Runester

I’m just testing out a new application I purchased, named MacJournal. It allows me to write my journal entries on my mac and then publish them to my blog with a push of a button.

Let’s see how good they look, embedded graphics and all.

Today was a quiet day, and not too much happened. Certainly nothing worth reporting here. I did get to see another photo album worth of pictures of my Brother, Sister-in-law, and Nephew. That was great! I’ll be able to see all of them in person when Lisa and I visit Michigan in a couple of weeks.

In other news, I’ve added a couple of new podcasts to my list, including several from Joseph Selby. Remember him from that time I met him over lunch down in Boston? Well, he’s started a podcast network, Game Locus,  and five (5) different podcasts! The one that I’ve listened to and enjoyed the most is SemantiCast – a gaming podcast, of course. Though Impolitic, a podcast on all things non-gaming, also sounds interesting once it gets going. So, congratulations, Joe!

Finally, it’s that time of year, again … for JiffyCon! It’s coming up this Saturday in Greenfield, MA. I’m already registered and have arrangements to drive up with Tresi who’ll be running a game of Paranoia. The two times I’ve attended JiffyCon I’ve had a blast, and expect no less this time. Though it may feel different, being hosted in a UU Church! I’ll try to snap some photo’s and write up the experience, if nothing else.

So, that’s not bad for a Monday, huh?

First, let’s be honest here. I’m a technologist. I’m not a marketer and I’ve never (successfully) started a business with, you know, actual customers. But, that’s why I’m so fascinated by marketing and business models. It’s interesting because it’s so different than what I do! Marketing people can look on in fascination while I ‘fix’ their Excel by hitting the [Scroll-Lock] key. I look on in fascination while they spread the message of their client and motivate real people to spend real cash. Compared to what I do, they might as well be sorcerer’s.

Second, as I’ve recently blogged about, the book publishing business is going through a weird revolution. [From other online articles and blog's, it appears to mirror music and news, as well.] While from a consumer choice perspective, this is a ‘golden age’ – very few people are making any money from it. It turns out that without the few large publishing houses able to sell mass appeal books (and act as gatekeepers, which is a downside) that the half-a-million new books published every year garner very littler per-book attention. For every one Stephen King or John Grisham, there are literally tens of thousands of small time authors who will make nothing but the advance on their book. They will never see a dollar or dime of royalty money. Further, their publishers cannot afford to publicize or market their books! The author must, themselves, market and spread the word and organize book signings and arrange for all of the travel and even build and market the web site associated with the book, etc. etc. etc.

So, what does the publisher actually do? Well, there’s the ‘gatekeeper’ thing, which is supposed to be a type of intrinsic guarantee of quality. There’s also the editing, printing, and distribution through well established sales channels. There is certainly value in getting your book published through a traditional publishing house. But, if you thought that it would be it and you could just go back to writing your next book … think again.

The kicker is, even with the author having to shoulder the marketing, the average book only sells about 3,000 total lifetime copies! [Obviously, some more and some less, thus the average.] That means that no one is getting rich writing books, unless they happen to be the top 1% of 1% of authors. The other way to riches is to hope that auxiliary properties based on your work will generate real money, like a movie or video game. A comic book would be great publicity, but probably not garner you any great amount of money. And, for every book published in every year, only 1/1000th of that number of movies are made in Hollywood – and not all are based on current books. So, the odds of getting your book turned into a movie just aren’t that good.

Third, there’s been a great deal of discussion and blogging and tweeting and the like on different ways for people to market in this crazy new landscape. One school of thought is that the product should be ‘free’ but with a monetization model based on one of the following three tried-and-try patterns: 1) Advertising. This is how Google gives away free search results and email, then sells ad space and is very profitable. 2) ‘Freemium’, a portmanteau that refers to the premium-for-pay upgrade many services offer. Like how FlickrPro costs money but Flickr is free. The pro subscribers subsidize the free users. That is also the model the Drop.io is attempting to use; everyone can make as many drop’s as they want with 100MB of storage and a max connection count of 10 – but if you upgrade you can get more space or a subscription for a premium version of their product. We have yet to see if their model will work, but in order to work the upgrades and the premium service would have to more then make up for the resources they’re spending on giving away the free version of their service. 3) Loss-Leader, as in Verizon FiOS is giving away a free netbook computer if you sign up for their FiOS service. That’s crazy! A free $300 netbook, just for becoming a subscriber? Well, they’ve obviously calculated the average lifetime value of their customer and know that value is much more then the one time cost of a netbook. Even with churn and people who just want to take advantage of the offer, they will more then make up for the cost of those netbooks. [It still boggles my mind that they are now giving away laptop's for for free ... even if they are just 'netbooks' ... but in my day, those were valuable and not considered tchotchke's.]

