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New Era Publishing ( 1550 reads) |
Sunday, September 07, 2008 (08:44:40) |
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Being part of the development of how business online will look is pretty interesting to me, so far atleast. We are tossing around a bunch of ideas for how we can develop and evolve as a company and part of the online design movement.
1. Patronage - originally done in gaming by Open Design & Wolfgang Baur. The idea that Baur uses is that he sets a "limit" on how much donations he requires to write a book/adventure. He then offers people to become patrons of that project, paying inbetween 30 to 100+ dollars. In exchange for this donation you get insight and greater and greater degrees of creative control and say-so. If we would do something like this, we would likely follow his lead and put out a number of projects that we could work on, set limits for each one and open up for people to donate. Whatever enough people donate for, we write and release - patrons get it for free and the possibility to buy print for print-costs only. Others get to buy the PDF and possible Print version at normal price. Unlike Piecemeal Publishing, patronage is transferable to different projects or refundable.
2. Design-by-Demand - This idea is based around that we'll do what people ASK us to do. Putting out a pricelist for individual items (feat, power, item, prestige class, feat chain, base class) we open up for people putting in orders with us. They might want a new psionic race for their campaign, or an NPC, a new power or perhaps a couple of feats that fits an idea they have. They pay us a small amount (say 5 dollars for a feat), we make it, test it and they get it, spiffied up in an official PDF. In return, we get to use that material in whatever e-book we put out. Some of it might end up in race books, power compilations or whatever fits.
3. Piecemeal Publishing - A middle road between Patronage and DbD, piecemeal publishing is based on providing a free sample of a product and offer a "tipping jar". If people tip to a pre-set level, we do another installment, if not, or just to a smaller amount, we take it as a thank you for the freebie. We continue writing until we hit a pre-determined "final post" (which will be announced) or people stop tipping. This way, we create our own material and offer it to the public, but the people decide what gets written. Difference between patronage is that with PP, everything that has been tipped for, gets released for free under a CC-license - we might compile the information, tidy it up, make it look nice and add a bunch of art and release it as a "for buy" option.
4. Ransom Model - an extreme variant of Piecemeal Publishing. Here, we write the entire conceptual idea completely, offer a few previews and put out a Ransom. If the ransom is met within X months, we release the entire project, for free, for everyone. This might or might not include art, depending on what goals we set. This is the model I like the least, part because it requires us to put up ALL the effort at the start with the very real possibility of not getting squat for it. If we're doing it like this, we might just as well release it as a "for buy" PDF and see the money trickle in (if it does).
So, do people have any OTHER ideas for alternative business models? |
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