Monday 19 October 2020

I Want to Break Free


God knows I want to break free...from Drive Thru RPG.

Yes, I said it. I hate that site. I hate publishing through it: the eye-watering royalties (30% as opposed to the 3% you might get with a non-RPG-related competitor), the fact that it doesn't provide instant access to those royalties but forces you to wait, and - perhaps, irrationally, the thing I hate about it most - the fact that it seems to think I am a Spanish-speaker and doesn't apparently have a setting to switch my display language back to English.

It's not that I object to any of the political decisions or non-decisions that it has made. It's that it takes us for a ride in terms of pricing - for both consumers and publishers - because it is a quasi-monopoly. And the only reason that I can think of as to why this should be the case is that we have a misplaced loyalty to it: a species of geek social fallacy that says, "Because this website unashamedly and unabashedly makes clear that it relates to my weird hobby, there is a rebuttable presumption that I like and will use it."

Well, it's time to stop liking and using it. There are better options. I've always been satisfied with payhip; there are plenty of others. Use them instead. 

20 comments:

  1. is itch.io a viable option for you?

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    1. Possibly. I don't really play computer games anymore so I don't know the ins and outs of it.

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  2. I don't want to be annoying but I would like to ask the same question as msilver. I don't know anything about itch.io on a publishers' stand-point but a lot of great tabletop games can be bought there and I think it would be wonderful to buy Yoon-suin second edition there, but I am an ignorant customer speaking here.

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    1. See above. I wouldn't rule it out or in yet!

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  3. Personally I would add it to itch.io and dtrpg in the hope to get more sales (you can always price dtrpg up to get the same return).

    But I have to say that a 30% cut is more common than you would believe for providing a platform. Apple and Google charge that for apps, and for games it is very similar with a cut of 30-20% depending on sales volume and store.

    Personally I think it is quite high, but then you also get promotion and visibility ...plus there are no viable alternatives.

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    1. It's the 'no viable alternatives' thing that I want to challenge. There are, and they charge a lot less than 30%. Payhip is 3%. Selling directly through my website via squarespace is 3%.

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  4. I completely respect your decision, and generally buy my rpg books on whatever platform they're available on.

    I will say that as a consumer, Drive Thru is very convenient. Having a single site with (most) of my books available for download is amazing. Looking at my library and opening a book I've never read before and got in a bundle is fun. I don't think it's (only) loyalty - all else being equal, I would like everything to be on dtrpg. Given that it's not the case, I don't mind losing some convenience for the sake of writers

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  5. DTRPG is valuable to me not out of general loyalty but because it lets me make any money at all.

    People don't buy my books on DTRPG because that's the only place they can be found; people buy my books on DTRPG because they were already there and found my books while they were searching for something.

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    Replies
    1. How do you know that? Genuine question.

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    2. I have an off-DTRPG presence, including a couple of blogs, but there's no connection between the (pretty minimal) activity on my blogs and my sales on DTRPG, and no sign of blog --> DTRPG travel.

      The only thing that actually influences my sales is posting something new, because then folks see my thing on the front page, decide to buy it, and go through the rest of the store (which is why my strategy ended up being "make lots of little things")

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  6. Weirdly enough my DT account was stuck in Spanish for about two years, but I can't remember what I did to get it back to English. I certainly never did anything to set it to Spanish in the first place either.

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    1. It is not a major inconvenience or anything because I know what all the buttons and links mean, but it is I think symptomatic of a company which is a quasi-monopoly and doesn't have a big incentive to do the basic things right!

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  7. Thank god I pirate everything.

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  8. Lol. My account switched over to french about 2 weeks ago. I guess there's no hope of it switching back anytime soon...

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  9. There is a way to switch the language back... but I forgot what it is..

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  10. Wait, this might be too simple, but is it the language button? On the main screen scan right down to the bottom and its on the bottom bar on the left. A drop down menu.

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    Replies
    1. No - I tried. It works briefly but as soon as you click on any internal link it reverts back to Spanish.

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  11. ==I Want to Break Free

    Reading just the title I thought you were going announce your womanhood.

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  12. You should contact Jacob Hurst of Swordfish Islands or Matt of ExaltedFuneral and see if either would be willing to host books on their sites.

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