Reprinting GURPS 4E books?

[ArchonShiva]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

I'm fairly sure that Kickstarter could get a fair number of new GURPS print books of one sort or another into existence, creating a bit of a buzz around the whole line in the process. And in the worst case, failure wouldn't be overly expensive. Not all kickstarts are Ogres.

As far as I can recall, OGRE was meant to lose money from the start. (no serious business means to lose money, but Steve basically said he was cutting his margins so close that it would be inevitable.) It was also a great pioneering success in many ways.

I'm hopeful, almost confident that a few years down the line, once the monsters list grows a bit, we'll see a ks for a classic three-volume hardcover Powered By GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2.0 collected set - reflow content into a unified whole, incorporate some of the new stuff from Martial Arts, Low-Tech, Thaumatology, Pyramid, Douglas, Peter, TBone, PK and others, and make it work without needing any other books. This should come with a leaflet-sized started booklet using something like Kromm's building blocks character creation from Pyramid. Give this thing a reasonably interesting (but separate) setting book and when the ks is done fulfilling you'd have a serious product to put back on store shelves. Just sayin'.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Ronnke

Shipping is very affordable. I'm in Australia and shipping for one book is about $6:50 more books in the same order doesn't change the shipping much. My last order which was 8 books shipped for just under US$12.00. Express rates are obviously more.

That's very interesting. Sadly, here in Denmark at least, it's not just the shipping charge itself. Anything bought from outside the EU is also subject to 25% VAT, added to both the cost of the item and to the cost of the shipping. And each package is also subject to a further charge of 160 DKK for customs handling, although for a package containing a lot of books that really isn't much.

But still, I'm very much keener on buying something from inside the EU, than from outside of it.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Ronnke

Why does SJG not use Lulu.com as a PoD solution for out of print books?

Reasons of cost ($5 may not seem like a lot to you, but this is an industry where people are already complaining about book costs) and QA (not just the quality of properly produced books, but the rate at which improperly produced books are produced; I gather that they also like to confirm the quality of product before it goes out the door and doesn't like the prospect of letting go of that part of the process) have been cited at various times. But while those concerns may no longer be current for SJ Games (it's been years since I've heard them, and things have changed a lot since then), I think there's another big one: they don't need to. Customers already have permission to print their books themselves or have them printed by a commercial service. It's not clear that inserting themselves into that equation would result in more profits for the publisher. There have certainly been modest experiments concerning PoD books (the first few DF books saw print that way), but the results apparently haven't been such that they demand aggressive follow-up

Having said that, I do wonder if one of those uses of social media Kromm mentions might not be to emphasize their current policy on PoD: if you want a print book, you can go ahead and make your own! Would people who don't like PDFs be more likely to buy SJ Games's books if they knew they could go to run off a physical copy with the PoD service of their choice? It might not help much, but it'd be cheap to do (say, put a prominent "You're free to PoD!" link on all their electronic products on e23 and mention it frequently in conjunction with GURPS-related posts and tweets), and I doubt it would hurt.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

That's very interesting. Sadly, here in Denmark at least, it's not just the shipping charge itself. Anything bought from outside the EU is also subject to 25% VAT, added to both the cost of the item and to the cost of the shipping. And each package is also subject to a further charge of 160 DKK for customs handling, although for a package containing a lot of books that really isn't much.

But still, I'm very much keener on buying something from inside the EU, than from outside of it.

LuLu has an EU 'branch' (Spain I think)

One of the whole points of POD is to circumvent the issues of physically moving books from a single point of origin (that will be long away from some people), or a single printer used for an entire run.

Judging by the speed and cost of delivery I'm guessing Drivethru also use local printers (will check postage data next time I get a delivery).

[ArchonShiva]

Originally Posted by Ronnke

[Lulu prices aren't high]

In terms of classic product distribution, as far as I can understand, costs aren't supposed to exceed 15% of MSRP: distributors buy products for 25% MSRP and sells to stores for 50% MSRP.

If SJG sticks to this model, which as far as I can tell is what they've been doing for thirty years, anything Lulu charges would have to be mutliplied by x6 to x8 to arrive at a final price. Obviously they would not follow this exactly (I'd expect mostly direct sales, for one thing), but it is unlikely to be as simple as you say. As just one example, I'd expect a store carrying your line to demand access to your other print products at a reasonable retailer price, if only by special order.

Besides, if Lulu works for you, just keep using it.

