I was looking at the penny arcade item and I am sure someone in your organization has thought of selling the rights to book 1 to some of the other game houses that for a fee ($19.95) you can DL a game. There are many game portals and they all seem to have the same games over time. Big Fish games, Fenom, etc. If this isn't part of your marketing stratagy you may want to look into it.
I think there are many people who have already bought Book 1 who use one or more of these game portals. who knows...You could reach many more potential customers.
I would be curious to know how many others use these game sites and just how lucrative such a venture would be.
Thanks Asgard for the suggestions. We have tried to take advantage of other distribution options when they come our way and the game is actually floating around a few places out there, but in this age of 10 new casual games per day, Eschalon can get buried quickly. That is what is cool about Greenhouse...they are hand-picking games and posting just 1 per month, so it would be a long time before Book I is forgotten about- and by then Book II should be done baking.
Well, how much business is actually gained from these sites?
Ethically I find myself disturbed by websites that seek to profit off of other people's hard work by making themselves an intermediary. And when gamers and developers participate, it serves to perpetuate the system.
I see this in the book publishing world, and small presses not infrequently actually end up losing money trying to get their stuff pushed on Amazon and SPD.
Certainty: a character-driven, literary, turn-based mini-CRPG in which Vasek, legendary "Wandering Philosopher", seeks certainties in a cryptically insular, organic, critically layered city.
I agree totally with both however I am thinking of the future. When a certain point in the life cycle of a game is reached you may still glean a few extra bucks by using the casual game ports.
Let me also interject one little bit of information. It may also help boost sales of book two. Free advertising. Your book 1 splash screen has a link to Basilisk game site which shows book 2 and from there to the forums. Most people who like a particular game will seek out a forum, given the oppertunity. The forum is where they would also find more info on book 2.
As I said in the beginning these are just random thoughts that struck me from my old junior college days in business 101 and marketing.
Evnissyen wrote:Well, how much business is actually gained from these sites?
Ethically I find myself disturbed by websites that seek to profit off of other people's hard work by making themselves an intermediary. And when gamers and developers participate, it serves to perpetuate the system.
I see this in the book publishing world, and small presses not infrequently actually end up losing money trying to get their stuff pushed on Amazon and SPD.
You are so very correct. The business world is a killer world to break into espically for a start up concern where only one in six start ups are still around after one year and of those one in five after five years. Not good odds. BW has reached the first mentioned milestone and book 2 should put him over the second.
Even though the small publishing houses show a loss they do make money or they go under which means that the product was inferior, did not appeal to a large enough segment of the population or the business plan for the company was wrong. Let us face it, if your book or product only appeals to ten or twenty people you deserve to go under.
Yeah... honestly it's difficult for me to speak for the gaming business because I haven't familiarized myself enough in that area. So I'll just move on to the matter of book publishing (and maybe Basilisk can enlighten us about any similarities... I'd be very interested to know).
Now... since I'm a writer and I run my own literary site, this is an area I am somewhat familiar with. It's actually a common misconception that books which sell poorly do so because they're poor books. The unfortunate fact is that, at least for the time being, money still speaks quite convincingly and is very often the determining factor in whether a book sells effectively or else goes out of print (and, in fact, whether or not it makes its way onto the "bestseller" list.... "Bestsellers" seem, to a large extent, to be predetermined).
There are small presses publishing quality work from talented writers, but these works don't sell well because the presses simply don't have the money to pour into it. Putting your stuff on Amazon costs money that the smallest presses often can barely afford, if at all. And the authors who sell their work to these publishers do so because 1. (lesser reason) they're trustworthy and you deal with the publisher on a personal basis and you are therefore allowed much more contractual liberty (not to mention that as long as the company stays in business they will never let your book go out of print), and 2. (major reason) the larger presses are afraid to touch these authors' works since "market research" has not shown their work to be capable of producing a viable audience (this is especially true for nontraditional authors). When larger presses take on this sort of "high literary" or "highly artistic" work they generally lose money... unless they choose to make a special marketing push which they will do on occasion, such as Pantheon famously did with Danielewski's House of Leaves. (Pantheon is a Knopf imprint -- the only company under the Random House umbrella with the guts to risk pouring that kind of money into such a work).
Anyhow, I vehemently disagree that if the work you publish manages to reach only a handful of people then your business "deserves to go under". Perhaps in such a case, the work hasn't been sold aggressively enough... but selling is difficult when you lack resources.
Certainty: a character-driven, literary, turn-based mini-CRPG in which Vasek, legendary "Wandering Philosopher", seeks certainties in a cryptically insular, organic, critically layered city.
Evnissyen wrote:Yeah... honestly it's difficult for me to speak for the gaming business because I haven't familiarized myself enough in that area. So I'll just move on to the matter of book publishing (and maybe Basilisk can enlighten us about any similarities... I'd be very interested to know).
Now... since I'm a writer and I run my own literary site, this is an area I am somewhat familiar with. It's actually a common misconception that books which sell poorly do so because they're poor books. The unfortunate fact is that, at least for the time being, money still speaks quite convincingly and is very often the determining factor in whether a book sells effectively or else goes out of print (and, in fact, whether or not it makes its way onto the "bestseller" list.... "Bestsellers" seem, to a large extent, to be predetermined).
There are small presses publishing quality work from talented writers, but these works don't sell well because the presses simply don't have the money to pour into it. Putting your stuff on Amazon costs money that the smallest presses often can barely afford, if at all. And the authors who sell their work to these publishers do so because 1. (lesser reason) they're trustworthy and you deal with the publisher on a personal basis and you are therefore allowed much more contractual liberty (not to mention that as long as the company stays in business they will never let your book go out of print), and 2. (major reason) the larger presses are afraid to touch these authors' works since "market research" has not shown their work to be capable of producing a viable audience (this is especially true for nontraditional authors). When larger presses take on this sort of "high literary" or "highly artistic" work they generally lose money... unless they choose to make a special marketing push which they will do on occasion, such as Pantheon famously did with Danielewski's House of Leaves. (Pantheon is a Knopf imprint -- the only company under the Random House umbrella with the guts to risk pouring that kind of money into such a work).
Anyhow, I vehemently disagree that if the work you publish manages to reach only a handful of people then your business "deserves to go under". Perhaps in such a case, the work hasn't been sold aggressively enough... but selling is difficult when you lack resources.
This is the wrong forum for this discussion (entertaining though it may be). As you stated in your last paragraph you do need some resourses to provide for a proper marketing strategy, one point of which I was trying to point out to BW. It may not be appropriate right now, however, when BK 2 comes out it may be just the right time for BK1 to provide some of the advertising for BK 2. An idea, a thought or even a marketing ploy.
