One thing I am curious about is how you actually go about getting your books into brick and mortar stores. I popped over to London from Germany recently and was disappointed to find zero Traveller books in stock in the stores I looked. It appears mail order is not a problem, but physical shelfspace is rare these days.
Distribution for RPGs is not... completely awesome these days. To give you an idea, two decades ago, more than 80% of all our sales were through distribution. Today, they are less than 10%, and we are by no means alone in this. We have spoken to other similar-sized publishers and they are seeing the same thing. There are several reasons for this, but much of it comes down to the fact that the distribution system is... not great.
Now, this is not all bad, not by a long shot. You have to sell two and a half books through distribution to match the revenue by selling one direct, and that is before you take into account the greater costs of selling via distribution (principally the printing costs of those two and a half books). Add to that, the likes of Traveller is more popular than it has been for
years, and this is part of the reason why things are looking sunny for gaming companies at the moment.
Now, this is not stunning for your local retailer, obviously, and we do make efforts to support them. If a distributor steps up to the plate (as opposed to moving the core books, with the definition of 'core' being highly variable), then we will happily deal with them - a new distributor set themselves up earlier this year in the UK, but they are small at the moment and will take time to get properly going. We also deal with some retailers directly when they approach us. You will find us well represented in the likes of Leisure Games, Games Shop of Aldershot, and others. The same applies in North America, where retailers can deal directly with our warehouse on very good terms.
In a nutshell, the current system is not brilliant. We have found a way to survive that turbulence, as have other publishers, and we will deal with any retailer who approaches us... but things are not awesome for them.