There’s a fourth pattern, not discussed in the original essay I read, which I call “building a valuable network.” This is basically what Monster.com does. They give away their job search service, because they need the enormous list of potential employees to sell their actual for-profit service, which is an employee search feature sold to businesses. In other words, Monster only needs the applicants to make their real product valuable. Their ability to offer applicants to employers doesn’t mean much if there’s not hundreds of thousands of applicants available to offer and the best way to get those applicants is to offer them the “find a job in your area” service, for free! [Monster also advertises to applicants and offers premium for-profit services for those applicants that want to pay. They have an affective multi-path marketing plan that makes their 'free' service quite profitable.] Another example would be a free service that gathers user data and uses this database as a resource they can resell. This may be problematic with the way users feel about having their information sold, but it’s still done all the time. Again, the free product or service is simply a way to gather or generate the actual product or service that is then sold for a handsome profit.

So, can we put all of this together? I think we can. I believe that there are already people out there that make money as “writer’s” but not from selling books. They use their free or near-free book sales to distribute their message and market themselves. They then offer a ‘freemium’ service, such as a weekend seminar or an onsite presentation. They may also use it to subsidize other, premium products and/or subscriptions. They use their customer information as a marketing list for other products, even products owned by other publishers. They write, publish, and market a book .. but the book isn’t their product. In any case, they’re making money.

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In a previous blog post I asked whether or not having a non-profit as an RPG publisher wouldn’t further the general goals of having a long lasting entity hold the intellectual property of something like a game, and act to foster the community of players and publishers that have a stake in the survival and even success of that game. Here, I’m going to ask whether or not one of these monetizing schemes can turn something that’s hard to profit on, an RPG, profitable.

I’ve already seen the ‘freemium’ method used. Several companies will give away an electronic edition of their core rules for nothing or very close to nothing ($1 or $5). Then, they hope that if you like the core rules, you’ll come back for supplements and settings, which they sell at a nice mark-up. This probably has some success, but I’ve never seen a huge response to this. I’ve only seen an actual subscription model used once or twice, and I believe the publisher already has to have a well known property and/or author before they can successfully sell a subscription. In a way, a subscription is like a promissory note. They promise to produce something of value at regular intervals, and you promise to keep paying for what they produce. If it’s a new author or new company or even a new product, the public may not believe or trust the promise and will not be as willing to pay in advance for it.

I’ve also seen two new models come forward in RPG’s but not other fields, like books or music. One is the ransom; in which an author writes a product and than says that until he raises a fixed amount, say $2,500, he’s not going to release it. But, that once he does raise that sum, he’ll give it away for free. Again, if the author and product are known they can be expected to be good and an audience will gather knowing their money isn’t wasted. Interestingly enough, the initial investors are subsidizing all of those that will subsequently download the product for free … so it’s a kind of ‘freemium’ service, inverted, and with no special price for those that actually pay the premium. A related model is the patronage, where a small group of investors are gathered with a minimum entry fee, and they not only get special access to the product but have an intimate hand in directing it’s growth and production. In this case, the patrons usually get a beautifully printed hard-bound copy of the book (or at least the ability to purchase such) and then the product is sold for less as an electronic copy only to the non-patrons. In the patronage model, not only is the special access being sold as a premium service, but the special relationship with the designers and the ability to influence the final product.

One of the big advantages of the patronage and ransom model, is that the consumer testing is built in. There’s no need to through a product out there and hope that someone, somewhere wants it. In both cases, if there is not sufficient interest then the author is free to move on to something else. If there is sufficient interest, then the audience is built-in and marketing is successfully happening before the product is even ready to be shipped.

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I now imagine a hybrid, in which an author or small group of authors, form a not-for-profit company as caretaker for a set of intellectual properties tied to a game. The authors then use patronage and ransom (or some hybrid variation) to profit, up front, from the production of their product. After the price has been paid and the product produced and all of the special version/access/service agreements satisfied, then the not-for-profit get’s the rights to the work so that it can be kept available and actively advocated for. The back catalog then acts as the free product that markets both the authors and their IP, while advertising the next project they’re working on. It can even be stated in the contract that certain rights are reserved by the author, such as movie or video game rights. That way, just in case one of the IP’s goes big, the author will still see the lions share of profit. But, there will never be an ‘abandoned’ property, because even if the author walks away from it, the not-for-profit can continue to make it available and assign those rights that it has.

