Covers and Product Pricing
Cover Art Wallpaper Is In
We thought you all might like to see the cover art for both books from David Seidman today, formatted as wallpaper for folks looking to adorn their desktops. Click for the bigs!
Your Story
(Widescreen Version) (Non-Widescreen Version)
Our World
(Widescreen Version) (Non-Widescreen Version)
You’ve seen the first one for a few years now, but the second one just showed up in yesterday’s press release. We’re excited to get that scene from Blood Rites illustrated, and it continues in Evil Hat’s tradition of making sure we have an ape on another cover. Double victory!
Product Pricing
When we announced the release of The Dresden Files RPG for the upcoming Origins 2010, we had to put little “TBDs” (to be determined) for the pricing on the books. The reasons were several — we needed to figure out who our printer was likely to be (we’ve done that), and moreover whether or not we’d be going into distribution in order to get the product out to as many game-stores as we could (and as of yesterday, we’ve done that too).
Once those decisions were in hand, it was time to crunch numbers: we needed to make sure that every scenario we constructed made sure Jim got paid what he deserves, and that Evil Hat gets enough of a cut that it can make its costs back and, with a little luck and support from our fans, grow. It’s heady algebra, but we’ve run the numbers backwards and forwards at this point and we’re pretty confident we’ve gotten the prices down to where they’re competitive for the market, supportive of Jim, mindful of the fans, and friendly to us staying in business.
Which means we can share ‘em:
The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 1 – Your Story ISBN 978-0-9771534-7-3. Approx. 400 pages, 8.5″x11″, full color hardcover. MSRP $49.99.
The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 2 – Our World ISBN 978-0-9771534-8-0. Approx. 270 pages, 8.5″x11″, full color hardcover. MSRP $39.99.
No preorder announcement yet — but we are doing our best to stay on track for one that’ll land in the earlier part of our projected “sometime between early April and late June” range we’ve already been talking about. And as with all Evil Hat preorders, when we do kick that off, it’ll come with an immediately-available PDF download so you can sink your teeth in while waiting for the physical things to arrive.
And don’t forget — folks who order books from their local brick & mortar retailer at full price will be eligible for our PDF guarantee. The Alliance deal makes this even more possible, by getting the games into more b&m stores! Read more about this at http://www.evilhat.com/home/pdf-guarantee/
Umm, so clearly I need to get to Blood Rites already. (About a third into the series so far.) Nice covers. Impressive price points. (Seriously, how did you pull those off?) Things are shaping up impressively.
@Justin D. Jacobson, it’s all structured so we’re making single-dollar profits (but profits nonetheless) over the unit cost to print when the books sell into a retail channel via IPR (better) or Alliance (a touch less, but close), assuming we sell through the multi-thousand copies we’re getting printed up. Found a good, US-based printer to use, too, which is friendly to our delivery goals.
WOOOOO! I have to say I love all of the information you guys are giving out on the books- prices, page count, estimated dates for pre-orders, etc. Thanks for keeping everyone in the loop. You all are doing a terrific job!
The book prices are competitive with the D&D Trinity(PH, DMG, MM) and 1 or 2 other books off Amazon. I’m so happy. You guys are awesome…:)
I CAN HAZ PREOREDERS???????
@Lanodantheon, shooting for late April if we can hack it, but it may have to be May.
Good to read that info and to see those complete images (they’re awesome by the way).
May I ask you something Fred? Just out of curiosity, how many copies of each book are you planning to have printed? Don’t answer if you prefer that info to remain private.
Selenio.
@Selenio, we’re targeting at least 5,000 of each, but we’re keeping a close eye on things in order to get an idea if we should be revising that upwards.
@fred
WOW! Those are BIG numbers for what we’re used here in Spain… The usual numbers for us are more in the line of the 1,000 or 2,000 for RPG books.
Sometimes I wish I were american… though I love my country… really…
Selenio.
@Selenio, they’re big numbers, period. But we think the license has the ability to deliver.
You only have to worry about selling 4,999 of those. One of those sets has my name on it…if it doesn’t go ahead and do that now
Dibs! I’ll be putting some money aside now for these!
