The business of publishing

[aarond]

On the business side of boardgame publishing, what are some of the target numbers that important to know?

For example:

What margin is typical for a publisher to aim for?
What is normally included at a particular price point? e.g. A $150+ game should have mini’s instead of wooden tokens.
How do you work out how many units you need to print and hold in stock to keep up demand?

Looking from the outside I’ve noticed that a lot of games that were lunched on kick starter have a hard time managing demand after their original printing. It would be good to have some knowledge of how to avoid some of the possible pitfalls of being a publisher before and after release.

[Yann_Burrett]

It’s hard to get hard and fast numbers here, largely because every publisher is going to have a different idea of what a profit margin should be. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding methods further complicate things, because one way that people get interest for their upcoming games is to cram it with features and minis and everything else.

If you’re interested in self publishing your game, I can recommend the blog at Stonemeier games (and they’ve also got a really good book on the subject). We touch on if you should crowd fund or self publish in section 3, buthonestly the best plan would be to sit down with a spread sheet and a business plan and do a cost/benefit analysis.