All my stuff is self-published, has amatuerish layout and uses public domain art, is available for free in pdf, and not-really-promoted anywhere, and yet it still sells in quantities that astonish me.

YMMV

Quote from: Matt;806114For instance, there's a really cool WWI fighter pilot game by a guy I see on this forum now and then, Clash something-or-other, that is a heap of fun. It looks a little amateurish but that's part of the charm as you can tell the producer loves the product. I assume it's small press or self-published.

I would be that clash-something-or-other, and thanks! Very glad you enjoyed it! It is Small Press - the difference between Small Press and Self-Published being in my mind putting out multiple games over a period of time.

My games are not OSR, though they are entirely traditional in design. My games at best sell in the low thousands, more usually in the hundreds of copies. I have been doing this since 2002, and have a lot of games out there, but I do not make any money at all off them, at all. The money gets plowed back into research materials and a bit of advertising, programs for making them, and paying people who write for me. I do it because I love designing games, that's all.

-clash

I think there is an element that won't give time of day for the lower budget stuff, be it because there is no or crap art, or it's small, self contained and that's your lot. That is the main thing I think about self published stuff - there's mountains of it, and beyond the core rules there's usually very little follow up.

Give the core rules (or a lite version) away for free but have a series of adventures come out, sourcebooks, maps etc, and people might be more inclined to take a look.

Quote from: APN;806161I think there is an element that won't give time of day for the lower budget stuff, be it because there is no or crap art, or it's small, self contained and that's your lot. That is the main thing I think about self published stuff - there's mountains of it, and beyond the core rules there's usually very little follow up.

That's funny because I find my prejudice in the opposite direction... being turned off by huge phonebooks dense with full-color art and graphic flourishes and assuming there will be a dozen more just like it as the system bloats out for maximum cash intake. Too many pretty pages and I become suspicious that it's there to cover up empty words.
Instead I can take those dimes and buy a buttload of stuff by different authors with widely varying approaches and ideas I can pull from.

It's too bad he couldn't make the money he wanted off it, but I don't know of any "OSR forums".  This place is the closest I can think of.  There are some TSR D&D forums, that have always been pretty generous about putting out space for OSR advertising, but most OSR space is on blogs or G+.  I don't ever recall any of his games being trashed on the TSR D&D sites.

If he was trying to advertise on ENworld or BP, maybe?  I don't pay attention to those.

Wait, didn't he set all his products to "Pay What You Want" this summer? I'm not sure that's the best way to make money off your products.

I've published a short OSR module as PWYW on RPGNow. 124 downloads, 7 paid (with a suggested price of 50 cents), netting me a total of $2.20 after RPGNow's cut.

(As it was a trial run for a much longer module I've been working on, I'm not really disappointed, but I was hoping to be able to get enough to buy some stock art and thus make about $10.)

But I do think like everything else, having a well known brand or being a well known author probably helps more than anything.

Quote from: JeremyR;806175I've published a short OSR module as PWYW on RPGNow. 124 downloads, 7 paid (with a suggested price of 50 cents), netting me a total of $2.20 after RPGNow's cut.

I'm always a bit dismayed when putting in a couplefew bucks on a PWYW and being told my payment was 'above average'... like, I'm cheap but I'm not THAT cheap.

There's just a whole lot of negative people out there with nothing to do with their free time but "contribute" their negativity.

I don't think "the OSR" (whatever that means today) is hostile to self-publishers.  I think hackles can rise when somebody seems to be spam-posting their stuff to a hundred overlapping communities, which may be the sort of reaction J encountered when marketing his games.

I read, reviewed, and enjoyed 'Hulks & Horrors'.  I was looking forward to more in that line.  Arcana Rising looks interesting, and Heaven's Shadow seems like something that the mini-six crowd would be all over.  I don't know what the issue was - too many games instead of pushing a line for one?  No idea.

It looks like J may have expected to make enough money in writing games to replace a real job.  If that was the case, that was a bad choice.  Even in Finland, apparently.