I bet something like this may even work for traditional fiction, as well. How many fans clamour for a book that the author spends years and years and years ‘working on’ but never produces? What if the fans could directly pay for it, and act as patrons for the project? The author gets much needed feedback from the very consumer he needs, and he gets an infusion of cash well before the books sells.

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts on how to do the (seemingly) impossible: make money by writing gaming books.

Well, I’ve finally watched the first episode of “V” the new series airing on ABC. It’s a re-imagining of the classic sci-fi series from the early eighties. Here’s some links to anyone who needs the details.

“V” – 1983 (IMDB Entry) … “V” – 2009 (IMDB Entry)

(2009)

(1983)

And, just for fun, please let me present some made-for-TV-in-the-80’s schlock.

(1983, Jane Badler & June Chadwick)

So, what did I think about it? It was OK. The first episode was only one hour long, but it already established that the Visitors are only pretending to be our friends, that they have a nefarious ulterior motive, that they’ve been on Earth for years infiltrating key positions, that there is a human resistance movement, and that some of the Visitors have formed a fifth-column to aid the human resistance against their own race. That is a lot! It took significantly longer to establish all of those details in the original mini-series / full series. Even the revelation that they are lizards under a genetically grown skin mask was a big reveal in the first series and kind of a gimme in this one.

On one hand, perhaps they went too fast and should have revealed at least some of this slowly, over the next few months. On the other hand, many, many people remember the first series and already knew these details. It wasn’t going to be a surprise to us! So, they got these details out of the way, so they could get on with the story they actually want to tell. (Maybe.)

The thing I remember the most about the first series was that it was a thinly veiled metaphor for fascism. They wore read uniforms with a very Swastika looking emblem in black. They had giant flags and a strict military hierarchy. And, once the mask was revealed and the kit gloves came off, they took over and ran the world like a puppet nation under the heal of an oppressive fascist state. They even had “brown shirts” in the way of a youth core, in brown V-like uniforms, no less. The metaphor was strong!

What are they going to do in this series? So far, I don’t see the parallel. They are not wearing uniforms, but a sort of grey/beige business suit. If they have a hierarchy it is not readily apparent (other than that “Anna” is their “leader”). In fact, the strongest parallel I can see in this episode is the involvement of the FBI in tracking a terrorist cell. So, is terrorism going to be the new socio-political metaphor for the series? And, how is that going to work when the “terrorists” are a technologically advanced invading force presenting themselves as peaceful? Weird, huh?

Unless the writers are going to play the “your terrorist is my freedom fighter” card and show that the aliens are waging a secret terrorist plot while the human resistance movement is labeled and treated as terrorists, though they are right. If this is true, I don’t think it will have the same impact of the first series.

Over all, the affects are light years ahead of the 1983 version – but this is only to be expected. None of the actors have really jumped out at me, nor their characters. I’m certainly willing to give it a chance and see if things progress better in the upcoming episodes. I have to say, though, that my hopes are not too high. I don’t think ABC is prepared to take this story where it needs to go, or go as edgy as necessary to really turn this into meaningful metaphor and therefore good fiction. I think, like in previous prime-time sci-fi major network shows, they will pull their punches and then fall back on “freak of the week” with “look what the aliens are doing now” and “hey, we have a human / alien hybrid doing something weird” and little else. That, of course, will sound the death knell of the series. Or, they’ll try to pull a “LOST” and create a multi-leveled story line with many characters and a slowly unravelled mystery. But I just don’t see it. The first episode didn’t really leave any meaningful questions to be answered. We know the humans are going to resist and we know the Visitors are going to use their influence to squash the resistance. Everything else, as they say, is just the details.

I know, this is an often mentioned, hackneyed topic by now. But, a certain Post Secret post, brought it up to me in stark relief.

PostSecret: I read my husbands email

What bothers me is not just the “I read other peoples emails” but the fact that she reads her husbands emails. Then, to make it even more intrusive, she sends replies. What emails does she reply to? Are they from people she doesn’t want him to meet? This really appears to be a case where she is going to monitor and control his relationships – and that is NOT ok.

