Community Query on "Business" Matters

[calithena]

I'm wondering about making the magazine more consistent in certain respects. We are trying hard to hit that 88 pages every time now. But also I'm wondering if establishing a flat cost of $10 per issue might make things easier to keep track of somehow. This would raise the price on some issues and lower it on others, but I guess I'm thinking in terms of uniformity, etc. it might be better. Two hobby stores have picked up the fanzine now and we're thinking of trying to go into distribution, etc. Might be better to have a consistent product.

Anyway, we are a community support fanzine, so we don't determine prices by profit, only by what 'makes sense' for our community. But I am thinking there's some reason to support uniform pricing now.

An alternative to lulu remains highly desirable, if one exists. They are gouging twice as much out of PDF costs as they used to now.

Also if any of you want to print Fight On! yourself to sell at cons or bookstores or to hobby stores I will set that up for you, given how high lulu is setting their prices now I imagine you could probably undersell the website and still make a profit.

Thoughts about these or other matters are welcome.

[calithena]

So here's the question really. Would anyone run howling to the far reaches of the interwebs crying bloody murder if I established a flat per-issue print price of $9.99? This would make distribution easier and would give me some room to absorb the hit if lulu raises prices again (and you can bet that will happen). It would also lower the price on the oversized issues (at least slightly) while raising it on the normal sized issues.

Because issue 3 is so big that's pretty much the lowest uniform price I can do with lulu's pricing structure.

I want to talk about the other stuff too but that's the real thing I want to decide about over the short term.

[geoffrey]

I think $9.99 for an 88-page (8.5" by 11") magazine is still a bargain. For comparison, my CARCOSA is 96 pages (5.5" by 8.5") and sells for $9.

I've never had anyone complain about CARCOSA's price, so I doubt you'd have much trouble with $9.99 for a magazine that has close to twice the page space of CARCOSA.

[Deleted]

Your proposed set price per issue sounds reasonable to me.

[treebore]

Drivethru RPG will soon have a POD service with which to give Lulu competition. They are close enough to finalizing things you may even be able to hold your breathe long enough for it to happen.

Word has it they will be better than Lulu, price wise and shipping wise, right from the start.

The uniform pricing makes sense to me as well.

[calithena]

Great news if true, Treebore. Though drivethru never returned my emails when I was trying to get PDF set up with them a year ago. But still, I will definitely look out for that option.

[aldarron]

What about xlibris, or amazon or xoop? What are the reasons everyon seems stuck with lulu? Not saying thier aren't good reasons, but I've never heard anyone say what they are. Personally, ten bucks for a print magazine is more than I'd like to pay, out of a tight family budget, but, the content in Fight On is certainly worth that much. I'd be a lot happier though as long as I could just pay $5 for the pdf and only print out the parts I wanted most.

[calithena]

Well, you've pretty much got your wish with the PDFs already.

Lulu charges more than 2x to print what most people would. They also handle fulfillment, distribution, credit card, etc. etc. though so that is a big plus. xoop looked like a similar model with similar pricing, I have to look into them again though, they were plausible. Createspace is the land of infinite headaches (although they will do classic digest, which Lulu will not). xlibris I didn't know about, off to check it out...

[jasmith]

I think the pricing is reasonable enough, though, personally, I prefer PDF for this type of product. Since I'm going to use specific articles and only read others, I like being able to print out what I need and organize it as I like. I had no idea Lulu was so steep on PDF's. Out of curiosity, what are the barriers to handling electronic distribution in-house? Using Paypal would handle the c/c issues. Also, I wonder if the various OSR publishing concerns, could pool their resources and come up with any better solutions?

[treebore]

Dec 15, 2009 20:42:06 GMT -6 calithena said:

Great news if true, Treebore. Though drivethru never returned my emails when I was trying to get PDF set up with them a year ago. But still, I will definitely look out for that option.

Its about as true as it can get in a business environment. The only real question I have heard is when the bugs will be worked out to allow it to go "live". They have already taken a couple of months longer than originally hoped.

[capvideo]

XLibris probably isn't an option: unless they've changed things (and a quick perusal of their site indicates they haven't) you have to buy a package for each book you publish. They seem to have hidden the fees, but last I checked they were in the hundreds of dollars range. Again, unless things have changed, that would be *per issue*, because each issue is a new book.

[ant]

Sounds fair to me, cal.

[robertsconley]

Dec 15, 2009 20:42:06 GMT -6 calithena said:

Great news if true, Treebore. Though drivethru never returned my emails when I was trying to get PDF set up with them a year ago. But still, I will definitely look out for that option.

You may want to try again. I got setup in a week after the initial email.

Perhaps they have a new person in charge?

Rob

[robertsconley]

Dec 15, 2009 21:36:48 GMT -6 aldarron said:

What about xlibris, or amazon or xoop?

The only lulu style competitor at the moment is Createspace and they don't have 8.5 by 11. Lulu killer feature at the moment is the fact they can printer 8.5 by 11 book.

RPG Now will have similar issues as well. Here are a link to the sizes RPG Now in theory could offer

www.lightningsource.com/products_paperback.aspx

8.25 by 11 is the closest they have to 8.5 by 11.

[robertsconley]

Dec 15, 2009 22:28:18 GMT -6 calithena said:

Createspace is the land of infinite headaches (although they will do classic digest, which Lulu will not).

Lulu has publisher's grade both in 8.5 by 11 and digests. I used digest for the Majestic Wilderlands. I am not that thrilled by the print quality of the art and maps. They converted to half toning instead of greyscale.

So you want to do a test before committing to using that format. The cover feels and looks the same as anything I bought before including fight-on. The paper is of a lighter grade and text itself looks great.

[Alex Schroeder]

$10 is ok as far as I'm concerned. My problem with Lulu is that it usually costs another $10 or more to ship stuff to Switzerland. And I'm still buying it because I hardly ever use PDFs at the table, eg. I'm subscribed to KQ and feel like not extending my subscription because I'm just not reading the PDFs. They end up in the PDF gave on my harddisk and that's that.

[abecross]

Dec 15, 2009 9:08:08 GMT -6 calithena said:

Would anyone run howling to the far reaches of the interwebs crying bloody murder if I established a flat per-issue print price of $9.99?

To be honest, I've never purchased the print version to save paper, but $10 seems like a real bargain for the amount of actual, usable content in each issue of FO!.

[chgowiz]

I would support $10 an issue. I'm picky about which issues I buy print vs. PDF - mainly on the table of contents and seeing what the reviews say. That's more my own economics and having to save pennies coming into play - if I didn't have to budget so hard, I'd spend the $10 per issue.

[kesher]

AFAIC, there hasn't yet been an issue of FO! that wasn't easily worth $10. So, yeah, I'd support it.