In other news I got some files from Chris the other night and we’re going to be releasing our first POD book very soon!

Well, for starters I have some kick ass art coming in for the next Black Tokyo release.  I’ll post some images soon. I also got a great piece of art back for a Sci-Fi setting I’m working on.

The Sci-Fi setting is still in the early stages of development, but the concept art piece I commissioned came in looking great.  I have some setting notes and am planning a three tier release.  The setting will be released with rules for the Traveller and Savage Worlds system. I’m also plotting some fiction set in the new setting that will also help it really take shape.

I sent some scripts over to an artist for the Pandora Rising project as well.  Once the comic-book style pages come back I’ll put those out as a free preview of the setting. This project has been on the drawing board for a long time.  I plan to do the setting akin to the War of the Dead series of linked adventures that take players from their “normal” world and throw them into the new reality.  I really like that way of introducing a new setting.

The follow on will be the campaign book which will be more like what most RPG players are used to.  I’m calling that Pandora Risen, and it will be more like picking up the Ebberron setting book or the Forgotten Realms setting book where all of the world is mapped, major powers and people detailed etc.

On the fiction front I’m also plotting out a short story based on the Black Tokyo setting with the intent to put it out on DriveThruFiction.

Lest you all think I forgot, I am still working on the Digital Copy Retail Experiment.  I’ll update you soon on how that’s going.

I demo’d a new card game over the weekend.  I was down in Virginia to see my daughter in a school play, and stopped by the local game store I used to work at to see my buddy Lee Garvin of Reality Cheque fame and the author of Tales From the Floating Vagabond.  Well, it turns out he and a customer had worked out a new card game called:

Badass Zombie Killers!

With a name like that you *can’t* go wrong!  The premise is that the zombie hoard has arisen and you have a very short period of time to construct the most badass zombie killing weapon you can from what you can scrounge.  From there the hilarity begins..  I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t know what I’m allowed to say or not but I thought it was an awesome game.  You win the game by having the highest “Badassery” rating for your chosen weapon when the hoard arrives at your door and it’s time to start zombie killing. Think more like Munchkin than Magic.  No collectable cards but they were darn funny reads.  I can’t wait to see the artwork to go with the descriptions I read.

Lee and I are in talks about getting a table together at this years GenCon.  With luck you will all be able to come by and demo the game for yourself then.

OneBookShelf (OBS) and its child sites, RPGNow and DriveThruRPG are the hands down winners in the digital RPG market.  Whats more, they are so far ahead of everyone else, I don’t ever see Paizo, WOTC or other publishers/storefronts ever catching up.

I’ll even go one step further, and say that by carrying over the features they offer to RPG publishers to DriveThruFiction; they offer advantages even Amazon, Apple and B&N can’t touch.

Big words, I know.  Lets break it down…

Money.  Let’s talk %’s people.  When OBS merged and they changed the payout numbers there was *a lot* of bitching in our tiny little industry.  A few big names even left the site if I recall correctly.  Now, I was not a big fan of making less per sale, but the promise of a bigger market was what OBS said to justify the fees.  Fast forward a few years and what do we have?  A bigger market?  I’d say yes to that score.  Also, since then we have Apple, Amazon, B&N and Smashwords all in essentially the same business except for the focus on RPG content.  What is the average % of each sale these online retailers take?

• Apple: 30%
• B&N: 35%
• Amazon: 30%
• Smashwords: 15% (On top of whatever the stores charge.)
• OBS: 35%
• Paizo 25%

Notice a pattern there?  That’s right!  OBS has been charging about the same all along as what the big guns in the publishing industry decided they needed to charge to remain competitive.  And they were a few years ahead of the game.

Since we are on the topic of money, lets talk about getting paid.  OBS is hands down the absolute winner in this category, even when you factor in the “Big Dogs” like Amazon and Apple.  With OBS I can get paid as often as I want.  Go ahead and read that again.  As. Often. As. I. Want.  I can cash out my royalties any time I darn well please, have it transferred directly to my PayPal account and since I have a PayPal debit card I can hit the ATM and have *cash* in my hand within a few minutes.  No one else even comes close. (Yes, there is a 1$ fee from PayPal but I’ll take that over having to wait for the post office to bring me a check that I then have to sign and haul to my bank, or waiting about a month for a direct deposit to hit.)

