PDF publishing of card/board games

It's not that RPGNow is not a good fit for PDF board games and card games, it's that board and card games don't quite leverage the PDF model.

Some people buy PDFs so that they can just have an RPG book _ONLY_ in electronic form. Now that's not useful for a board or card game unless it's computerized -- if it's the print and cut out variety then you have to, by definition, print and cut it out.

Next, comes the cost. If it's a full color game then it can take a lot of an expensive color ink cartridge to print out the game. And people may have to go buy card stock or photo paper or business cards (which they don't have around the house) just to have a copy of your game. Then it won't come with packaging. This makes for a mighty barrier to entry.

Now, keep in mind, that most PDF RPG products probably top out on sales at a 100 units, with 500-1000 units only for PDFs from "known" folks with high production values on their PDFs. So, even if you used RPGNOW to sell and RPG you might not expect to sell more than about 100 units, so you shouldn't be surprised that your game sells even less if it has these kinds of barriers to entry.

Realize that for $10-15 people can go buy a printed, cut, and packaged Cheapass Game. Why do they want yours for any substantive cost when they have to do all the work themselves?

Honestly, I may be wrong, but I think PDF board game developers have it all wrong. They should sell their game for dirt cheap or give it away for free. Then they should have an advertisement in the PDF to buy a hard copy of the game.

I imagine if people like the looks of your game they'll have you cut and print it for them and package it instead of doing it themselves. If they don't like the looks of it, then they aren't out any cash (or a very minimal quantity of cash).

Another way to push card and board game sales: advertise in the product description exactly how many pages of color vs. black/white print you'll need to make the game.

Hope that provides some useful insight.

I am planning on producing war games on PDF, and I am going primarily PDF for one simple reason: I don't have the funds to do an initial run of 1000 copies of a game.

So, I am producing the game with home printing in mind. The counters are high contrast. One side black on light colors, the other white on dark colors. The board is 8.5x11, and prints in black and white with good contrast. The rule book is designed so the color cover is not mandtory.

I also plan to offer print, if you don't mind paying twice as much for it. I'm just going to be printing very small runs and getting making very little profit from it.

If the first few games sell 1000 copies, maybe I'll try a real print run. Anyway, that's why I am going the PDF route.

You may want to look into www.wargamedownloads.com and www.key20.com.

Me too, I intend to go the PDF way. I currently working on a war game which should contains a lot of material. You won't get bored so easily. I intend to sell it for either 8$ or 10$ US. I expect to receive around 5$ to 8$ per copy sold if I remove the distributor fees and some fees for artwork. If I sell over 100 copies, I think my goal will be accomplished.

Maybe after a few publication, I will be able to know how much copies I need to sell to make sure it worth investing the time it required. Anyways, this subject has been discussed intensively before in the thread below. I think it was my first thread on this forum. Since most people know the story already, well I won't add anymore argument.

http://www.bgdf.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2295

When the game is available, I will give some feedback on the sales. And if there are already people on this forum who are currently publishing by PDF, it would be nice if you could give some feed back like "I sold X copies at price Y$ in Z time"

You should look up Greg Stolze's "ransom" model of publishing. That may work for PDF publishers, at least for those with a reputation.

I honestly think that PDF publishers of board games are likely to want to try giving away their product for free or selling it for cheap, and then trying to make money on hard copy printout of the game. I think people are willing to risk, say, $1.00 on a PDF board game and then would be willing to pay to receive a hard copy of the game they really like the looks of. You will probably find that you either aren't losing a whole lot of money with this route or that you are making a little extra.

Lee