All IMO, not from any discussion with Rick.
If you follow people like Tim o'Reilly or Bruce Sterling you will see a lot of opinion that print is under threat. Amazon's Kindle is making inroads amongst early adopters. While it might seem crazy to believe that print will vanish today, many people might have thought the the same looking at their DVD or CD collection a few years ago.
The problem with print is distribution. Book publishers, like music publishers before them, made their money because they had the capability to distribute music. You don't just have to print the books you have to get stores to carry them and then ship them out to those stores in a cost-effective fashion.
Distribution remains one of the key problems for the small press part of the rpg industry, afaik. Think about it. You are implying sales staff to sell to the stores, warehouse staff to pack and ship. For a small outfit, which might have no full time employees, distribution is a big business problem.
Just because Rick decides to print 1000 copies of HQ does not mean that the stores will ask him to send them copies of it. Consider the importance of Wizard's Attic to the industry and quite what turmoil was caused when it fell apart. They distributed product to the stores for rpg publishers, providing the sales and warehouse staff. Groups like Indie Press Revolution help, but one of Mongoose's big advantages over Moon Designs is distribution.
So I suspect that the move to electronic formats for niche products like RPGs is inevitable. How fast? I suspect it depends on how fast readers that are practical at the game table spread. Out of interest some of us in our group already use netbook style PCs at the gaming table. But small press publishers will have to be early adopters because of economics. And we as consumers will have to accept that.
The question that usually arises then is 'without paper products how do folks find your game'. I think that is predicated a little on the notion that people discover new roleplaying games by browsing in stores. I suspect that is unlikely. Small press games will sell to gamers captured by groups like WoTC who look for 'alternative' role-playing experiences.
If people prefer paper product then print on demand services such as Lulu are another option being used by many publishers i.e. the consumer pays to have thier copy printed. Of course the terms have to be attractive. I can see the use of POD services like Lulu being viable for groups like Moon Designs. But beware, the cost of product will rise for all of us through POD because we no longer benefit from economies of scale. Cheap, printed, small press product may not be a viable option.
Another option may be to only print certain core books, such as the HQ rules for distribution to stores, and then rely on electronic sales for supplements. The idea is to capture the players in the store with the basic rules and key supplements, then draw them in. If you bought HeroQuest 2 in the stores along with The Sartar Book I suspect you might be willing to go the effort to pick up The Coming Storm electronically as a campaign for the above two core books.
Early Access programs are popular in the IT industry. I have two early access program (EAP) books on my computer now. I get notifications when new versions are produced, and I tend to accept the early draft format to get usage of the material or ideas early. Usually you can purchase either PDF + early access, or PDF + Print + early access. The pricing usually makes it low cost to add the print (i.e. its a high price for the PDF).
It works, and I can see it working for rpg products the sameway, but it requires the infrastructure to make it work. You need a website that can handle user accounts, payments, distribution of PDFs etc. That is no small investment for a small company with zero employees. It's much more viable for a site like DriveThru.rpg or IPR to establish the infrastrucure to support EAP than an indvidual publisher.
Moon Designs it not alone here. Many other small press publishers experience exactly the same set of issues, issues generated by not being able to support any full time employees.
As consumer we may well have to adjust our attitudes. RPGs may not be produced in anything like the way that they were in the 80's or 90's. Those days have gone.
Powered by hypermail