Paizo: They send me a dead-tree paper check every 30 days or so. Seriously, get with the program and start using PayPal Paizo!

Amazon, Apple and all the rest are also in the pay-every-30-days camp.  (Unless some of them pay quarterly, I haven’t bothered to dig into it too deeply.)

Oh, and OBS also lets me set up royalty payments that are auto-magically directed to the person.  That is *HUGE*.  That means collaboration is seamless since it gets you out of the accounting business, having to work out the amount due and sending it along.  Paizo doesn’t do that, heck Amazon doesn’t even do that.

In summary OBS is very competitive on the % of funds they earn from each sale.  They are hands-down the industry leader in getting earnings to the publisher/author.

I could end this post here, but there is so much more to cover!  Let’s continue…

Promotion. Let’s talk about getting the word out about your product, making it look good when you do manage to hijack some eyeballs and helping you build your brand.

On OBS I have near complete control over the sales listing.  I can massage the text, the layout, add images and I’ve even toyed around with embedding video and audio into the listing.  I can change the listing as needed just by logging in and editing the entry.

They stole borrowed my implementation of the flash flip book and audio commentary feature.  What’s more, what took me hours and hours of monkeying around and fiddling with they turned into a plug-and-play feature that every publisher can use to their benefit. Let that sink it for a second.  I am an IT professional in my full time job, so I know my way around things like web scripting, Flash and web hosting.  I managed to hack together Flash flip books of my product, record and audio commentary to go along with it and start putting those on my listings.  I can’t begin to tell you time and labor intensive it was.  OBS saw the idea, recognized it was a good one and made it *easy* for everyone to use.  They are innovating on behalf of publishers who would otherwise not have the time or expertise to experiment on their own.

Not to let OBS off the hook entirely, as I think they could improve their flip-book code to make it work with longer books.  Once you get over about twenty pages it just seems to choke.  I have never had a large book preview work right out of the box.  Also, I *hate* the measly three or four page default preview.  Should be longer.  Publishers; make your previews as large as possible.  At a retail store I can open a book and flip through the pages.  The online flip-books are there to re-create that process, so let customers see what they are buying! ( Now that is just my opinion, and it is hardly OBS’s fault, but I figured I’d stick that in there for all to see.)

Also, tied in with the look of the sales listing are the header and footer tools.  If you check out one of Skortched Urf’ Studios sales listings you will see a footer we spent a little time tweaking that includes links to our various categories, a pointer to this blog as well as a scrolling banner with a selection of our titles that links to them.  I can change the footer, create different ones for different categories and even stack different footers!  (I haven’t messed with the headers as much as I would like, but I assume I have as much freedom there as I do with the footers.)

Lets continue with promotion and talk about email.  OBS lets me email anyone who has ever purchased one of my products.  They let me email people who have one of my products in their wishlist.  I can sort, refine and finesse the report to people interested in a specific title, line or genre. Want to know what that kind of customer interaction costs?  If you wanted to do it on your own it would cost you about $20 bucks a month.  How do I know that?  Because that’s what it costs me to have a aweber account. OBS includes most of what aweber does for free just for having a publisher account.

There are also email newsletters sent out by OBS, banner ads on the OBS sites you can take advantage of and none of them will cost you money.  Just use your Publisher Promotion Points (PPP).

True, their featured reviewers are hit-or-miss.  Not on the actual reviews, but in getting them to post a review of everything they download.

Lets finish off the promotion section with how easy it is to create special discounts, send free copies and create bundles or even subscriptions. (More on the subscription option when we start talking about DrveThruFiction.)

Information.  Now lets talk about the data OBS gives me from my sales. I can run sales reports for the month all the way back to when I first started publishing.  I can sort the sales by how many per month or lump them into one big overall view.  This makes it easy to see what is selling the best, what lines need support and what just plain isn’t working.

That’s all well and good, but what about trying to wring more sales out of my existing catalog?  OBS has me covered there too.  I ran a report on Campaign Overlay: Fantasy Firearms and found out the following:

There are 43 people out there with that title in their wish list, and one fine fellow with it in his shopping cart.  Given that I have already sold 51 copies of the PDF that leaves 86.3% growth if I get all of those people to actually buy the title.  If I so choose, I can now create a special discount code and send it out to *just those* people with it in their wishlist!  So I did.  Several of them have chosen not to receive emails from the OBS system, but I still managed to get a discount code into the hands of 32 of those people who showed enough interest in that title to put it on their wish list!

