Sunday, April 19, 2009

Green Devil Face: Another Update!

GDF#1 (FFV repackaged) is complete and I have the first copy in my hands.

All of the text for GDF#2 is formatted and ready, but several of the rooms are so detailed as to what's in them and exactly where that they really need maps/graphics, so I'll do that tomorrow morning/afternoon (or however long it takes), and then it's ready to go.

These zines will be literally hand-assembled, and I'm excited about the upcoming roll-out. I've done a preliminary guesstimate of how much I'll be charging, and the 28 page (plus cover) zine comes out to 2,46€ (about $3.20), including worldwide postage. First thing in the morning I'll be off to the office supply store to get exact cost figures but I don't imagine the final cost being very far off from that.

Two problems I'm worried about:

At these prices, they can't be sold anywhere else, as there's no markup. I'd like to approach a couple of vendors, but if I'm selling them at just a hair over cost (25 cents a copy "profit," basically a buffer against a sudden spike in envelope prices or something), there's no profit to be had for them. If I put the final "retail" price a couple euros up to allow this, then I'll be profiting off of others' work and I want this to be a growing community project. But I think it's a weakness to just have this available here (and in several pdf outlets, once I get that figured out), the same as I think Fight On! and Knockspell are very limited if they are just available on Lulu.

My non-GDF projects will indeed include a proper margin to allow me to approach vendors. With GDF being established as a baseline "This is what prices look like when the idea is not to make money," I just have a feeling that trying to put a euro in my pocket for a sale of other projects is going to look bad somehow, especially when I have original art costs (GDF right now just has public domain art, although for future issues I hope to have volunteer art submissions) to factor in as well.

(later edit: And if I do make a "wholesale rate" so vendors can re-sell it, I can't undercut them with my direct sales... so the "retail price" necessary to try to distribute it a little wider means direct sales will give all that markup to me... and at that point I'll feel like I'm overcharging. agh, what to do what to do...)

Ah well. The second problem will play out as it will, as I will not try to profit off of Green Devil Face, and I will indeed try to earn pocket change off of other projects I put out. But the first problem is something I really am concerned about, because it's not about appearances or money, but about availability and exposure beyond those already looking for it.

5 comments:

  1. As a contributor, I would not feel cheated if you made a profit, but that profit was carefully spent on furthering the OSR in some way, or 100% of it was put back into GDF.

    But then, I'm an evil capitalist. ;)

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  2. I just thought of a legit reason for GDF "profits": Paying for mailing contributor and promotional copies. :P

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  3. Yeah, we would appreciate it. ;)

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  4. You are so open, upfront and careful about it I wouldn't worry about it at all.

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  5. GDF #2 is done, but I had to write a couple of pages tonight to fill it out (the page count needs to be a multiple of 4), so it got passed to the girlfriend for proofreading. That should be done in the morning and then I'll announce LAUNCH!

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