Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

Just thought you all might find this interesting. Here's our current sales figures for the various BFRPG books:
This includes my purchases, of course.

thats pretty good for a non-commercial item

Cool. We should try (with word-of-mouth and other 'free' sorts of marketing) to move these numbers a bit more. I know that when my children get a little bit older I plan to try to help them form a gaming club so that we can share the whole role-play concept, yet doing so with 'free pdfs' (or printouts or very inexpensive lulu options for those wanting books)... but that is a local push. We need to try something that spreads on a national/international manner.

SmootRK wrote:Cool. We should try (with word-of-mouth and other 'free' sorts of marketing) to move these numbers a bit more.

Y'know, actually, I don't really care all that much about sales figures. It's the download counts that really impress me. Kids today, even if you get them interested in traditional RPGs, may want them on their tablets rather than in print, and that's cool too.

I wish I had the time to figure out a tablet-ready character sheet.

Perhaps a PDF version which is re-formatted to fit smaller screens in a readable fashion (without too much scrolling or shifting left/right)... or perhaps in this new tablet-age of computing, an extensively hyper-linked or wiki sort of version of the rules would be devoured by the kids to use at the table.

And I think a tablet formatted character sheet would be a super idea... seems that everyone will have one of those in their hands very soon. My wife even has one before me, and she uses it non-stop. I am not going to replace her PC when it gets old... just whatever the new tablet form is. I, on the other hand, still do a fair bit of writing/document work, so I need a full (non-touchscreen) keyboard and monitor, else I would be some sort of hunched-back Computer-Igor in just a short period.

And of course there's people like me, give away printouts of the Beginner's Essentials pdf to people - at least once a week. Whenever I look into starting up a pickup game I always have 2-3 copies of it on hardcopy to give out to people who are not all that familiar with classic fantasy gaming.

I also keep my spiral bound copy of the rulebook on hand as well as the binder with the printed out copy. And at least one of my returning players also has a lulu-bought copy as well. And I have my netbook that I keep all of my pdfs and my adventure notes for my games.

Those are quite interesting figures. I impressed at how many hardbacks have sold (unless Solo is stockpiling them ) Buying an HB on Lulu can be quite a step up financially for some. This also all flies in the face of dissenters claiming that no-one will buy real books when PDFs are free or cheap. Really interesting.

Ooh, tablets and e-readers ... Quite soulless and yet perfect for rule/phrase-look-up. Btw, I was having a look at the set up on Amazon for publishling to Kindle. It looks pretty straightforward, although it wasn't clear about rights to publish in different regions internationally. I keep fantazising about writing mini solo gamebooks.

However, just you can't beat black text on wood pulp.

billiambabble wrote:This also all flies in the face of dissenters claiming that no-one will buy real books when PDFs are free or cheap. Really interesting.

Especially so since I keep telling people that buying Lulu prints doesn't pay me (or anyone else in the Project) anything; thus, I assume most purchasers are not just doing it to support the Basic Fantasy Project, since it in no way does so. I'm just as happy with those who download as with those who buy.

So yeah, it does say that ink on paper still has a significant following.

I just wanted to quickly interject about tablets. In my Pathfinder game there are 4 of us, 3 IPad/Ipad2 users and one Android Tablet User(me). We all use ours to store our characters and for quick reference to the Pathfinder SRD.

Again, interesting. Tablets for characters. Damn, I feel old.
But, but, what about the holes in the character sheets made by erasers? Where do the doodles go?
- I say we bring back chalk and board!

I think people love to "own" this stuff in bound form, and I'm guessing that old-schoolers have a preference for manuals on the shelf. I like my coil bound copy, but I might just have to get a glossy hardback version (It's an addiction! Never underestimate the fetish of books!).

I still think you'd be forgiven for just adding a couple of dollars to everything. A sort of "happy tax" or rocket charity - as long as you're happy, then the communities remain maintained - and we're all happy!
We need more capitalists if we're going to spend our way out of this recession!

Before I forget - in case no-one's mentioned money-off codes for Lulu this month:

"20% off books - Enter code DECBOOKS11 - Save up to $25 - Offer ends 12/31/11"

Oh, man, why does Christmas make us so broke ...