Secrets of Blackmoor wrote in Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg - Considering Investment:I was poking around the net and looking for people talking about Tonisborg and this popped up again.

I am always amused by the discussions between people who do not run a game publishing business, or any business for that matter. The comments are hilarious to me.

If you look at OD&D you get a prime example of a small publisher struggling to put out product. I can't recall the exact numbers, but let's say the first printing was for 500 sets of booklets. It cost them 1000 dollars.

ok, now the publisher is out 1000 dollars and has to recoup investment through sales. in the meantime, no one at the company is making squat. A couple months later after selling the sets at wholesale, they may have 6000 dollars - WOOOO!!!

Uh, even at 1970's value that is not feeding a lot of people.

So, instead of cashing out all that cash, they load it back into the production hopper and make more of the game. And so begins the production cycle of money goes out and money comes back in.

Thus when I see comments about us having made a "instant collectible" I just laugh. At the numbers we're producing no one is laughing all the way to the bank. I bet any other publishers reading this will agree. For us this is kind of a side business. Cash goes out from pre-orders and then when it comes back we pay authors and the company holds some cash in order to make more product.

Back in the day before internet sales the delay of cash to purchase product and fabrication times really slowed down cash flow. That is the greatest problem for small companies. I bet TSR would have loved to make way more books, but they just didn't have the cash on hand to meet demand.

Today, everyone is buying Print on Demand which I personally feel is low grade crap. Any company doing POD is not making a ton of money. They would need to sell on a scale of 100 thousand little POD books to make a decent living. Most are doing the game thing as a side gig.

Thus the instant collectible is not some grand scheme to fleece buyers, it's just how small print publishing works. We do not limit print runs at all. Print runs are limited through orders. If only 500 people pre-order, then only 500 books get printed. Thus when a print run is small, it is the nature of the market to dictate whether or not it becomes collectible. The publisher has no control over the after market value and they can't really cash in on that anyway. We were lucky to have some left over books on hand.

So yeah, greatly amused. Why, in my day, a cup of coffee cost 50 cents and a pack of smokes was a dollar!

hee hee hee I don't even go out for coffee often because I am so broke these days. Yet, somehow I must be sitting on piles of cash and working this nefarious scheme to limit production runs and create after market collectibility for the game books we publish, so that people who buy our books can make a profit.

Someone is selling a red hard cover on ebay right now for 300 and a black cover for 3k. I am not going to see any of that, but the market has already established that as its value. I have nothing to do with that.

aia wrote in Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg - Considering Investment:
I think diffently compared to gregory: marketing and sales actions of the first two publications go in a direction which is totally inconsistent with these last version...
You should not be amused if someone from this community of collectors says things like instant collectible about your book, this is an extremely negative alert...
Then, you are right to try other ways to make money out this book if the first ones didn't bring you at the expected level. The problem is that it is difficult to correct the marketing strategy when a book is sold with the value proposition "own one of the few copies of this book as it won't be printed in other versions...": if you accept my opinion, that is the main error so far...

dbartman wrote in Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg - Considering Investment:This post has wandered a bit from the original topic, so it might be helpful to understand the evolution of the printings of this product.

The first edition, first printing was initially part of the following Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/se ... f-dungeons

1st Edition, 1st Printing - Hardcover, Black, Contributor Version (25 printed, but at least one reference indicates 30)
1st Edition, 1st Printing - Hardcover, Teal, Standard Version (30 printed)
1st Edition, 1st Printing - Hardcover, Royal Purple, Standard Version (170 printed)

This was considered a limited-edition release.  200 were available to the public, with the 25 black versions for contributors.  The color wasn't necessarily important originally.  They were produced from the materials available.  These do not appear to have been intended as an "instant collectible", but more of an add-on to specific pledge levels of this Kickstarter.

The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg Kickstarter consisted of the book itself, and add-ons:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/se ... -tonisborg

The printings do get a little confusing here, as they are both mentioned in the pledge levels.

1st Edition, 1st Printing - "Mass Market" Paperback, B&W (?? printed)
1st Edition, 1st Printing - Softcover, Color (?? printed)
1st Edition, 1st Printing - Hardcover, Cardinal Red (170 printed)
1st Edition, 2nd Printing - Hardcover, Cardinal Red (454+ printed?)

What might have muddied the water a bit is that there appear to have been preorders and/or orders taken for the hardcovers and softcovers before, during, and after the Kickstarter.  Perhaps someone can confirm or deny this.

I couldn't find any discussion where it was indicated that there would be no additional printings, just that the print runs were limited, which is not unusual, especially when initially rolling out a product or through a Kickstarter.