Briefing #2 and e23

[Nerroth]

Hi.


With the Klingon Armada and Module Prime Alpha precedents already out, the waters of pdf sales via e23 are gradually being tested.

When it comes to attempting something similar with Federation Commander, could colour versions of (some of) the Briefing #2 Ship Cards be candidates for sale?


If doing all of them at once would be too much trouble, perhaps each empire, or maybe doing a pair of empires at a time? Say, Fed-Klingon, Gorn-Romulan, Lyran-Hydran or whatnot.


Perhaps e23 could be a means of making the most of other ships which may never get laminated Ship Cards (Frax, M81 Pirates, or what have you) while avoiding a conflict with the ships which are released in modules and boosters already.

[Steve Cole]

Perhaps. Right now, I don't even know what the e23 sales are. Leanna does, but it's Sunday and she's not here. By tomorrow, I won't remember to ask. You might email me. That might trigger me to ask a question and forumulate a study of the possible situation.

[Nerroth]

Email sent.

[Steve Cole]

I wandered down the hall and asked Leanna, who said that she's busy with major orders from wholesalers and several days of mail order backlog from the snowstorm and that I should ask her later in the week.

[JEGoodrich]

On e23's site, you can go to the "What's Hot" link. Towards the bottom of the page is a customized hot list. Select ADB's name in the publisher list and it shows the sales.

Klingon Armada - 37
MPA - 28 (1 is my purchase, even though I have the print copy)

I've been checking on the numbers at times just to get an idea of how the sales are going. I'd like to see some more stuff up there.

[mjwest]

On e23's site, you can go to the "What's Hot" link. Towards the bottom of the page is a customized hot list. Select ADB's name in the publisher list and it shows the sales.

Crap! I wish I had known that back when I had a book there.

[Jean]

To put this number in perspective, I limited the search to July 1, 2009- and removed SJG from the list. ADB's books were then #1 and #5.

[unic]

I wouldn't pay for colour pdfs of the briefing #2 ship cards - too much effort to print them all out on cardstock and laminate them myself.

On the other hand, I would happily pay the going rate (... compared with boosters or such) to get ship cards for briefing #2 of the same quality as the ones I have from various other products.

As it is, I have bought briefing #2, but am unlikely to ever play with those ships, precisely due to the lack of high quality ship cards. This saddens me, as those ships do look interesting and seem to be requiring somewhat different tactics than the more modern ships.

[Steve Cole]

I am sure you would pay the going rate. The problem is, I cannot print them for the going rate. The minimum print run is several times the number that we would realistically sell, and we'd invest a ton of money, and lose money to boot.

It costs about $5000 for a minum run of 16 cards. Booster 2 has 72 cards, so that means investing $22,500 for such a print run. That would be 9 boosters or $90. That would mean selling 250 sets of 9 boosters, and I'm not convinced that would happen, and that's just to break even on cash flow, and assumes none of them are sold via wholesalers/retailers. The wholesalers/retailers would get mighty upset if they were not allowed to buy them, and we'd make only $40 for the nine-pack, requiring a breakeven sale of 563 packs, which just isn't what we're selling.

Two possibilities

1. Get Leanna to let me print one booster (8 cards) from booster 2. Call it booster 82-A. See if we sell 250+ copies by mail order (which could be tough as we don't sell 250 copies of anything by mail order, but if there were no store sales, maybe). If we do, we print the other eight booster 82s one at a time, and stop the first time one of them loses money. If we don't, you guys quit bugging me to do something that loses money.

2. Invest $25000 in machinery that would make the cards one at a time for about the cost we pay now for cards made 48000 at a time. The trick there is that this works only if that machinery also makes a ton of other stuff. I am actually looking into this.

3. Win the lottery and spent the millions doing stuff that loses money just because I am a river to my people.

[Predator06]

I vote #3 with the caveat that you stick a few green Orion slave girls on a raft and float them my way.

[jeffery smith]

yes #3 would be great but would be absolutely insane. while i appreciate you being a river to your people (and you and your team are!) i do not expect to see color cards for briefing #2 until you come up with a way not to lose your shirt over them.