Hop in the TARDIS and take yourself back to the early part of 2005.

Kevin Siembieda is claiming in press releases that Palladiumbooks is doing better than ever.  They're rolling in the cash and have been enjoying their best sales ever.  BTS2 is, of course, a wild, smash hit (if only the man could find the time to write those two supplement books promised), and things couldn't be better.

Amidst all this, a bold announcement is made for an updated Rifts corebook!  This will be a brand new book with 95% new content!  It will be a new edition but not a second edition (huh?).  The Palladium gang is going to pull out all the stops and have the book ready for GenCon.

Some other things were said about the book.  First off, the book would have an advertisement for the Nokia Rifts videogame.  There would also be a Gold edition with exclusive art.  When the Chi-Town cityscape painting was revealed, it was said that piece of art would be exclusive to the Gold edition.  There were also statements made which implied that the Gold edition would not have the advertisement in it.

Now, in any publishing business that I'm familiar with, advertising pays for the print run.  I suppose that Palladiumbooks may have been contractually obligated to do a new printing of Rifts to coincide with the videogame as a sort of tie in promotion.  But, surely the highly business and licensing savvy Kevin Siembieda wouldn't have agreed to that without Nokia footing the bill.  So, I believe it's safe to say that Nokia paid some of the price of the Rifts Ultimate Edition print run.

Now, there's also the pre-orders to account for.  I don't recall the pre-orders on the regular edition, but the Gold edition had over 1,000 pre-orders according to what Palladiumbooks representatives have announced (which is certainly in question, but let's go with it for now).  That's 1,000 orders at $70 a pop before the book ever went to the printer.  $70,000.

In his latest Murmur, Kevin Siembieda says that $3,000 is enough to do a new printing of a small to medium sized book.  From the people I've spoken with, Rifts Ultimate Gold would have cost roughly the same amount or less to print as the regular edition.  Also, Palladiumbooks sold copies of the Gold edition to retailers for the same price as the regular edition.  So, at the very least,  it's safe to say that pre-orders of Rifts Ultimate Gold also covered the printing costs of not only the Gold version but the Unlimited version too.

Of course, then there's the effort of producing the book itself, which I've already characterized elsewhere as the work of a disinterested student trying to fake a term paper.  95% new material actually meant 95% new text that wasn't in the old version of the book which has now been cut and pasted from the manuscripts of other existing Rifts sourcebooks.  I know I'm overusing the phrase "I think it's safe to say..."  but I really do think it's safe to say that the effort required to put this book together was fairly low to non-existent compared to just about anything else the company publishes.

What are we left with?  It seems to me that between the advertising and the overwhelming pre-orders, Rifts Ultimate was fully paid for before a single copy was printed.  While the book apparrently hasn't sold as well as expected (Palladium reps often said they projected to do a new printing in December of 2005, and only now after the summer of 2006 are the supplies of the title running low enough to consider a reprint), it must have been near pure profit for the company.

Yet, as 2006 opened, Kevin Siembieda changes his tune to say that the company has been devastated and is going out of business.

Things that make you go, Hmmmmmm.

Does this account for the Crisis of Treachery that so many speak of?

Do any of these publishers know what it takes to run a profitable business?

Quote from: fonkaygarryDo any of these publishers know what it takes to run a profitable business?

Well, seems gamers are about as good as running businesses as programmers. Which is why the combination of the two results in getting bought by EA...