If anyone with a booth at GenCon wants to sell

[calithena]

copies of FO!, get with me.

What we'd do is I'd find a way to let you buy them from lulu at cost (publisher's discount). If you bought 20 or more then you get a volume discount, at 50 copies for example it comes out to just over $4 an issue including postage with their added discounts. Then you'd have them, they'd be yours, you could sell them for whatever you wanted (though I'd prefer similar prices to what are on lulu). You keep the money.

Issues 1 and 2 will be available for Gen Con so you could have both to sell, maybe save on postage more by ordering together. I believe the bulk discount is per issue though.

Anyway, if anyone wants to do this, I won't be going to GenCon this year, but I'd be delighted if FO! had a presence there.

[Thorulfr]

I will probably have a booth at Gateway in Los Angeles in September (www.strategicon.net), though 50 copies would be way too many. Perhaps if there was some way to coordinate several local-con vendors to bundle the smaller orders into one large one (but then would there be a double-hit on shipping?)

[busman]

d**n, I didn't think about it, but Strategicon has a con this weekend in L.A. Not enough time to order and get them here at this point, probably. Not to mention I'm still recovering from Bronchitis and I don't know if I'll be able to go at all.

[Zulgyan]

That would be awesome!

[Thorulfr]

May 20, 2008 15:00:42 GMT -6 busman said:

d**n, I didn't think about it, but Strategicon has a con this weekend in L.A.

You're a boothie, too?
I've got the little guy for the weekend, so I might take him up on Sunday to browse through the dealer's room and ride the elevators - he was rather incensed that he did not get to go to the con last weekend, and his mom is heading up to a con in the bay area this weekend, on top of it. I'll PM you with my cell number if you are able to make it.

[grodog]

Sean---

You should contact Vicki @ Tabletop Adventures, and perhaps inquire about having FO join the GPA, since they sell books at their booth at GC, and TA has old-school stuff too (IIRC from my dinner with Vicki and her husband Mark a few months ago, they're running the expanded GPA booth @ GC this year). If you need her phone/email, let me know.

[labsenpai]

Just a bump to say I'll be attending GENCON, so showing my contributor PDF issue #2 might be possible (presuming a release in a couple weeks).

I'm not a routine Con-goer, so I may get swept away in the tide of gamers. If there is a guest/vendor I should try to show this zine to, you can name them. Unfortunately, I can't afford to vend.

[tavis]

If anyone will be at Gen Con with copies of Fight On! to sell, I will be looking to buy!

[rainsford]

Calithena,

Joining the GPA might be good if you are looking for industry contacts. I believe the Associate Membership is $25.00 a year, but it is unclear if joining the GPA to join their booth program will be cost effective. You would need to pay for the program, then get a number of copies of the magazine, then ship it to the GPA coordinator. (Luckily, the magazines would then travel with the coordinator from show to show.)

What you may really want to figure out is how to incent retailers to carry the magazine. Of couorse, at its current price, that is almost impossible - but you might want to figure out how other PDF publishers handle retailers. The $3.00 .pdf might be a better product for retailers than a $6.00 (plus shipping?) magazine.

But I am certain some retailers sell /pdf product from their stores, so it can be done.

There may be some clues at www.rpgnow.com/ - or maybe publishers like Goodman Games have talked about it someplace.

Best regards,

Rainsford

[calithena]

If there was a serious interest in distro I could probably print it myself for a small enough amount that retailers could charge the same cover prices for the print issues. That would be with the retailer taking 50%. With the traditional model of the distributor taking 25% and the retailer taking 50% I don't think we could do that. But, if anyone wants to try this they should get in contact with me.

The odds of doing a separate printing from lulu for cheap (lulu's advantage is that they handle printing and distro, one-stop shop, plus no up front) before GenCon are nil, though, so if someone wanted to do this the best I could do would be to supply some copies at cost, which would make the person selling a little money but would mostly be another item for their store. I could buy back unsold copies, also at cost, I suppose.

[calithena]

I'm going to approach some PDF sites for direct sales once the issue 2 PDF is ready. Wanted to have 2 products before going that route. I prefer print sales but no reason not to get our efforts more exposure.

[rainsford]

Calithena,

The hobby game distro breakdown is:

- Product is sold to distributors at 60% off MSRP, plus the publisher covers shipping
- The distributor sells the product to retailers at 50% of MSRP

-----

A number of companies sell to distributors, and also allows retailers to buy the product directly at 50% off (plus the publisher covers shipping)

Magazines are sortof totally different though. They don't age well (usually.) The .pdf version, plus the Lulu print versions are probably good for the older editions (say 2 issues back.)

Best regards,

Rainsford

[Deleted]

Perhaps next year when it can be planned for you can arrange to have copies of issue 1- up to the current issue available at some of the cons where you could have had them printed up specifically for that purpose. Just put a Collectors Issue on the first 3 issues of course when you do that.