Is the online RPG environment a toxic hellhole?  Yeah, sure.  But that's a reason to disengage from the hellhole parts, not to give up a hobby you love.

I don't know why he was 'taking a loss' each month.  That seems the wrong way to go about it.  But I wish him the best and hope he gets things straight and rediscovers his love of rpg-writing.

Quote from: VectorSigma;806182It looks like J may have expected to make enough money in writing games to replace a real job.  If that was the case, that was a bad choice.

This is the bare truth. If you're asking money for your self-published stuff, you might make beer money on it if your stuff is moderately popular.

Which is fine, I think. You just need to not have dolla-signs dancing in your head about the endeavor. Set your sights low enough and you'll be pleasantly surprised when the money lands in your Paypal account each month.

The phrase "core rules" shows how fooled the consumer has become. Let's sell a game but hold back a bunch of add-ons we can sell later rather than give you all you need in the box/book to play in perpetuity.

Remember when there was just "the rules," none of this "core book" nonsense?

If people pulled his advertisements from forums where other advertisements are allowed, that's just plain shitty.

Dunno about "hostile to self-publishers" or kickstarter people.  Maybe "hostile to those who aren't proven and popular stars like Sine Nomine, maybe, but I don't travel much to OSR sites or circles, so couldn't say.

Yeah, the internet is becoming a wasteland of "kill the enemy and erase their existence from memory" on every single topic there is.  Politically, J was always kinda on the "Slaying Orcs is Colonialism", "Dark Side of the Hobby" side of things, so he takes his isms with him wherever he goes, if you get my meaning.

Still, I thought his stuff was cool, sucks that he couldn't live on it, but hardly anyone can, really.  Hopefully when he starts making fat stacks as a programmer he can afford to revisit his passion for game design.

If people were deleting his posts that's pretty fucked up. The idea that you can make a living nowadays as an RPG self-publisher. Not to be rude but, that is silly. I'm curious if perhaps this position he has come to (at least partially), has to do with the VAT tax non-sense the European Union has put into motion.

Quote from: misterguignol;806185This is the bare truth. If you're asking money for your self-published stuff, you might make beer money on it if your stuff is moderately popular.

Which is fine, I think. You just need to not have dolla-signs dancing in your head about the endeavor. Set your sights low enough and you'll be pleasantly surprised when the money lands in your Paypal account each month.

this is truth.  I recall a spat he and I got into a while back over one of his KS projects that wasn't even written yet.  His position was that he needed money to eat.  My position was that creating a KS to raise funds to eat and not use those funds to create the project was asking for disaster

when I get my monthly deposit from DTRPG, I don't use any for my regular expenses.  I use it as, "here's my freelancer funds I can spend this month" ;-)

Quote from: RPGPundit;806107John Berry, of Bedroom Wall Press (producer of Hulks and Horrors) has recently announced his retirement from RPG writing (also, he's in Finland. What is it with non-finnish-sounding RPG writing guys living in Finland??).

Among the reasons he cited for Quitting Forever was that "the OSR community had become increasingly hostile to self- and public-funded works like mine".


Do you think that's true? Is the success of the OSR and the rise in fancy more professional OSR products actually meaning that the very small-press guy just isn't wanted anymore?

No I would not say in general the OSR is hostile to self publishers. I would say that you need to be careful about the promotion of kickstarters due to the several spectacular well known failures. And that if you want to make a living off it, you need to do what James Raggi and Dan Proctor do and put the legwork in as far as self promotion, and distribution. Dan and James have differing approaches it is useful to compare and contrast them to develop your own style.

But nothing is going to save you if what you are pushing is ultimately a niche  or specialty interest.

I am amazed that John Berry was trying to make a living off of his games. While there is nothing wrong with his stuff, he himself rarely popped up on my radar which is not true of several other I know of trying to make a full time income.

While I am not particularly special in regards to what is popular. I do follow the general news sites and blogs and those who make a major push appear regularly in the news.