Dale McCoy of Jon Brazer Enterprises is now a regular columnist over at the Robot Viking. In his first installment of the Brazer Bulletin he discusses what the GAMA Trade Show is really like. He went last year and shares his experiences of what it is like to go.
Future post to the column will discuss Third Party Pathfinder and Traveller Products, Pathfinder and Traveller News, and anything else going on in the industry. Be sure to read it every Wednesday.
Yesterday, JBE hit an important milestone. We received 2 checks in the mail for PDF and print book sales. The total of those two checks is more than I receive in take-home pay per paycheck from my day job. That is highly significant since my job is in the category that Matt Sprange (of Mongoose Publishing) describes in “I am Mongoose and So Can You” as “will likely require to take a pay cut working full time in the RPG industry.” Mind you, the the checks I received was more than my net pay and not by gross pay and I get 2 checks per month, not just 1 and it didn’t include expenses like print runs or artwork, but it was an important milestone nonetheless.
It means that JBE is a success. No matter how you slice it, we are holding our own. It begs the question, “If I can do this is with an average of 10-15 hours per week, what can I do with 40 hours every week?” Whether I’d love to find out the answer to that question or not right now, I will not be in the near future. There are a good number of reasons why I am not testing those waters just yet. Many of those reasons involve health insurance, the security of the day job and so on. But we have been looking at the possibility of making it a reality. Running JBE as a full time job is a dream. One that looks to be more a reality with each week and month. While the economy may not allow for it to happen this year, we are working towards it. We believe it can happen.
In the words of the great J. Michael Straczynski, “Faith Manages!”
I had not realized it until yesterday, but I charging to much to ship internationally. I overestimated the weight. My bad. So here are the new rates:
International Economy (Canada Only)
Qty 1-2 US$6.00
Qty 3-4 US $10.00
International Standard (Worldwide)
Qty 1-2 US$11.00
Qty 3-4 US$13.00
International Express (Worldwide)
Qty 1-5 US$29.00
I apologize for my previously high rates.
This morning on my way to work, I stopped at my local Wawa for breakfast (bad for the waist line, but still good) and there was a guy from the local newspaper there handing out free copies of their paper. I didn’t take one and as far as I could tell no one else did either. It amazed me that they were still trying to keep that end of the market alive. Why weren’t they offering some kind of “try our online subscription free for 30 days” or something like that. This might sound harsh, but when the nation’s largest newspaper (the New York Times) could spend HALF as much money by buying every single one of their subscribers a Kindle and letting them read it there instead of printing the actual paper, your industry needs to find a different business model, and fast.
My next thought though was: how does this apply to RPGs? The print side of the market has been shrinking for years while the electronic side as really been the only growing part. While the total market for electronic books is miniscule compared to the print market, those numbers will not be that way forever. But when Amazon sales of Dan Brown’s book The Lost Symbol are selling better on the Kindle than in hardcopy, the rest of the market cannot be far behind. Keep your mind open for the whole of the RPG market to be on those devices in less than 5 years.
What else is changing? Sci-fi-like battlefields are finally here. If you have not seen this video yet, check it out. Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough for D&D from Surfacescapes on Vimeo. Throw a network connection on there, and you’re set to game with the rest of the world.
But back to my newspaper musings, I see some RPG companies getting it and some not. Some companies post the whole of their system up on a wiki and others that do not place bookmarks in their PDFs. Now we’ve got the Nook from Barns and Nobles that is full color. Printing full color costs a ton; displaying full color images on the device costs the same as black and white. Why print when you can do that? Companies need to be ready for the future, because the future is here. As Michael Stackpole put it, “The war between digital and print is over. Digital won, print just don’t know it yet.”
How will you be reading your RPG material in five years? Have you ever tried reading a book from your phone or an eReader device?
Well, I’ve had a busy week. And I rocked it. I finished up a business class I was taking. My group had to give our presentation a week early because we weren’t going to be present for the last class (more on that in a moment). We Michael Phelpsed that presentation! Final grade for the class: 94%. Freakin awesome!
I got involved in a flamewar on the internet. Final result: I helped change a few hearts and minds and I hope the place will be much less flamey in the future. Plenty of good people I was having a hearted discussion with, but we ended off on a positive note. Oddly for the internet, I know, but it does happen.
I made a public apology to Wizards of the Coast elsewhere in the internet. The apology was about comments I made publickly on the run up to D&D 4E. Plenty of people gave me serious props for being man enough to apologize. Plenty of others were interested in hearing more about my own company and our Traveller products.
Tomorrow I leave for vacation. I’ll be going to North Carolina with my family. I can’t wait to spend the week with my daughter and my sister’s kids. They have alot of fun playing together. Plus I get to “corrupt” them with kid fractured fairy tales like Cinderella and the Stinky Feet. When I get free time, I’ll be writing more material. But if I get nothing written (definitely a possibility), its not a big deal. I’ve budgetted that in just in case.
Later today, I’ll be releasing Paskrin to Subscribers. This is #4 of the initial five Creatures of Distant Worlds series. These buggers are the bane of engineers and mechanics everywhere. They bite, chew and claw their way into a special place in any players heart devoted to hatred. Every have an engine block have the pistons eaten? That’s what these guys do. Watch out players.
Lastly, I’m almost moved out of my apartment. Just a few more things and cleaning to go. But I am still busy as all heck. Write again later.
