

There's certainly enough US/Canadian fans to justify the existence of the North American Discworld Convention, bi-annually since 2009. And I hear a fair amount of American accents at the UK DiscCon as well.

I believe Sir Terry said somewhere that US sales were very respectable, once his American publishers stopped burying the books in the garden and started actually trying to get them into bookshops.

I'm also reminded of the Douglas Adams quote about the American success of HHGG: "One is told at every level of the entertainment industry that the American audience does not like or understand English humour. We are told that at every level except that of the audience who, as far as I can see, love it." And Hitchhikers always struck me as a lot more inherently British than Discworld.
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Old 12-12-2015, 03:05 AM   #732
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This part of the thread bothers me. GURPS is still viable and a lot of high quality material is published rather regurly.
Hard copy is less then it used to be, but we have a wide variety of PDFs and I feel the line has expanded.
Well, we have a lot of evidence that what SJG thinks they can do with GURPS is shrinking:
- They did not renew the GURPS Traveller license
- They can't afford to print most books or keep them in print in an age where the size and lavishness of printed RPG books is increasing
- They don't think they could launch GURPS Discworld or GURPS Mars Attacks today and make a profit.

We have comments from staff members claiming that sales of RPG products are down across the industry, and Google Trends data which is consistent with that claim.

And we have a number of comments by staff members that they will preside over this shrinkage and try to reverse it, but if it continues eventually they will have to stop publishing new material. That is irrelevant for players (who can just buy the books used or as PDFs or borrow the GM's copy) but would be too bad for the clever people who write for SJG.
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Old 12-12-2015, 02:06 PM   #733
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...
- They did not renew the GURPS Traveller license
...
The GURPS Traveller Line Editor has suffered from poor health recently; that may be a contributing factor in this specific case.
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Old 12-12-2015, 03:16 PM   #734
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I know many of you are rabid GURPS fans, but almost the entirety of the conversation for the last month has been nothing but how GURPS is "dying"; nearly eight full pages of forum. You'd think it was all SJG made. In reality, it's a niche of a niche of a niche.

They have said they will continue to support the game, they have been supporting the game, so I don't think the sky is falling just yet.
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Old 12-12-2015, 03:44 PM   #735
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The GURPS Traveller Line Editor has suffered from poor health recently; that may be a contributing factor in this specific case.
Indeed, I can imagine scenarios where that decision had nothing to do with GURPS or SJG. But the shrinking and closing-down of GURPS Traveller is still suggestive.
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Old 12-12-2015, 09:04 PM   #736
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Good lord. I wrote the first post in this thread 10 years ago. 10 years older and no wiser.
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Old 12-13-2015, 03:34 AM   #737
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Could we send Discworld and Mars Attacks to print right now? Absolutely. Our cash flow can handle the printing/shipping costs, and proceeding with those books today would in no way damage our operations.

Sending those books to print today -- without a sales and marketing plan in place that results in higher than (currently) expected sales -- would cause long term damage to GURPS. You're only as good as your latest release, and putting these two out there today would result in lower than needed sales and impact the next GURPS title released through distribution channels.

I believe many here are thinking short-term when it comes to these two titles. We must explore all of the options: increased marketing efforts in an attempt to grow monthly GURPS sales, carefully consider crowdfunding for one or both of the books, raise distributor and retailer awareness of the titles' strength.

As a company, we aren't ones to rush. When it comes to actions that could have far-reaching effects on GURPS -- the only game the company has actively supported (new expansions every single year!) for close to three decades -- we're going to be even more cautious and thorough than usual.
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Old 12-13-2015, 07:50 AM   #738
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Default Re: Report To The Stakeholders

Why isn't there a sales and marketing plan that results in higher sales in place for those books? The books can hardly have come as a surprise to the company, the writing and playtesting etc. takes time. Did the scene shift dramatically some time during that process?
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Old 12-13-2015, 08:16 AM   #739
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Why isn't there a sales and marketing plan that results in higher sales in place for those books? The books can hardly have come as a surprise to the company, the writing and playtesting etc. takes time. Did the scene shift dramatically some time during that process?
We have limited resources and focus the majority of our energies on the most important priorities. Our marketing staff is stretched thin and has been concentrating on the projects that have the highest potential return.
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Old 12-13-2015, 10:32 AM   #740
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Which matches what I said earlier. Large chunks of the company are focussed on Munchkin and similar products, and GURPS isn't getting a fair share of their time. So it's hardly a surprise GURPS is struggling to be successful.
GURPS is getting a substantial amount of the company's time.

Consider that we In Nomine fans were promised status updates "every few months" - seventy-one months ago, and we've heard nothing official since then. In contrast, GURPS has a monthly magazine (which Munchkin does not) and other monthly new releases. I'd love it if In Nomine was "struggling" the way GURPS is.
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