Kickstarter/Publishing Lessons Learned

 

I am by no means the most prolific of one-man-band RPG publishers, but I have now run two successful Kickstarters and published, er, 4 or 5 things. This at least qualifies me to, if not give authoritative advice, at least rant semi-coherently in an extemporaneous way about the do's and don'ts of the matter. Perhaps some people will find it useful to do so.

• Pricing. I err on the side of value for money, but I wonder if I am excessively Thomist about this. In the Hall of the Third Blue Wizard is around 200 pages of content for £15 in print; Yoon-Suin 2nd edition will be 400 pages of content for £30 in hardback; The Peridot's first issue is 80 pages long and £6 in POD. But nobody ever, ever, ever, comments favourably on this approach. Meanwhile, people seem to amass vast sums in Kickstarter backing for (to me) absurdly slim volumes at very high prices (e.g. £28, not including shipping, for a 48 page 'book', which I saw recently). It is useless to complain, so I do not do so - I merely offer the observation to people thinking about pricing a product.
• Doing the packaging/shipping oneself. It is best not to if you have anything else going on in your life, like a real job and/or a family. It is feasible to do it, but comes associated with all kinds of unexpected ball-aches and hidden costs (like the printer delivering all the books to the wrong address, etc.). Best avoided if you value your sanity.
• Doing 'pledge management' oneself. This is much more doable. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Kickstarter launchers they need pledge managers (or marketers for that matter). There has evolved a very complicated ecology of companies who are basically parasitic on the existence of Kickstarter; I am sceptical that many of them actually add value, though of course I could be proved wrong.
• People will come out of the woodwork to give unsolicited 'recommendations' about how to do things; ignore them. (I'm aware of the irony of giving this advice in this form.) If they were such geniuses they would be doing it themselves.
• Stretch goals are fine, but probably best limited to one achievable and relatively cheap thing. My stretch goal for IHOTB was an adventure I had already 80% written; my stretch goal for Yoon-Suin 2 was a piece of art by somebody I know is reliable and good and quoted a good fee. That's enough. If the core of what you are offering is good enough, have faith that it is.
• Kickstarter's main benefit may be in advertising/promotion. A Kickstarter campaign provides you with what is essentially free advertising (well, almost free - you pay them 5%) for a month. This gets your product out there as very few other things can. Matters might be different if you have 10,000 followers on Twitter or whatever already, but almost no indie RPG publishing one-man-band has that, and the days when one could simply post something on G+ and receive endless reshares are sadly long gone.
• Human nature being what it is, people like shiny, good-looking things. There is a monkey- or magpie-like acquisitive element of our nature that leads us to gather prettiness to our bosoms, no matter how superficial that prettiness really is. Have at the very least a nice, blingy cover. I learned this with the first Yoon-Suin. Yes, people liked the content, but only after being snared by Matt Adams' art. 
• If you can write AND draw/paint then it is like having a license to print money, and if you can only do one of those things, it is might be worth practising really hard on the other so you can maximise your talent stack. Then again, what would David Ricardo say? I haven't made up my mind.
• Drive Thru RPG is a terrible blight on all of our lives, and takes a really almost criminal cut of royalties, but in the end it is the only game in town when it comes to the PDF market, because that is where all 90% of your prospective customers are making their purchases. It is important to use it, because you will get 'window shoppers'. 
• I could probably make a living doing this if I quit my day job and did two successful Kickstarters along the lines of Yoon-Suin 2nd edition every year. Make of that what you will.