It had happened twice in a row, these six-figures: Surely I had somehow become one of the chosen few. Surely there were writers who had gotten the memo about how advances worked, and the ins and outs of publishing. What came after was beside the point. Someone has to be on the bestseller list, win the National Book Award, have the big movie deal.
Did anyone working with me — agency, publishing team — tell me that a sumptuous advance was not something I should depend on or get used to? Did anyone in the publishing house take me under their wing and explain to me how the company made decisions about future book deals? Did the publisher tap a more seasoned author on their list to mentor me, as many major corporations encourage within their companies? Did the MFA in writing program that I was part of, in any way, arm me with the knowledge to protect and advocate for myself in the publishing world?
I donated large sums of money to organizations I cared about, and delighted in the feeling that I was making a real difference. Did I pay off my student loans? No, though I made a few large payments. Did I set money aside for retirement? Right now, I had to suck the marrow out of life — and invest heavily in trying to build my author brand. And no one said I should be buying fancy cocktails.
That was all my choice, a combination of an almost manic pursuit of joie de vivre Fitzgerald would understand! I figured they had cracked the code — swag, website — and I just needed to follow suit. Despite making some poor choices, I did try very hard to do right by this unexpected reversal of fortunes. The school where my husband taught had a financial planner that offered services to teachers, so we met with him and his partner, but it was obvious they only wanted to sell us life insurance.
Our tax guy told us what to write off, but we had no idea what we were doing. No writer I knew had someone they trusted for financial advice, and our unconventional earnings made getting clear advice very difficult. I lived in Brooklyn, a borough of one of the most expensive cities in the world. While I was buoyed by the very small, very occasional foreign book deal, this was it until there were more books in the pipeline. What could I have done differently? I could have opted to move to a city that was less expensive, certainly.
I could have chosen not to quit my day job, but it would have been tough. I had five books under contract at once, plus the enormous task of building and maintaining an author brand. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive. Original electronic format These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable.
Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format.
Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality. See all titles Need help? Common Questions FAQ. Submit Suggestion.
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Original electronic Scanned image These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.
The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable.
Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background. For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book.
We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive. Original electronic format These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable.
Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Monsters typically draw one card, but if they're particularly fast or slow, the GM should draw two cards and keep the highest or lowest. If a PC draws a joker, the difficulty of all their rolls this turn is reduced by 1; if a monster draws a joker, the difficulty of all rolls made against them this turn is increased by 1.
Minions are usually abstracted away in Tricube Tales, but they're a major part of Saga of the Goblin Horde, so I recommend adding a new mechanic for them: Gang tokens. Each player starts with three gang tokens, and they can increase this maximum with advances in exactly the same way as karma and resolve i. Gang tokens are usually recovered at the beginning of each adventure unless the boss has the opportunity to recruit replacements during the session, at the GM's discretion.
Meat Shield: If physical damage from a challenge roll would lead to the loss of one or more resolve, the player can spend one gang token instead. Shenanigans: At the beginning of each scene, you can recover one karma token by rolling d6 on the Shenanigans table and narrating an appropriate effect. Loner: This boss doesn't have any gang tokens, and can never gain any. However, they begin with 4 karma and 4 resolve tokens, instead of the usual 3. Each goblinoid race has a specific advantage that can be used like a perk, and a disadvantage that can be used like a quirk.
Use the descriptive text from Saga of the Goblin Horde to get a better idea of what each race is like. Use the flavor text from the Savage Worlds powers and trappings as a guideline for determining what your character can do. However, I'd personally suggest keeping things simple: allow players to choose a general style of magic, such as pyromancy, shamanism, etc, and pick one Magic Limitation for it.
Don't bother tracking individual spells. Players can make a note of their knick-knacks for flavor purposes if they wish, and even incorporate them into the descriptions of their actions, but don't bother applying specific mechanical effects. If a player desperately wants their knick-knacks to provide an actual bonus, ask them to take a perk for it one perk for all their knick-knacks should be sufficient, there's no need to take a separate perk for each knick-knack.
It must be stressed that these figures have very limited value when viewed in isolation, because many other factors come into play -- the page size, the font and layout, the amount of artwork, the utility and complexity of the product, and so on.
