Quote from: Howard on March 25, 2023, 02:33:43 PM

Quote from: S'mon on March 25, 2023, 04:07:32 AM
At least *something* needs to be free or PWYW so that people can check out the quality of your work. So at least one free thing, the others can be $1 (if very short, like 8 pages) or $2 (eg 16 pages). IMO that's the case even with a preview.

I personally avoid PWYW products, unless it is from a known to me source. In principal, I agree with the concept. In practice, some part of of my brain just treats it as an infinite price and moves on. Your mental wiring probably works differently however.

Same. I also read several experienced publishers in a similar topic in another board mention that PWYW products are often worse than Free products when it comes to people actually getting them, cuz most people apparently have no qualms about DLing literal free stuff, but feel like they're cheating the publishers if the product is PWYW, but they have no money to give. So the PWYW ends up getting DLed FAR less often than the explicitly "free" stuff.

So I'd recommended a combination of actual Free stuff people can DL guilt-free to get a taste for quality, and actual paid products that are decently priced, including pricey stuff if it's actually worth it. People willing and able will shell out more than 1-2 bucks easy, but people without lots of money are more likely to get free stuff than pay $1 for things, IMO.

I'm also gonna go against what some people here have said and say that cost does not correlate with quality. I've DLed plenty of decent products for free at Drivethru RPG. Stars Without Number and Worlds Without Number have almost entire full books as free versions, for crying out loud! And Kevin Crawford is one of the most renowned names in the OSR.

IMO, if you wanna make a name for yourself, having some free (as opposed to PWYW) version of your stuff out there is crucial, for people to be able to peruse what you have and make a determination whether they wanna shell out actual dollars for the full products.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 25, 2023, 08:23:45 PM

That'd be my advice too, this is what I do with my "dark fantasy" line. One free/PWYW, the rest usually in low prices.

Caveat: I usually get one bad (three stars) review every time I post something free.

Most people see a free product and think it's got to be junk. The same online as offline. It's fucked up someone does that crap to you.

Brick and mortar stores have this cool feature where you can look through the book to see if it's any good before you buy it. If I'm going to buy your product, I need to be able to do something like that. For obvious reasons, digital publishing struggles to reproduce this aspect of in-person shopping.

Let's say you have a 15-page adventure that is broken up into 3 parts, each of which is 5 pages. I would like to be able to look over the first complete 5-page part of your adventure to evaluate the product before I purchase it.

Some people are going to mooch the first section of each adventure and not buy anything. This is like putting out a few free pdfs. However, each of your free pdfs is connected to the rest of your products. They aren't spending money on an unknown. If a customer thinks one of your adventures is very good, they go buy the rest of it.

Quote from: Corolinth on March 26, 2023, 10:46:58 AM
Brick and mortar stores have this cool feature where you can look through the book to see if it's any good before you buy it. If I'm going to buy your product, I need to be able to do something like that. For obvious reasons, digital publishing struggles to reproduce this aspect of in-person shopping.

Let's say you have a 15-page adventure that is broken up into 3 parts, each of which is 5 pages. I would like to be able to look over the first complete 5-page part of your adventure to evaluate the product before I purchase it.

Some people are going to mooch the first section of each adventure and not buy anything. This is like putting out a few free pdfs. However, each of your free pdfs is connected to the rest of your products. They aren't spending money on an unknown. If a customer thinks one of your adventures is very good, they go buy the rest of it.

Drivethru supports this feature. Click on a product of interest. Click on the "full sized preview". I'm not sure if it is creator enabled or OBS enabled, but the random product I picked showed 18 pages of content (TOC plus some of the 1st section). Looking at stuff from a midsized company I support- they have 3-4 page previews on most things. This covers their TOC and 1-2 pages of content.

I'd say a combination of freebies and low cost. For every person that won't bother trying something for free, there's a person that won't pay sight unseen; and vice-versa.

Cover all your bases.

Quote from: Jason Coplen on March 25, 2023, 08:30:22 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 25, 2023, 08:23:45 PM

That'd be my advice too, this is what I do with my "dark fantasy" line. One free/PWYW, the rest usually in low prices.

Caveat: I usually get one bad (three stars) review every time I post something free.

Most people see a free product and think it's got to be junk. The same online as offline. It's fucked up someone does that crap to you.

Oh well, I'm used to it now, and I heard from other publishers that I'm not the only target here. It is baffling and annoying, but it is the cost of doing business, I guess...

Not advice, but when my game is up (and it isn't particularly close) I intend to have two versions of the game; a free one intended to act as an introduction, and a power-user edition which will probably cost $20 or thereabouts.

However, I have a core mechanic which has valid reasons to be tuned two different ways for two different groups of players, so making profit is not the only reason to market the game this way.

I have some marginal experience in the field, for whatever that's worth. Products tend to sell better when you have a free preview and charge a reasonable amount for it. Forget $1-2; between transaction fees and the appearance of cheapness, you won't get much out of it. If you're publishing a module, you should go for at least $5, give a good and functional preview, and perhaps have a reduced free version. If you're going for pay-what-you-want, it's essentially the same deal except you're giving the whole product away for free.

I tend towards generosity myself, and I've given away archives of my work for shockingly low prices, but if you're making a public storefront, you should give the price enough of a bump to appear respectable. This, bizarrely, has a habit of working better than being cheap.

Quote from: saki on March 26, 2023, 04:48:37 PM... if you're making a public storefront, you should give the price enough of a bump to appear respectable. This, bizarrely, has a habit of working better than being cheap.

I was reading a book about psychology last week, and it talked about this very effect. Humans have learnt to use cost as a proxy for value, particularly for something like this, where you can't really evaluate its usefulness until you've read it. So a free product, or one for a nominal amount, is subconsciously treated as worthless, and not even worth the time to read.

I like the approach of Stars Without Number, where you can get the rules for free, but there's a fairly hefty price for a version with extra sections. That way, you can check out the free version, but you "know" it must be worth doing because of the cost of the full version.

Quote from: Krazz on March 26, 2023, 05:50:16 PM

Quote from: saki on March 26, 2023, 04:48:37 PM... if you're making a public storefront, you should give the price enough of a bump to appear respectable. This, bizarrely, has a habit of working better than being cheap.

I was reading a book about psychology last week, and it talked about this very effect. Humans have learnt to use cost as a proxy for value, particularly for something like this, where you can't really evaluate its usefulness until you've read it. So a free product, or one for a nominal amount, is subconsciously treated as worthless, and not even worth the time to read.

I like the approach of Stars Without Number, where you can get the rules for free, but there's a fairly hefty price for a version with extra sections. That way, you can check out the free version, but you "know" it must be worth doing because of the cost of the full version.

Yeah, precisely. Also, I would have personally provided more of my products as pay-what-you-want if the services I used allowed for it, but it's pretty easy for people to just grab what they want and leave and never think about it when you do that. Chances are, if someone can have the product, they won't pay a price for it after the fact unless they have a powerful personal or ethical motive. That's something to be aware of - you're giving up a good chunk of your sales that way. So I suppose if you wanted to make a more reliable business out of it, you should be publishing somewhat more limited materials for free, and have an improved version for sale. For a module, perhaps a paid version might contain elaborate and focused GM-facing notes that complement the material, highlight important parts, provide advice on integrating the module into other materials like an ongoing campaign, provide useful but ancillary tools related to the content, and contain the artwork you paid good money for.