The OBS email summary:

Sent 32 emails (out of 43 matching customers, 32 accepting mail).

So on the one hand I can blast an email to over 7,000 people when I target anyone who ever purchased one of my titles.  (Including free PDF’s I donated to the various charity bundles.) or I can narrow down my focus to an individual title and email a few dozen targeted customers.  Honestly, that is a very  impressive marketing infrastructure.

(Oh, and if anyone reading this wants to pick up a copy of Campaign Overlay: Fantasy Firearms for half off, click HERE.)

I can run a product analysis on any individual title, as well as see how many page views each title has and how many page views per sale the average is.  I know how many times I need to get eyeballs on a sales listing to convert it into a sale!  Did you know that for every six people I get to look at Black Tokyo -Tales of the Tatakama I make one sale?  That is my best preforming title so far as page views to sales goes.  My worst product takes over 2,000 page views to become a sale! That is a clear indicator that I need to take a closer look at the cover, description, sales listing, category filters and other metrics to increase that.

Summary.  So, putting all of that information together I have no problem saying that OBS is the hands-down winner when it comes to the RPG digital market.  Why don’t I think Paizo or WOTC will catch up?  Simply put; the OBS staff.  They didn’t put up a standard, off the shelf online store and run with it.  They have invested in coders who tweak and improve and add real-value features like the ones I’ve mentioned above.  Sure, it *could* happen but to me it would be like B&N catching Amazon; I just don’t see it.

[Yes, I know I haven’t covered the print program at all.  I’m still getting my feet wet in that area so I don’t have enough experience there yet.  The fact that they have the program is a big “Win” in my book, though.]

Areas for improvement. No, OBS doesn’t do everything right, no one does.  So what would I like to see them add or improve?  I love the product and publisher discussion forums integrated into the Paizo storefront.  I’d love to see something like that implemented into OBS.  Their staff and featured reviewers program needs a major overhaul.  The one best thing about Amazon is their reviews.  That sets them apart from just about all other online stores.  It builds a sense of community at Amazon.  I’d really like to see us capture something like that on the OBS sites.  I think the “discussion board” feature Paizo has might help along those lines.

DriveThruFiction. OK, I know they merged a couple of the niche prose sites into the new DriveThruFiction and I think its awesome!  Ebooks are exploding, and gaming related sci-fi, fantasy and horror is a natural fit. So what will help DriveThruFiction stand out from Amazon and the other “big dog” storefronts?  The same stuff I already talked about above!  Amazon doesn’t pay you whenever you want.  They don’t let you email customers with your book in their wish list. Another thing Amazon doesn’t do is let you buy books in a serialized or subscription format.  Think War of the Burning Sky or War of the Dead.  Now transfer that idea over into a serialized novel.

It seems to be working for these guys, why not DriveThruFiction authors? Add in the royalty auto-payment tools and collaborations between authors is now easier than ever.

No, I don’t think that OBS will give Amazon a run for their money in e-publishing.  But I do think that they can carve out a nice piece of the market for themselves akin to what Baen is doing with their sci-fi and fantasy storefront.

A word of caution to early DriveThruFiction publishers.  I have noticed that some of the covers are pretty lousy.  Some of the descriptions are far too sparse.  It’s the same problem many small RPG publishers have too.  A good looking cover doesn’t have to cost a lot of dough.  Be creative.  Or, here’s an idea, go ahead and spend a little dough to get a decent looking cover!  With freelance artists all over the web, stock art sites like iStockPhoto and plenty of other resources a good cover really isn’t that hard or expensive.  I’d hate to see DriveThruFiction’s growth suffer because a bunch of “gold rush” companies sling up any crappy cover that belongs on a refrigerator rather than a book.

I’m excited for all the OBS has done in the past, and can’t wait to start using DriveThruFiction in conjunction with Amazon, Smashwords and other sites to get our fiction releases into the market.

These are exciting times to be a writer, a publisher and a fan in our industry!

-Mark Cathro
Owner/Publisher
Skortched Urf’ Studios

Time to get back on the publishing train. Back when Skortched Urf’ Studios started, we were doing near two releases *a week* for the first year. While I’m not planning to replicate that feat just yet, I do think we can be more consistent than we have been. And when I say that, I am not talking about Chris Field and Otherverse games. Hes been on a roll for the last few years, with no signs of slowing down. What I’d like to do is start matching his output with Skortched Urf’ Studios projects.

