| CorpCommander | 14 Jul 2015 7:42 a.m. PST |
I am going to publish a set of rules via WargameVault – seems the easiest option to me right now. Any suggestions or helpful advice from those who have done it on what pitfalls I should avoid? |
 Saber6   | 14 Jul 2015 7:57 a.m. PST |
Caveat: I have never published there My experience as a patron has been good. Watermark PDF at least let you track down a pirate if that is an issue. I understand that their fee is a small (relative) percentage of each sale. |
| Who asked this joker | 14 Jul 2015 8:52 a.m. PST |
The fee, I believe is about 30% of the sale price. I looked into it a while back. As well, you may have to get a business license as WGV does not act as a publisher for you. It really depends on the State/country you live in. Other than that, good luck with your venture! |
| normsmith | 14 Jul 2015 9:56 a.m. PST |
An alternative is wargamedownloads dot com They take 20% good people to deal with. |
| CorpCommander | 14 Jul 2015 10:56 a.m. PST |
Will look at WargameDownloads.com later today. Thanks for the tip. A 20% or 30% cut is fine. There is a line item on your tax form for hobby related income. I don't expect to make enough for it to be a tax code issue. I'll also spend money advertising. Besides TMP, where else would be a good place to put up a banner for Old West related gaming rules? |
onmilitarymatters  | 14 Jul 2015 11:08 a.m. PST |
Russ Lockwood here, happen to be at OMM… For comparison, and let me put an asterisk here for the moment, I believe Amazon's Kindle publishing charged 30% plus a storage/transfer fee per MB (varied by country, and obviously the size of your publication). However, you had to be exclusive with Kindle. If you didn't want to be exclusive to Kindle, and be listed in iTunes, Nook, and a variety of other places, Amazon charged 65% plus the storage/transfer fee per MB. I do not know of the deal used for publications that are read via its Library function. The Asterisk
Amazon just changed their policy within the last couple weeks or so and I am a bit unclear about it or when it applies, but there is some new mechanism to reimburse authors by the word, not publication (plus, presumably the storage/transfer fee per MB). The article I read (I'm thinking it was in the Wall Street Journal) also noted that authors sometimes complained that Amazon sometimes had funny ways of calculating its payments. Somewhere (sorry, I can't remember where), I read that the average self-published writer earns about $100 USD from Kindle. The article also mentioned that a rarified few writers made six figures for novels. |
| doc mcb | 14 Jul 2015 11:15 a.m. PST |
Several of my rules books are at WGV. They are quite helpful getting things ready; thta is, their tech people will help you with things like ink levels that they understand and you don't! And then they do everything and you get a bit of $$$. |
| (Phil Dutre) | 14 Jul 2015 11:30 a.m. PST |
Price is everything. A document priced at 0.99? I might throw it in my cart if it has an attractive title. Typical impulse buy. A document priced at 9.99? You better provide me with enough information before I throw it in my cart. This is an informed purchase. If you have more than one document? Put up your base document for free and any of the add-on stuff for money. |
| Weasel | 14 Jul 2015 1:35 p.m. PST |
30% cut if you publish through the vault exclusively. 25% (If I remember right), if you also publish elsewhere. They do have print on demand options, but I don't have experience with that (yet!) You can update files at will, send emails to customers and do all sorts of cool stuff.
They have a lot of great support. Tax stuff,they just send you a 1099 thingie.
If you do end up making a lot, set a bit aside for tax season. For your first upload, they do a check on it, to make sure it's legit and not a scam.
It's pretty quick and the standards aren't terribly high (that can be good or bad).
Once you are "in the system", you can upload stuff and have it available immediately. Figure out how to use GIMP or Photoshop (if you're rich) so you can edit up covers and whatnot.
Learn what the dimensions of a permitted cover image are, and memorize that :-) Learn a little bit of page layout. I am no master at all, but I've got a decent system together.
I may sound like a bit of a shill, but I love the guys at the Vault. Nothing but great experiences with them.
If you have specific questions, feel free to hit me up at runequester@gmail.com
I'd love to help answer them. |
 etotheipi | 14 Jul 2015 5:10 p.m. PST |
Make sure you explain what you game is about in the description. Up front. Make me want to buy it immediately (or know that it isn't my cup of tea). Then, later on go into the details. Tell me: * what is the genre (in one, well crafted but not complex sentence)
* how many people
* how many figures
* how long it takes to play
* why it is fun The tracking of sales function on WGV is awesome. Get detailed report of sales and correlate them across products. Take your time with the art or get someone to do it for you. First impressions shouldn't matter. But they do. I am a horrible person and lousy businessman. YMMV. |
| Weasel | 14 Jul 2015 6:54 p.m. PST |
I always felt like the categories they use on Board Game Geek would be great on the Vault. Number of players, expected playtime, etc. |
| Russ Lockwood | 14 Jul 2015 7:39 p.m. PST |
Just dropped by the Vault site and pulled this off the FAQ:
Earnings on digital sales
Download Exclusive: 70% of customer price you set
Download Non-Exclusive: 65% of customer price you set Digital sales channels
Download Exclusive: Only resold through Wargame Vault
Download Non-Exclusive: Sold anywhere Earnings on printed sales
Download Exclusive: 70% of print margin*
Download Non-Exclusive: 65% of print margin* * On the sale of your title in printed formats, which we print on demand to customer orders, you receive the percentage on the print margin of that sale; the print margin is the price the customer paid (as determined by you), minus the cost to print that title for the customer's order. Print costs are provided on publisher information pages. For example, if the print cost of your title is $4 USD, and you set the customer price at $12 USD, then with an exclusive publisher account you would earn ($12 – $4 USD = $8 USD) x 70% = $5.60 USD per sale. Printed sales channels
Download Exclusive: Sold anywhere
Download Non-Exclusive: Sold anywhere Enhanced title rotation
Download Exclusive: Yes
Download Non-Exclusive: No Bonus on-site promotion
Download Exclusive: Yes
Download Non-Exclusive: No |
| Dan 055 | 14 Jul 2015 8:27 p.m. PST |
Wargame Vault costs you more (they take a higher percentage) but they also help you more. |
| demiurgex | 21 Jul 2015 8:00 a.m. PST |
Gamecrafter is a good option as well if you want to sell hard copies – they will help you design and will print your cards, tokens, rules, etc. |
| Weasel | 22 Jul 2015 4:53 p.m. PST |
Your choice fo venue should also be a consideration of the amount of exposure and how big a pond you want to swim in. Amazon gets more eyes than the Vault but you'll also disappear much easier there. |
| Visceral Impact Studios | 26 Jul 2015 4:41 p.m. PST |
They do have print on demand options, but I don't have experience with that (yet!) We tried a test run with WV print on demand. It's light years behind Lulu in quality and ease of working with them. WV's partner (WV outsources POD) added blank pages to the publication despite it being set up in printer forms and the color balance was awful. However, for exposure WV is absolutely wonderful. My advice: WV for inexpensive PDFs, especially supplements and less important publications. For print or POD look elsewhere. For POD we love Lulu for quality and reliability. One other note on WV: the infrastructure seems sort of dated and hodgepodge. I find the interface for Lulu (POD) and Wix (web site hosting) far easier to use. WV is sort of kluged together. |