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On my podcast project, I was able to get the artist that was recommended to me to produce the artwork. He did AMAZING work, and it didn’t cost me very much. Once I get the artwork integrated into my site it will look both unique and professional – much more than I could have hoped to do on my own. The artwork coupled with the custom intro/outro I received from Luke and this is going to be a great sounding podcast!

All I have to do is actually produce some episodes.

THE 10 AWFUL TRUTHS ABOUT BOOK RPG PUBLISHING

Taken from the excellent article, here – 10 Awful Truths (follow the link for much fuller explanation of each of these ten ‘truths’ and how they relate to the book publishing business.)

1. The number of new books being published in the U.S. has exploded.
2. Book industry sales are declining, despite the explosion of new books.
3. Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast.
4. A book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.
5. It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books.
6. Most books today are selling only to the authors’ and publishers’ communities.
7. Most book marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers.
8. No other industry has so many new product introductions.
9. The digital revolution is expanding the number of products and sales channels but not increasing book sales.
10. The book publishing world is in a never-ending state of turmoil.

Looking over the list and reading the source page, I was struck with how easily you could replace “BOOK” with “RPG.” It makes sense, RPG publishing is just a tiny, tiny subset of the book publishing business. The surprise, I guess, is that the very same ‘explosion of products’ is happening in both. From what I’ve seen in RPG’s, there has never been as many new products being produced by as many publishers as any time in the past – EVER. Yet, the overall market for RPG’s is said to be shrinking, and companies are finding that they cannot sell out of a print run of … 300. That’s serious. Because as much of the hobby is fan driven, the truth is that it takes a company with a profit motive to keep a game line alive, supported, and active. All of the efforts I’ve seen to keep a system / setting / etc. going on fan run initiatives alone have yielded tiny communities of the ‘faithful’ and little or no printed product.

We are seeing big, beautiful books … 350 – 500+ pages and costing $50 to $65. But, the companies are rarely following these up with multiple print runs and they seem to be selling only to current gamers, now in their 30’s and 40’s with more disposable income then free time. Of course the PDF only products literally number in the thousands, and get sale rates in the … tens?

I think we need a new model. Either there is some massive ‘die off and consolidation’ or some new paradigm that no one has hit on just yet. But, I cannot see things continuing as they are. One possible answer is akin to the Open Source movement in software, namely, a not-for-profit that is formed to support a game line. It has the power to print books, sign contracts, hire freelancers, and work with both volunteers as well as corporations. It would be a “lasting entity” that would outlive the one or two founding personalities that organized it. But, it would NOT have monetary profit as it’s only or even chief motive. Which means that what little profits are made could be rolled back into making more and better products and supporting the community of fans that grow around their product lines.

I’m not sure how, but I ’sense’ that a not-for-profit organization is (or is close to) the perfect in between structure; between fan driven effort and corporate publisher. It seems to be very successful for WikiPedia, OSF, Apache, etc. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work here, too.

After a great breakfast at IHOP, we did a little wedding reception invite shopping. There’s a brand new store open near us named “The Paper Source” and it was really cool to see all of the paper-craft supplies available. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time for handmade invitations. So, we walked across the parking lot to the “The Paper Store” and looked at the pre-printed card-stock available. We picked out five (5) we liked, and had them print up a proof of two of them. I think we know which one we’re going to choose, but there’s time to change our minds.

After that, we walked over the theater and watched “Where the Wild Things Are.” I’m a huge fan of the book, because I read it when I was very little. Then, it left me with this indescribable feeling of danger and adventure. Lisa had never heard of it before. So, I bought a copy a few weeks ago and read it to her. She was unimpressed. I guess you really have to be nine, for the full impact.

Anyway, the movie was … ok. The message (as such) was actually pretty subtle and more of the story was conveyed by the looks and expressions of the characters (and the monsters) then by the actual dialog. I definitely think this movie will age well, and be just as good in five or ten years – something few movies really achieve. The downside, was that it’s kind of slow, especially in certain parts. There also wasn’t much story there – it felt ’spread thin’. Finally, not a complaint with the movie, but there were some really little kids in the audience, and between their boredom and their parents antics, I was pretty distracted.

I’m glad I watched it. Maybe I’ll watch it again on cable, some day. But it was not the rapturous experience I was hoping for. Oh, and it’s not a kids movie.