I’m definately down for a set!!! I can’t wait!
Speaking of profits, I’d like to know the best way to get the most money back in your pocket when buying these books. I’m always happy to support EndGame and IPR but on such a monumental project, I really want to see as much as possible returning to Evil Hat. When the dice hit the table, what puts the most cash in Evie’scollege fund?
@Sean Nittner, it’s all a question of who you want to help keep in business. A sale through any channel will help Evil Hat anywhere from solidly to hugely, so the question is how much you want to support your local game store vs. the publisher. We’re happy for folks to make whatever decision makes sense to them, personally, as a consumer. That said, if you want to talk about “give most cash to publisher”, ordering directly from the publisher is always going to put the most money for that specific sale in their hands (the Evil Hat webstore in this case). BUT that’s not the whole picture: if you order through a local store, you’re also going to be giving information to that local store that there’s interest in the product and that they should look into supporting that interest. To oversimplify that a bit, buying from a brick & mortar store doesn’t just create revenue for Evil Hat for that one sale, it creates the potential for multiple product sales at that store. So really, win/win. A brick & mortar purchase is a long-term win for Evil Hat, and a direct sale through our webstore (or IPR) is a potent cash-right-now shorter-term win. When we’re trying to make back our printing costs, I might have a slight preference for short-term wins, but that’s a very very slight one. I like me some retailers.
With a US based printer, we won’t have to have the usual “boat watch”. Thank the gods.
@Neal, bingo. You’ll also be more likely to find environmentally safer practices, etc, and it feeds money into the national economy where Evil Hat lives, so it’s good for the social and economic agenda.
When you’re talking pre-orders, does that include pre-ordering through a b&m store? If so, what would I need to do to get the pdf?
@gaelvin, if your store’s willing to team up with us directly to offer an in-store instant content preorder — something we’ve done with Endgame out in Oakland, CA before — you’ll be in good shape. Just tell them to contact us!
Short of that, I’m not sure how much in-advance PDF delivery we can do during the preorder period (since we’ll have other things eating our faces), but once we start selling the stand-alone PDF you can tap the PDF guarantee to do the job. We’ll see, though, nothing’s in stone yet.
Make that 4,998 copies still to sell. My money is going to evilhat the moment I see the preorder had gone live!
You may take my money whenever you are ready, Mr. Hicks.
I know of two guaranteed and one probable sales in my gaming group. I of course am one of the guaranteed. 8o)
Fred, are you going to be able to get these into the retail book distribution with the Alliance deal? It’d be great exposure, especially with Jim’s books being fairly well featured of late in most of the big bookstores I’ve been in lately.
@Chris Beilby — Quite possible. Alliance is connected to Diamond which is connected to the book trades. They’re looking into it.
Count me in as another definite buy even if i have to wait for the uk rpg companies to ship them to my door due to the int shipping costs being silly when the pre orders start
And I’ll just chime in to say that the interior looks just as spiffy as the covers. This is going to be an awesome product, and I wouldn’t be surprised if 5,000 doesn’t sell out quickly.
Is it true that the books are going to be sold together in a bundle for the first months? Because in my country the dollar currency is not favorable for importing stuff, and I might see myself forced to buy one by one, which is a shame, but life can be like that sometimes.
Regards,
ZOOROOS
@Zooroos, that’s the current plan, though who knows — we haven’t actually started the preorder yet. I do think that you’ll be saving on the postage fee impact by getting them both at the same time. Two five-pound packages tend to tally up to more postage than one ten-pound package.
Lordy be, I cannot wait! And, I have to say, I LOVE the fact that you’re using the fiery poo-throwing monkeys for a cover! I loved Evil Hat before (anything FATE and S7S are just fantastic), but you guys using those monkeys for cover material…wow…you just jumped up my personal ladder of favorite gaming companies to tie with the #1 slot (which is held by Ubiquity). So congratulations and THANK YOU for producing this game! (Oh yeah, and you can reduce your number of available books by one each, I am a gaurenteed sale!)
Any idea on what the Canadian price markup will be, or will that be a brick-and-mortar store call?
@Lakira, good question, but not one I have an answer for, alas. I don’t know what the standards are there (if any).