Thoughts from a first time self-publisher Part 5: Projections and Planning
Hello again! This week is actually my last week of working full time. I’m a psychotherapist (LCSW) that specializes in trauma work. I love my work, but I also love my hobbies and family and am incredibly excited to be freeing up some time. For the next couple of months, I’m sure all that extra time will be eaten up with game design and preparing for this Kickstarter. Wish me luck!
Best Part of my week (so far): Super Snipers showed up in a BoardGameCo video! Skip to 23:00 to hear him briefly talk about it. It’s really exciting to see my game out there in the world and I can’t wait to see what Alex has to say about it. I’ve also had great success in connecting with additional reviewers for the second wave of the reviews.
Most stressful part: While connecting with reviewers and content creators has been the highlight, it’s also stressful. There are so many options (good problem to have) and being faced with both the logistical coordination of making sure each preview copy does the most work it can (see last blog) and the potential for additional paid content that may (or may not) have a bigger impact, is a lot to take on during my last full time week. That said, I think I’m handling it okay.
The Numbers:
As of Wednesday at 1pm compared to last week at the same time.
The Big Number: Nothing new spent yet but some expenses on the horizon. Still $21,960 invested in this project so far.
FB page- 121 followers. 122 (+1)
Public Group- 52. 53 (+1)
Private - 64. 66 (+2)
Pre-launch- 169. 187 (+18)
Email list- 512. 587 (+75)
Discord- 55 No Change
TTS- 110 subscribers. 113 (+3)
YouTube- 18 subscribers. No Change
Follow up on Reviewers from the last blog:
I’ve managed to find one additional Swedish reviewer and one in Croatia, meaning that high cost of shipping (about $80 one way) feels more justified as the game will get 3 reviews before making it back to the States. I may also have a second or third place for the copy currently heading to England.
This was something I didn’t get into in the last blog, but timing of previews and content is also an important consideration. I’m looking at the following plan:
1 Month Before: Release the Teaser version of the KS video
2 Weeks: Release the full KS video and one or two reviews
1 week before to the Launch Day: 4-6 Reviews
2nd Week of Campaign - Live playthrough event and 2-3 reviews. Get on Podcasts (still have to work this out)
Weeks 3 and 4 - 1-2 reviews a week.
The big push will be for Day 1 (as so much follows from that) but it’s important to keep exposing people to the game for the length of the campaign. If I can pull it off, this is all with 8 review prototypes, each hitting 2-3 reviewers and working with some reviewers who are able to do TTS only.
This Month’s Topic: Projections.
I had a request from one of the blog readers to discuss my projections for the campaign. Let me do my best to talk about the Super Snipers campaign specifically, while also providing a very basic blueprint for others to consider.
Sunk Costs: I am simplifying things (mathematically, financially, and psychologically) by dumping all of the following into this category: Art, Pre-marketing advertising, business costs, prototype and playtesting cost, pre-fulfillment reviews and content. Basically everything that I’ve already spent money on. These things are all part of the price of admission for the opportunity to get my game into the world in a way that it has a chance to be successful. It is not that I don’t care to recoup these costs, it is just that considering them as part of the “successful Kickstarter” formula muddies the waters and doesn’t take fully into account that many of these costs are investments in starting a company and may pay dividends down the road that aren’t directly related to the game I am going to launch.
Determining a price Point: There is a basic formula for determining the MSRP for your game. You take the “landed cost” of the game (what it costs you to manufacture and get to you/ your warehouse) and multiply it by 6. Sounds simple, right? (haha).
While you do want to land on that number (more on this in a bit), you also need to consider what the game will go for at retail and what your target audience is likely to see as a fair price. I had an enlightening conversation with a local FLGS owner about this topic. The current prototypes of Super Snipers use the Medium Stout boxes from the Game Crafter. He asked me what the MSRP was and I told him (based off of previous manufacturing quotes) that I was thinking in the $35 range. He relayed that customers picking up that size box - no matter what was inside - would be expecting to see more in the $25 range but that if I had the same exact components in a larger box (think Dominion or Azul), they would have no issue paying $45-50. Ultimately, with some of the changes that I am making to the game, the box size and component count will be increasing and I will be in a good position to hit my 6x’s landed cost and reasonable MSRP of $45-50 (decision is not final yet).
Last part about pricing - Bigger games require bigger investments but also have bigger profit margins and better ROI (return on investment) from advertising. You can expect about 20% profit from your game (the average, using this model). That means that spending $2.50 on advertising per customer makes sense for a $50 game where your profit is $10 (you net $6.50 you otherwise wouldn’t have had). But it makes no sense for a $10 game where you now lost 50 cents.
Manufacturing: I’ve gotten quotes from several manufacturers. There are several who are able to do print runs as low as 500 which is a great fall back option if I barely fund. My approach is to come up with a bare minimum version of the game that represents what I would want people to get in the event I just fund and get quotes for that for 500, 1000, 1500, and 3000 units. Then, I get a quote for those same quantities of the final game if I am able to hit all the planned stretch goals. I base my landed costs estimates at 1500 of version 1 and 3000 of version 2, adjusting so that they are close in price. 1500 units is where you start to see significant price breaks, but 500 and 1000 are good fall back options to understand.
What does that mean?
Well, I got the following quotes for Version 1:
500 - $11.37 each (ouch)
1000 - $7.68
1500 - $6.46
Version 2:
1500 - 7.50
3000 - $6.14
Keep in mind that part of the plan is for most of these to sell through retail/ distribution. Getting 300-500 backers would be amazing. Getting 1000 would be a dream. Either way, I need to look beyond the Kickstarter backers and use these funds to manufacturer well over those numbers to be able to make a profit. At the same time, if I get only 200 backers, I can’t assume that I could then sell 800 more in retail and would have to take the loss and order at the 500 level.
Back to landed cost… so let’s round up to 6.50 from the Version 1500 quote. To that, I need to add what it will cost per unit to get the games to my fulfillment partner(s). This is a huge area that others have written extensively about, so I will simplify here, I talked with a logistics and fulfillment expert (Bridge Distribution) and determined that it would cost me about $1.50 per game to get overseas to the fulfillment centers. There are a million and one things that could affect that number by the time the games are actually manufactured, so, for the sake of argument, let’s round that to $2, and consider my landed cost per game to be $8.50.
Landed Cost = ‘s 8.50 x 6= $51
And I may subsidize that cost some to bring it below $50. Still need to decide. For the sake of argument, let’s stick with $50 as the cost of the game.
Assuming that I don’t subsidize shipping costs (not a safe assumption) that means that I would be making a “profit” of 41.50 on each game I sell. That sounds amazing, right? We are all getting ripped off by these game publishers, right? Not so fast…
Let’s assume the following, very optimistic picture:
600 backers
$30,000 raised
Additional 200 copies to retail
All stretch goal content unlocked
I go for a 1500 print run
From that $30,000:10% in fees: -$3,000 (KS and CC fees)
Manufacturing bill of -$11,250 (1500 copies)
Fulfillment costs of -$4000
Additional advertising (includes free copies to reviewers, etc) -$4000
Retailers buying 200 copies of the game at 50% (standard): +5,000
Remaining $: $12,750
Okay, now let’s bring back in those sunk costs that we will just round up to $23,000 for simplicity’s sake. Everyone has their games at the end of a very successful Kickstarter and I am $10,250 poorer.
But what can I do with the remaining 700 games??
I will come back next week to finish out this topic. Thanks so much for reading and please subscribe and comment if you are finding this useful!
Until next week,
Galen.