So what do we have in the pipeline? I have a Pathfinder project a freelancer pitched to me on deck. I made a few suggestions and he has been busily revising and adding to the idea. Look for that soon. Also, I am dusting off an idea I had even before we published our first product. I have some concept art already done, more in development and several free previews coming soon. I’m calling the setting “Pandora Rising”. It will be a kick-ass modern setting where we re-introduce magic and fantasy elements in an cool and interesting way. I’m leaning towards making the initial release for the Savage Worlds rule set. More info on that soon.

On the Traveller front I’d hard at work on a new line called “Augments & Upgrades” which will cover all kinds of cool stuff your character can spend his credits on. Think of it as the Cybernetics book on steroids. That will be a series of short PDF’s with each detailing a specific area of augments. The first one, detailing various power plants and incorporating the Drain mechanic carried over from some of Chris Field’s D20 Modern cybernetics releases, will be out soon and I’ll probably make that one a free release. Following that will be PDF’s that cover various types of augments grouped by type such as Appearance, Armor & Protection, Stealth & Surveillance, Weapons, Sensors etc.

While Pathfinder is all the rage these days, I haven’t done much for the system. I am thinking of updating all of our Adventurer Essentials PDF’s and adding more content for a Pathfinder re-release of each, as well as adding the ones that still need doing like the ten foot pole!

Add in some fiction writing and a few other ideas that aren’t quite ready to be released and it is starting to look like 2012 is going to be a busy year!

Oh, and if your still reading this, please take a moment to sign up for “The List” using the form on the right hand side of the site.

When we send out a customer email it usually goes to over 7,000 people! While I love the idea that I can reach that many gamers, and will continue to use the RPGNow mail feature, I also see the real value in identifying our “True Fans”. Signing up for our mailing list of your own free will is a sure sign of that. Lets face it, most of those 7,000 people are ones who purchased one of the charity bundles RPGNow has done in response to the many natural disasters that have hit over the years. We think those have been great and were happy to donate products, and will do so in the future. But that doesn’t translate into us being able to reach our fans specifically; hence “The List”!

If you are receiving this email it is because you have purchased some of our products in the past.  Unfortunately, I know that also includes several free items we donated to some of the disaster relief bundles RPGNow/DriveThruRPG/OBS have done in the past.  So some of you reading this *might* not to get bombarded with every new release we put out.  I get it, I’ve unsubscribed from a few lists myself.  But, naturally Skortched Urf’ Studios wants to keep an open line of communication with our fans, as well as fans of our imprint partner Otherverse Games.  So we have set up a second, opt-in only email  list specifically for you!

To sign up for “The List” please go HERE.

So what’s in it for you?  “The List” is for our true fans, and to reward them we will send out special discounts, occasional products that will never be available anywhere else, and inside information on our upcoming releases!

It’s our way of saying “Thank You” to the people that have helped us reach where we are now, and want to come along for the ride to where we are going next!

New Releases and Product Highlights

Otherverse America Revised Edition

Chris Field of Otherverse Games has taken his Otherverse America setting to a whole new level. Included in this MASSIVE revision of the Otherverse America setting:

283 Page Full Color Otherverse America Core Rulebook

132 Page Full Color Otherverse America Game Master’s Guide

Printer Friendly versions are also included.

Over 400 pages of lavishly illustrated content from the mind of Chris Field!

This title normally sells for $26.99 but for a limited time it’s on sale for $17.95; over 30% off! Buy your copy HERE.

We also released the PDF version of our first print product for the Pathfinder RPG:

Campaign Overlay: Fantasy Firearms

Introducing firearms into a fantasy setting requires more than just gunpowder used by Orcs and Elves. Draksmoke adds that fantasy element to the simple discovery that charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter go BOOM when you mix and ignite them.

Draksmoke is fantasy gunpowder. Made from the burning liquid dragons use to make their deadly flames, Draksmoke is a dragon’s breath weapon in powdered form. Few alchemists know the secret to producing true Draksmoke, and they guard it with their lives. Rich and powerful guilds have risen up around those that know the secrets: The Black Brotherhood, the Armigers and the Monopolist Consortium all trade in mundane gunpowder, powerful Draksmoke and newly forged firearms; each pursuing their own ends.

