Originally posted by Dalton:
The reason retailers do not like non-standard sized books is that they all envision having to store these products for years before actually selling any. It is easier to store/pack/ship standard sized books.
If you look at the other products carried at a FLGS, you will find that retailers do NOT care about format. Otherwise EVERY product would be the same shape/size. CCG's, CMG's, Models and dice would all be the same shape. It is obvious they are not.
Spurious logic. All those other things are (a) small and (b) easily storable and easily displayable in their own little plastic boxes or display cabinets.
Books are a different beast. I'm not telling you why *I* think retailers don't like nonstandard books, I'm telling you why RETAILERS don't like them. These are reasons that THEY have sent to companies like SJG. You might think there's a different reason all you like, but at the end of the day you're not someone trying to sell RPGs and you're talking with your own assumptions.
Retailers don't like nonstandard book formats. That's from THEIR mouth, not mine. Accept that and we may get somewhere.
They keep selling out and doing a new production run. That is without alot of marketing and with both shipping and production delays. Customers love the small compact format.
Doesn't tell yoy anything. First, them "selling out" might just mean they're making a tiny production run. Second, THEIR customers may love a 'small compact format', but most of the millions out there who buy RPGs evidently don't. If people really hated large books then it stands to reason that they wouldn't buy them and publishers would be forced to go back to smaller books. And yet, that doesn't happen.
Walk into a FLGS, three or four different product tins are sitting beside the cash register. From D&D counters to dice.
All of which are small items. All of which can actually FIT on the counter next to the cash register. Try putting book displays there and you'd be able to fit two or three at most. Try putting minis, dice or whatever and you can fit about 5 or 6 different types right there, all of which shift in large quantities.
The 'All RPGS have to have the same format' argument is a spurious one at best. The better argument is 'RPG's have to have a low enough production value that a teen/pre-teen will purchase one on a whim'.
Nonsense. People on this thread need to get it in their collective heads that THE GENERAL RPG MARKET DOESN'T WANT THE THINGS THAT THEY WANT! RPGs with 'low production values' simply do not sell in any significant quantities now. People want glossy hardbacks, they want full colour artwork, and they don't mind paying for them. That's how reality is. The one thing they do NOT want in their droves is 'low production values'.
I know people who play magic the gathering and vampire: the eternal struggle and they use rule books a quarter the size of the LBB's with even more text then we origionally had in the LBB's.
And how often do you find those rule leaflets (because that's what they are, leaflets) on sale on RPG shelves? You're comparing apples and oranges.
So, content and cost are the deciding factors. Rules do not need fluff or pretty pictures. A starters guide, ref's guide and a solo and group adventure combined with some dice would sell. Combine it with a cd holding all the other materials would sell and be popular enough to not worry about format.
Again, if that was a good idea don't you think publishers would have done that by now? The fact that they haven't means that they understand what the market wants (because you know, they're the people who actually KNOW the market and KNOW what they're doing).
It just boggles my mind that people who clearly have no idea whatsoever how the RPG market works and what drives it thinks that they know better than the RPG publishers who have earned a continuous living through it for years. Marc Miller has been out of the loop for so long that he doesn't have a damn clue how the market works at all - and in any situation that's a bad thing. You can't make the market conform to your whims without some SERIOUS advertising and buyer manipulation, and Marc certainly doesn't have any of that. But then it would appear that he's not making T5 for general consumption, he's just doing it to appeal to a tiny crowd who just hang on his every word.
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