Quote:
Originally Posted by Zane
...I don't know how common these sort of stipulations are, but all I can say is ouch! Somehow a fixed percentage of profits would strike me as being more fair, even if they're collected up front.
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As Jason's pointed out, percentage of profits deals have their flaws, especially in small run publishing like RPG's. As for the direct purchase discount for copies after the "royalty" copies, it's in the ball park of the figures I've heard previously from RPG publishers as to what retail and distribution take out of the SRP.
Dan Harm's comments at Yog-Sothoth.com (see
here ) are interesting: Dan's hardly a gushing Chaosium fan boy (he's never shied away from being highly critical of them in the past when he feels he has grounds), but he knows publishing well and like Jason his assessment seems to be that it's a pretty good license.
The observation I'd make is that it's NOT a license for "casual" use - the product requirement (at least 1, no more that 4 books a year), the necessity for royalty copies BEFORE a product enters distribution and the discount for Chaosium purchase of further copies all mean that a licensee needs a robust business plan in place before they commit to this... And that's a good thing. It means that the casual, frankly deeply variable, stuff that glutted the d20 market is less likely but there's no impediment to non-commercial fan material that I'm aware of. And the license would have little or no negative impact (and as already said, probably looks quite appealing) to high quality "third tier" small press RPG publishers.
I think some additional clarity on how Electronic / PDF sales will work is needed (Chaosium currently only sell PDF's via DTR / RPG Now, who are the main PDF retailer - so how's that going to work if the original publisher is ALSO with DTR?) and also on true PoD services like Lulu - I assume they'd want the royalty copies up front, and that they'd expect the next set when sales roll over the next threshold - but there are some details that I'd want ironing out before signing up myself.
But I think that looks like a very good deal, and I hope it generates a lot of decent support for BRP.
Cheers,
Nick