POD Thoughts

[Matt C.]

Those are some really cool ideas Sandy. Do you think it would be good for that sort of start up to partner with some FLGS to sell to foot traffic as well?

[Sandy]

Hi Matt,

Partnering with a large FLGS is an excellent idea. It gives the club operators a working location-- they can rent back room space to place the printing press and binding gear. And the FLGS can then carry print books that no one else does. Done right, it could be akin to Forbidden Planet in NY, a sort of cult haven for shopping. Done poorly, the store owner is only 'out' backroom space, in the sense that they receive rent at the cost of not being able to use that space for other purposes (like running a gaming room).

A related idea was discussed years ago-- allowing any FLGS to carry the entire stock of a PDF outlet (DriveBy, RPGMall, whatever).

Early in the PDF revolution, people hoped that someone would make a kiosk for FLGSs where customers could get a CD burned locally of any PDFs and the FLGS thus would get a cut. This never got anywhere because (pick one or more):

a) FLGSs didn't think PDFs were going to be big
b) PDF publishers feared piracy (by the FLGS or otherwise)
c) someone has to front the development and deployment of the kiosks
d) someone has to manage and track the kiosk money and payouts each month

So there were some issues in attitude, and some in logistics. When POD began to be common, the same idea was floated-- imagine all of RPGNow's stock available in book form at any FLGS that agrees to operate a kiosk. But the costs and labor to operate one-off POD still make that one iffy, even ignoring all the issues with the above CD burning setup.

We're at an interesting point now where any FLGS that wants to, can carry print copies of any PDF RPG that is also available via lulu.com or similar. All they'd need to do is arrange a pre-purchase discount from the publisher. An FLGS could thus cherry-pick a handful of PDFs title to carry as retail.

I think the main factor limiting this is that a single FLGS just doesn't have much reach, so carrying a handful of products as special orders is not cost efficient (relative to the other constraints on their time and cash). In a perfect world, it'd work, but if the choice is between special ordering 10 copies of 'Spirit of the Century' in the hopes of selling, or running a demo to move product you have in stock, the choice is easy.

So I think your idea of having the book club POD partner with a store gets around that, because now the store doesn't have to do much to gain access to titles not available at other stores. The Book Club can just print up a few extra copies each month for the store to offer. I hope, if anyone starts a club, they use your idea!

Cheers,
Sandy

[Guildofblades]

Hi Sandy, All,

Allow me to introduce you to the Guild of Blades Retail Group's first "Copy & Print Game Store".

http://www.guildofblades.com/gobstor...heights-mi.php

Its been open a bit over 3 months now. We run our POD operation for books and custom playing cards from this location. Pardon, as a few of the photos are now a bit dated, as we continue to build out more shelving and pack in more inventory, so things are changing weekly here.

Locally, we offer PDF printing in the store for any customer that can prove valid ownership of any PDF which isn't bundled with any sort of restrictive license which would prohibit our ability to print and bind it for them. We also have working relationships with a number of small press publishers where we print their games (RPGs and card games) on site for retail sale.

And yeah, we print about twice as many PDF books currently as sell books over the counter.

This store concept is still in its infancy and for the now, we have just this one store, so its going to be a while before the business model can have any meaningful impact on the industry. But check with me again when we have 5-10 stores...

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com