To make use of such a powerful substance, new weapons have been hammered out on the forges of the world. Only the finest steel tempered in the blood of dragons can withstand the power expended by Draksmoke. Naturally, new magicks have been conceived to protect warriors, kings, and knaves alike.

* Included in this Sourcebook: Four new player species
* 10 new monsters
* 11 new spells
* 2 new Clerical Domains
* 30 new feats
* Dozens of new weapons (both mundane and magical)
* and more!

Everything you need to bring real firepower to your fantasy campaign!

One of our Facebook fans had this to say about Fantasy Firearms:

“The book is awesome. I personally don’t use the Draksmoke elements, as in my world Black Powder/Gunpowder exists, but the book is an essential part of my PF games. I owned both “FF” PDF’s from RPGNow before I bought this, but there is still more than enough content here to buy this as well!”

The print version sells for $24.99, but the PDF can be had for just $10.99! Buy your copy HERE.

And some of our other recent releases:

-Skortched Urf’ Studios

1. Prudent dice rolling is required for party happiness and success.  They were right to berate the ranger for sucking.  Hopefully in the future said Ranger will suck less.  However the occasional death of a party member will remind everyone that dice rolls are important.
2. If your not cheating you are not trying.  Not every dice roll needs to be in the presence of the DM nor accurately reported.
3. Learn the rules of the game so you can successfully argue with the DM.  Getting the DM to capitulate can not only save the party from harm but can also pay good dividends in general party happiness.
4. Always write down an extra zero when told how many experience points you have been awarded.  This will allow your characters to get stronger faster and therefore survive more encounters.
5. Have a shape shifter that can only turn into small furry woodland creatures such as a titmouse, owl or other worthless creature.
6. Whenever anyone finds gold or silver coins, everyone should write it down; after a brief argument of who will take the treasure.  This will allow the group to gather wealth faster
7. Learn to bitch, whine and complain.  The average DM will not be able to tolerate such an assault to the ears for any extended period of time and will assuredly change the course of the game just to make the bitching stop.  If this is not working fast enough threaten to quit playing.

I’m not going to lie; all this has put a crimp on our publishing schedule. But I intend to crank it waay up once I get settled in up North. I’m already scoping out some freelance help. I’m shopping for a new computer. The one I have at home now is over four years old; that’s like seventy in computer years! I bought it with profits from the first Black Tokyo title! Anyway, I’m going to set up the new office and get cracking on some long overdue titles that need to be pushed out.

My final days are already planned out here. The last couple of days have been “goodbye” lunches from coworkers. Tomorrow is another. (I’m going to hit the game shop at lunch today!) Saturday will be spent teaching a women’s only NRA Basic Pistol Course at NRA HQ in Fairfax with my good friend who works there in the Education & Training division. Sunday is set aside for time with my parents. Monday the guy they hired to replace me shows up so I’ll have him for half a day after orientation, and all day Tuesday to continue his training. Wednesday I’m taking off early to pack up the car and head North. I’ll drive as far as I feel like and stop at a hotel; then finish the trip Thursday to Boston where I will begin unloading the Relo-Cubes and cursing my ability to cram too much stuff into small spaces. I’ll have the long holiday weekend to unpack. The Tuesday after Labor day I start my new gig up there. (I was able to transfer within the same company I work for now, which is awesome!)

First, I finished doing all the work to the house and put it up for sale. After a whopping seven days on the market we had a cash offer! We settle on Monday. Tonight I’m having a couple of relo-cubes delivered. (Like PODS, only better.) Saturday I have several friends and some family coming over to help me finish packing. Sunday will be spent cleaning up the house. Monday morning we close!

I’ll spend the remainder of Aug living with a friend in Maryland and head up to Boston for the first weekend in September where we will unload the relo-cubes and move into our new apartment there. A few weeks back my wife and I signed a lease on the place, so that is good to go. It will be smaller than our current home, but until we decide the long term housing arrangements we think renting for a year or two is the best option.

So once settled in our new place the plan is to fire up the publishing schedule and move forward on some long overdue projects. In the mean time Chris Field has been putting stuff out at a furious pace.

I was very sorry to miss Gen Con this year but it just wasn’t in the cards. Next year for sure.