Today was one of the coldest and wettest we’ve had all year. Definitely a day to stay in and snuggle under my Slanket. But, not luck there! I went out for coffee & breakfast and brought back some tea and donuts for Lisa and Marilyn.

Then, I spent most of the rest of the day working on my personal project (which I’m not ready to unveil just yet). Lisa and Marilyn went to Brigham and Women’s Hospital to visit Polly. She’s doing good – it was definitely not another aneurism and it doesn’t look like it was a stroke, either. The current theory is that it was just a seizure in the part of her brain damaged by her cataclysmic aneurism from some years ago. They’re watching her carefully and have proscribed an anti-seizure medication. Hopefully she’ll be able to return home soon.

I had to venture out into the cold/wet once more, to pick us up some carry-out dinner. But it was nice to eat together at the table, Lisa, Marilyn, and I. They had just gotten back from the hospital and I had spent most of the day alone.

I’ve got some more tweaking to do on my project – then bed.

First day back to work, and as soon as I got in I had to prep and then give a little mini-demonstration. The demo went OK … everything worked as it should. But, it was underwhelming to the extreme. The point of the demo was that certain pop-ups and password prompts didn’t come up – because we had found a way to script through them. In other words, “Look! Nothing happened right there. And, now … there you go! Nothing happened again!” See? The ‘demo of what doesn’t happen isn’t exactly a compelling demo.

We had a new worker join our group – he’s a contractor who will (hopefully!) be hired in a few months. We’ve been pretty understaffed so we can certainly use all the help we can get. Ironically, his name is Stephen, too. So, even though I was assured that there are no other “Steve’s” nearby … there is within a few months of me joining. I guess like celebrity deaths and midnight lines at a fast-food place, “Steve’s” happen in clusters.

Finally, we watched a DVR’ed episode of Numb3rs and then tonight’s episode of NCIS. Those are pretty good shows, though I like NCIS better. The truth, is that it is not the show itself but the characters that make it. It’s basically just another procedural cop drama. The crimes are slightly different because they always involve a Navy Seaman or a US Marine. Except for the occasional “he was a spy” or “terrorists were involved” … the stories are pretty typical of cop drama’s. The thing that really stands out, the “unique selling proposition” for the show is the characters that are on it and their complex relationships.

It’s the gruff old marine, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who heads up the team, and his slightly eccentric pathologist nicknamed Ducky, Dr. Donald Mallard, who wears a goofy hat and drives a vintage car. There’s the goth chick, Abby Sciotu, with the caffeine addiction who does all their forensic testing, down in the lab. There are the three main field agents – Anthony DiNozzo (movie trivia nut, wanna-be ladies man, Gibbs suck-up), Timothy McGee (computer hacker / whiz, painfully earnest, “probey”), Ziva David (ass kicking outsider, on loan from Mossad, who has finally been made a full member). Each character is unique – not just from each other but from other, similar, cop shows.

If anything, they are almost caricatures because of there extreme traits and how much out-of-the-ordinary they stand out. But, what keeps this from being poorly written schlock is the vulnerabilities and inter-connections. These characters have formed a kind of family and they are fiercely loyal to one another. Probably in complete contrast to a professional NCIS team in real life, here they hug one another and send each other cute postcards, and Gibbs brings down a Super Big Gulp to Abby when he wants some information and she’s been in the lab all day.

• Gibbs is like the gruff but fair father
• Abby is like his daughter
• Ziva is like his older daughter, who is a big sister to Abby
• Anthony and McGee are like brothers – including the sibling rivalry
• Ducky is the kindly, eccentric uncle

So, is that the winning strategy? A family drama wrapped in a cop drama painted with the colors of a federal agency? Seeing as how they are trying to strike gold twice with NCIS: Los Angeles, we’ll see.

Not much to report; just a quiet Sunday. As I get older, I appreciate these days and what some quiet downtime can mean.

I did get something from a friend – something I need for a project I’m working on. A project I’m very excited about. Mysterious enough for you? Well, I’ll blab when I have something solid I can link to, until then, mum’s the word.

Have I mentioned how much I’ve been enjoying the Bog Leech Blog? Cool site … if you’re into interesting and weird creatures and creepy comics of monsters and mutants. In other words, just my cup-o-tea! Check it out … it’s a lot of fun.

An example monster from the mind of Jonathan Wojcik and his fantabulous blog!