As a rule of thumb, when something seems to have a really obvious solution that people with decades of experience just aren't seeing, they've probably already considered it and found it lacking.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

In terms of classic product distribution, as far as I can understand, costs aren't supposed to exceed 15% of MSRP: distributors buy products for 25% MSRP and sells to stores for 50% MSRP.

If SJG sticks to this model, which as far as I can tell is what they've been doing for thirty years, anything Lulu charges would have to be mutliplied by x6 to x8 to arrive at a final price. Obviously they would not follow this exactly (I'd expect mostly direct sales, for one thing), but it is unlikely to be as simple as you say. As just one example, I'd expect a store carrying your line to demand access to your other print products at a reasonable retailer price, if only by special order.

Besides, if Lulu works for you, just keep using it.

As a rule of thumb, when something seems to have a really obvious solution that people with decades of experience just aren't seeing, they've probably already considered it and found it lacking.

Yes Ultimately LuLu is a business, so no matter how cheap it is you are profit sharing if you use them to distribute your stuff. And while I don't know the true comparison to more traditional bulk printing, given Lulu is marketed as one stop shop for every step between manuscript and shipping to customer, they are looking to profit off every step. A lot of those steps can be done in house by publishers themselves (who have spent time and effort being able to do so)

Given SJGames has a distribution system (e23) that will have not only cost resources to create (and need recouping), but has ongoing costs, I can see why they don't want to give money to third party that will never be an asset to them.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Prime Evil

And what's the process to get them to produce them like that

Out of curiousity, how does the printer know what to put on the spine? The PDFs have front and back covers, but there's that remaining quarter inch of cover wrapped on the spine. Is there an invisible "spine art" page in the PDFs? They just extrapolate from the front page background color and title typeface?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Ultimately LuLu is a business, so no matter how cheap it is you are profit sharing if you use them to distribute your stuff.

Of course, the same thing is true of regular bulk printers SJ Games normally uses. (Or used.) I doubt they owned their own presses and employed their own typesetters. Even if they did, they would have had to buy the presses from someone making them -- as a profit-oriented business. I'm even more sure they didn't own a fleet of trucks to do their own distribution cross-country and around the world; those guys are also a business that wants to make a profit if you use them to distribute your stuff.

It's a sliding scale. Eventually you're going to pay someone, including their profit, to do something you don't have the time, people, expertise, inclination, or volume to do on your own from scratch. The place where you'll draw that line varies by circumstances.

I suspect the high-value part of the business is the design, writing, editing, layout, etc. rather than the physical production. (Though I always wondered if Monarch Services saw Avalon Hill that way, or as just a way to keep the presses busy. Wargames, envelopes, whatever... it's all paper, right?)

[JMason]

On the topic of attracting new players: I've wondered if it isn't the time for "boxed" games to return. Imagine a Munchkin sized box (we know they fit on the shelves of many stores), with a (updated and/or genre-themed) copy of GURPS Lite, a sheet of cardboard minis, dice, map, and an adventure.

I'd think that selling that as a boxed game (and not a RPG book) might not work better in today's market. I'd love to see several of these: GURPS Fantasy Adventure Game, GURPS Space Adventure Game, etc.

Well, here's dreaming.

[ArchonShiva]

GURPS Lite will never be a solid standalone product that sells for money - it covers everything in an incomplete way and works only either as a demo or in the hands of someone familiar with the entire ruleset but wanting to run something less intimidating. Note that GURPS Lite mostly does away with content, not complexity - it removes the pages that nobody ever reads until the situation comes up and the index points them there.

A Powered by GURPS boxed set could work, but it can't be a toolkit, it needs to be a ready-to-use product with a solid setting where it's obvious what the players want to be doing*.

Off the top of my head, ignoring licenses, I'd try for Reign of Steel. It could also be a present-day special ops setting in the style of Rainbow Six, or a Hundred Year War medieval setting. Maybe Tredroy, but definitely not Yrth as a whole. (Yrth may just be the most interesting Fantasy setting in print, but it's not an attractive one) In all cases, I strongly suggest incorporating some rules from the Action line in such a product.

The key element is that it needs to contain the stuff needed to run a certain campaign, and not contain the stuff not needed for it. Also, try to avoid optional rules sprinkled around the text - just decide what's in and what's out.

Also, we're Off-Topic.

*THS is six stars awesome, but it fails precisely where it matters.