GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions

[Kromm]

I prefer to avoid speculation and taking sides in grumbling contests, but I can offer facts that I can confirm as an insider or that any of you could confirm with a little homework:

Originally Posted by Refplace

They [other companies] dont pay royalties to freelance authors.

This is a big one!

SJ Games doesn't always offer royalties these days, but they do sometimes. Any future work that reuses content from earlier works created under royalties contracts (as were all works up until the mid-2010s) also pays royalties to the creator of the reused material. Such reuse is nigh-universal – if you're doing homework, look for "Additional Material" credits.

Anyway, royalties are paid on each copy sold. "One PDF" and "one physical book" are two copies under the law in the jurisdiction that governs SJ Games' contracts, and the company cannot get around that through discounted bundling. So, if the company owes x% and were to keep the price of the PDF + print the same as that of print alone, they'd be paying 2x%. Great for the writer, but less than great for SJ Games, who'd end up losing money on the deal.

Many other publishers do not offer royalties and/or reuse fees. Even those that do aren't all incorporated in the same U.S. state, and these sorts of contracts are governed by state laws. So, you need to compare apples to apples.

Originally Posted by Refplace

They dont sell through their own store so each sale on another store is not as much a loss. Or simply trying to keep both internal and external sales as consistent pricing as possible.

Sort of.

Many online stores require those who want to sell products through them not to undercut them. If you do business with an online store that can't or won't sell discounted bundles, then you can't sell such bundles, either, because the discount would undercut them. In most cases, there are workarounds, but they involve the online shop in question taking a bigger cut . . . which leads us back to the previous situation.

Quite a few smaller companies aren't big enough to have, say, Amazon storefronts. SJ Games is, mostly thanks to Munchkin. And yeah, Amazon is one of the shops that includes no-undercutting clauses in the fine print of some storefront deals. There are other possible deals with them and other possible online shops; so, you have to compare apples to apples once again.

Originally Posted by Refplace

less money spent on editing

SJ Games spends a lot of money here, because its editorial staff are required to do deep first-draft reviews, actual i-dotting and t-crossing editing, indexing, proofreading, and PDF reviews. Many competing companies don't do all this stuff. I can tell you for sure that quite a few edit the copy, check the PDF, and call it a day. Once editorial costs get high enough, you need to recover them somehow, so there's an incentive not to offer discounted bundles.

Originally Posted by Refplace

Or higher volume sales, that makes up for a lot.

Yes. GURPS isn't everyone's cup of tea for many reasons that are beside the point in this sub-thread which is already beside the point. Most of its supplements don't sell all that many copies. "Giving away" free copies, even to people who've already bought copies, is less attractive in that context.

Originally Posted by Refplace

Steve Jackson Games has a long history of supporting FLGS and the boardgame and dice game markets help make that a more profitable investment to encourage and support.

This is 100% true. Steve, personally, refuses to undercut brick-and-mortar games shops. His reasons have nothing to do with laws, contracts, or any other externally imposed rules; it's a personal code of honor, one that I support. Discounted bundles are intensely bad for brick-and-mortar shops, to the point where their owners and the distributors who do business with them take every opportunity to say so. Steve has made a point of listening to these people.

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In brief, while there are surely exceptions on one or two of these points: Small and usually (but not always) "indie" publishers aren't paying royalties, aren't paying reuse fees, aren't paying a fairly large editorial staff for deluxe editing, aren't using large online storefronts, aren't selling in brick-and-mortar shops, and are selling single-genre (and often single-setting) games that have a clearer market than "Anything You Want. Any World You Can Imagine." Most aren't based in Texas and operating under Texas law. None are owned by Steve Jackson and share his values. Collectively, this makes them oranges to SJ Games' apples.

I do realize that from the customer's point of view, I just said, "Because reasons." Even if SJ Games were to publish all the reasons in detail and include sample contracts, copies of their distribution deals, extracts from lawbooks, and so on, they couldn't expect the average customer to read that or care. All the customer cares about is the price. And no, I have no clever comeback to that . . . it's true, and it's one of the challenges of the time we live in.

(It's certainly the case that if SJ Games decided tomorrow that GURPS and I weren't worth the trouble and said, "Sean, you and GURPS are done here. We'll keep ownership of everything published up to now, but go ahead and publish new stuff for the brand from this point forward. Godspeed!", I'd have just me to pay, I'd write what people asked for via comments or polls on a blog, I could write and edit to at least decent standards in one pass, I'd probably sell PDFs exclusively online through shops that let customers pay for POD if they like, and it'd all be under Canadian law. Then you could compare more justifiably. But that ain't ever gonna happen.)