GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 19: Incantation Magic

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Layout, editing and art costs all go up with page length, yes? Cover price is in some way therefore pegged on length and SJGames has set price points that they aim at. For Pyramid articles the author costs go up too (not true for book royalties though).

At a high level (and with many of the details) Sir Pudding has it right.

The customers will only pay a certain amount per page, regardless of the information conveyed. There's room for nudge on this, but not much.

Silly example: you find a way to get all of the information in both volumes of GURPS Basic Set - all of it, all 500 pages or whatever - in a single 11x17" printed page. This requires a lot of editorial and graphical and textual support, though. That kind of conciseness is hard. But you do it, and you pay for it, behind the scenes. Iteration with graphical artists, with the editors, with the layout folks, and marketing. All of it.

You feel that while the books are currently $80 or so, technically the single page document is worth MORE. It certainly cost more to make. But fine, you say, I'll only charge $50 for it.

Great. Your customers will pay $0.20, because it's "only one sheet of paper."

I've gotten a lot of flak over my noting on Google+ that Dragon Heresy, the SRD5.1 game I'm doing, is going to need two volumes to do "right," because right now I'm pushing a total word count of 450,000. Probably 720 laid-out pages.

"You suck," says the internets.

But the internets have also spoken: they want character creation ideas (lots of them), well-balanced powers, a full bestiary, combat rules and options, low-detail options, high detail options, a fully-worked setting, setting-free options, PDFs, print copies, experience point progressions, advancement by plot point, advancement by treasure, and full adventure support.

And they want all of that for something like ten to twenty cents per page, and will grouse if it's more.

Editing, indexing, and writing are usually paid for by the word (my benchmarks are about 2.5-8 cents per word for editing and writing, and about $10 per 1,000 words for indexing). Layout is still a tetch opaque to me, but seems to run something like $2.50-$5 per page. Art is something like $200-250 per 8.5x11" in full color . . . or more if you're hiring well-known, popular, sought-after artists.

Balanced against the prices customers are willing to pay, and the opportunity costs that if they're spending a lot of staff time (assuming you have staff) doing Project M and not Project D, then Project M can pretty quickly get in a hole out of which it cannot dig itself.

[Kalzazz]

The concept of words/pricing was one of the earliest lessons my dad taught me regarding books

In the days before instantly accessible Amazon reviews, pages/dollar was an easy metric that could be used to help pick books out

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Not, getting the works to fall into multiples of 16/32 pages might be a relic of the past, but the concept of word counts is certainly current still.

Although this does matter if the book is ever given a softcover edition.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

The concept of words/pricing was one of the earliest lessons my dad taught me regarding books

In the days before instantly accessible Amazon reviews, pages/dollar was an easy metric that could be used to help pick books out

I would estimate that for me, as a private citizen trying to bring a single 368-page (215,000-word) game book to market, and assuming a 4 cent per word fee to both my editor and myself that:

1) I would have to print something north of 2,000-2,300 copies of the hardback for the print costs to outweigh the cost of writing, editing, art, layout, and indexing.

2) I would probably have to sell - myself, so I keep all the money - over 1,250 copies of a PDF to simply break even on the project, especially if that writing is paid to someone else.

Technical Grappling has sold about 500 copies. I'm told in OSR circles this is a phenomenal success.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Doug basically said everything I would have and more.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Although this does matter if the book is ever given a softcover edition.

Even this is somewhat suspect. Offset printing that uses signatures has this issue, because they still use sheets. At large print volumes, such as 3,000 copies and higher, the cost per book for a smyth-sewn, hardcover casewrapped book with nice matte-coated paper and a laminated matte cover can be less than $7.50 per book for a 368-page book (note - at this volume, softcover isn't more than $1.50 a book cheaper, though that very much depends on my inputs).

Of course, 3,000 copies at $7.50 per hardback is still $22,500, but also only represents 42% of the costs of the book as I've designed it. At $50 per book, it will take 1,066 sales to cover the basic costs, and after that you're starting to make money.

[Kalzazz]

Yes, that does seem to be the core of the problem. Not enough people want to buy the books, thus books have to be more expensive so the people creating books can actually see the benefit of their labors, which feeds into not enough people wanting to buy them

Though whoa. I sure thought Technical Grappling sold more than that, its a hot discussion topic and had favorable mention from TKD and everything

[Kalzazz]

My understanding is that new Inventory tax laws killed the old model of 'print a slew of books then slowly sell them off over time' making it much harder for companies to take advantage of big print runs?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Take this to another thread if you want to discuss it further. Thank you.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I created an old favorite for the Incantation Magic system on my blog.