However, when combined and averaged, these figures can at least give you a feel for the sort of price range SWAG products typically sell for, and by comparing your product with other products of similar size and content, you can get an idea of what customers are willing to pay. I should also stress that this post is not intended as a criticism of other people's pricing! There's quite a lot of variation between publishers, and I think that's great because it allows us to compare and optimize our strategies.
In time, I imagine we'll see products start to align more closely in terms of price -- but SWAG is still relatively young, and it'll take time to establish a set of norms. More information about designing and selling decks can be found here.
My Pricing Strategy. My own approach to SWAG pricing has been to pick a nice round number that falls in the range of cents per page, not counting the cover, credits, or table of contents.
In the case of my Fantasy Archetypes, I also didn't count the duplicated pages each character had a male and female illustration on a separate page, but the text was practically identical for both versions. For larger books, I'd gradually reduce the price per page, to a minimum of around cents per page. Of course, I'm still trying to get a feel for different pricing and marketing strategies, so I may well end up changing my mind in a few months. But at least this gives me a rough figure to work with.
There is a middle ground though, something I keep meaning to try -- you can give a product a fixed price, but also upload the full PDF as a "custom preview", then in the product description invite people to download it for free or pay a dollar if they like it.
Only those who choose to pay will be able to rate or review the product. You may have noticed some SWAG products have a medal.
These are awarded based on the total number of sales including PWYW, as long as the customer paid at least 1 cent. It doesn't matter how much the customer paid, only that they paid something , so free downloads don't count. Note that an order containing multiple copies of a product only counts as one sale. By contrast, the "Hottest" lists are based on how much money your products have earned over time based on the date they were first made public.
This is why newer products tend to jump to the front of the hottest list, and then gradually slide back down. Whereas cheaper product might make more sales and thus earn a higher medal , expensive products tend to do better in the Hottest list. But at the same time, I found myself chafing at the limited storefront interface, and so I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the different options available to publishers and see how they compare.
Being an Ace is the most versatile option, but you have to email PEG to negotiate permission for the license. These licenses are granted to people , not products , and the requirements vary from person to person. Aces can sell products on DTRPG or on other sites, they can use Kickstarter and other crowdsourcing programs, they can use Patreon, and so on.
Aces can also use " Licensee Authorized Material " from the core rules and companions in their products, and they enjoy a lot of promotional support from PEG. Fan licensed products don't require explicit permission, and their existence is mostly ignored by PEG, which can be both a curse and a blessing. Fans can distribute anywhere they like including on DTRPG using a full publisher account , but their products must be released for free -- they can't even make them PWYW.
This obviously rules out a direct print-on-demand option, although as a last resort you can always do what I did for Saga of the Goblin Horde, and release a print-ready PDF and printing instructions. SWAG publishers have access to additional art assets although it seems Aces can use these assets too , and can offer print-on-demand products although this has to be done manually by an OBS service rep, SWAG publishers can't do it themselves.
SWAG products seem to have a little more wiggle room than Aces when it comes to content, but not as much creative freedom as Fan publishers. SWAG doesn't allow you to track or email your customers not even to notify them when you've updated a PDF , which makes it very difficult to inform your fanbase when you release something new.
It also doesn't allow you to view sales reports, sales sources, pending purchases, page visits, cross-publisher sales, or any of the other valuable marketing data available to regular DTRPG publishers -- you can only view the raw number of sales and total earnings between two dates.
Finally, although you can still list yourself as the author of a SWAG product, PEG will always be listed as the publisher, and you don't have the option of designing and customizing a publisher page to help build your brand.
These limitations probably won't matter to a casual Savage Worlds fan hoping to sell one or two small products, but for someone planning to get into serious publishing, it's likely to become a deal-breaker. SWAG also falls short when it comes to sale options. You cannot set an "original price" for products which is how DTRPG publishers display discounts in red text with the original price struck through.
You can't opt-in or out of site-wide sales those are entirely up to PEG , nor can you run your own sales.
Finally, SWAG doesn't have access to royalty tools. This is a useful feature for DTRPG publishers, as it allows them to offer contributors a cut of the sales, or split profits with co-authors, or even offer other publishers a percentage when writing for their system or setting.
DTRPG publishers can distribute their products anywhere they like if they have a non-exclusive license, and even those with an exclusive license can sell their PDFs from their own website if they wish, or sell their printed products anywhere they please.
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