Sunday, September 6, 2009

Weekend Sale and Bad Reviews

First, the 20% discount at RPGNow and the Paizo.com store is still in effect through the end of tomorrow (September 7th). The sale is actually going very well for me as sales on the Paizo.com site have been particularly good. I am sure this is partly due to the fact that my products are still very new there and largely due to the inclusion of the sale in the Paizo.com store blog.

The second thing is that I had a bad review for one of the products on the Paizo.com store. Now, I am not going to complain about it (much) as one of the comments in this one is actually a bit helpful in a decision I have been struggling with.

The City Streets locations all use the "Sparks" introduction, a system I used to provide generic information that GMs can more easily turn into game statistics for their game system. I have been considering removing that introduction (it is available as part of Gior's Glassworks, a free download) and providing it as a free download (in addition to Gior's) for quite a while now. Two publishers have told me NOT to do this, that I should have the generic info available for each location.

I now have several reviews and comments that really seem to indicate that I do not need this for the electronic products. I will still need to put the introduction into any products I print or sell through a Print-on-Demand (POD) service. The publishers that were adamant about me including it were largely print publishers before selling products online so they'll have a very different perspective than true electronic book customers.

So, the short of it is, even bad reviews can be helpful with decision-making. Some of the other comments (not enough crunch, and the price point) are probably not going to change things much. I am considering adding some prices to products and services (being sold in a particular CS location) in the future, but then it gets difficult to decide what system to use. While the "standard" RPG fare uses copper, silver, and gold pieces, there are a number of games out there that use different systems. When you get an email thanking you for not having that information you have to balance that against a review saying it should be there.

I do have a few products planned that will have prices in, because I think they should be there, I still haven't decided how to price those items though.

All of these ideas are bouncing around in my head as I look at making some significant changes to the layout that I use for the CS products. I am thinking about trying to move to a somewhat "slicker" look and this process is undoubtedly chewing up a lot of the time I could be using to actually make more products!

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