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Liquid Communism posted:Whoever in their legal department decided this was preferable to just paying Foster his couple grand has given them a huge PR black eye to deal with. Especially given Disney's whole claim to fame is adaptions of public domain works. I strongly suspect WOTC's treatment of GF9 and Dragonlance is a much bigger black eye as it's a smaller community. Disney is perfectly able to ignore any PR issues merely as a cost of doing business.
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Nov 21, 2020 03:26
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My favorite was Disney dropping the Mando season 2 trailer when Boyega started complaining about how poo poo his experiences in star wars was
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Nov 21, 2020 03:58
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Dexo posted:My favorite was Disney dropping the Mando season 2 trailer when Boyega started complaining about how poo poo his experiences in star wars was Uhhh... Mando S2 dropped almost exactly one year after S1. And John Boyega’s story was in the news two months ago, which is 10 years in 2020 time.
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Nov 21, 2020 07:32
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Liquid Communism posted:Not so much. Disney just appears to be trying to brazen it out and claim they bought Lucasfilm and Fox's assets but none of the liabilities. The depressing thing about companies of Disney's size is they can always fall back on "Yes, we are definitely and comprehensively the guilty party here, but if we face any consequences whatsoever the economy explodes, so it's legal for us". WOTC doesn't have that.
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Nov 21, 2020 10:22
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https://twitter.com/machineiv/status/1329873065329582080 Olivia Hill appears to be preparing to experiment with breaking from the usual indie game distribution model (presumably including IPR) and moving forward selling physical books directly.
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Nov 21, 2020 12:05
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Kai Tave posted:https://twitter.com/machineiv/status/1329873065329582080 It isnt too surprising, really. Selling your product out of your garage is a time honored tradition, and splitting the profit with less middle men is obviously better when possible. It is mostly something that breaks when you have lots of SKUs or are doing crazy volume.
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Nov 21, 2020 12:50
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Liquid Communism posted:Not so much. Disney just appears to be trying to brazen it out and claim they bought Lucasfilm and Fox's assets but none of the liabilities. Does that really matter, given that they will still be perfectly fine when this blows over? I'm sorry if I sound defeatist, but Disney is one of those monsters that never seems to die.
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Nov 21, 2020 12:56
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admanb posted:Uhhh... Mando S2 dropped almost exactly one year after S1. What? I went back and looked I was mistaken though it was not a trailer. It was the media blitz with the release date for S2 But it was extremely timed for when that GQ story and other Boyega media blitz came out.
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Nov 21, 2020 13:19
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While I do think Disney would just try this regardless, they're doing this move in no small part due to the pandemic hurting their wallet and grasp on the industry and it's still really no end in sight just yet. Disney's hurting and this actually is helping hurt it more.
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Nov 21, 2020 13:20
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Lord_Hambrose posted:It isnt too surprising, really. Selling your product out of your garage is a time honored tradition, and splitting the profit with less middle men is obviously better when possible. The things she notes as a potential consequence/drawback of this are: 1). Not having books go on what shelves still carry RPGs means that more aggressive outreach and advertisement is likely to be required in order to get eyes on your stuff. 2). Sellers are probably going to need to raise prices to compensate for what will inevitably be fewer sales by volume. 3). International shipping, in particular, is going to be extremely fuckin rough. Now personally I'm fine with 1 and 2, I am especially fine with raising prices on games and have been pretty consistent in saying so for years and years now, and I think it's long past time that the RPG scene came to terms with the fact that they've been getting a bunch of unsustainable deals for too long and that poo poo's gotta change if they want to actually see more games, there's a distinct difference between EA finding a new way to soak money from gambling addicts to line a millionaire executive's pockets and an independent elfgame publisher wanting to make ends meet. And I don't really care about more advertising either, as much fun as I like to make of the Zweihander guy. The third part is the part that I realize doesn't affect me so I'm biased, I understand that the international shipping scene is rough all over and working with third parties probably made it easier to deal with that hassle and get physical goods to a broader audience. I don't really have a good answer for that one, unfortunately. I'd love for there to be a cost-effective way to ship games internationally, but not if it means someone has to die in the desert for it.
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Nov 21, 2020 13:59
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Sounds like indie RPGs need a European equivalent to Exalted Funeral, which is the big OSR store that does big commercial-level imports of stuff from Europe for NA customers. It’s not perfect - talking it over a bit, as a Canadian poo poo is enough of a mess I’m actually best off ordering UK stuff directly - but it helps a lot.
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Nov 21, 2020 14:12
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The economic upside of middlemen is the economy of scale. The economic downside of middlemen is the middlemen need to get paid. If the benefits of economy of scale are small enough that you can't afford to pay the middlemen a living wage then you're not actually seeing economy of scale, you're just externalising the costs of production onto the economically vulnerable.
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Nov 21, 2020 14:26
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Who would they start with novels instead of their RPG books?
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Nov 21, 2020 15:53
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If you ever want a lesson in distributors, buy Adam Scott Glancy a drink and ask him, but be prepared for a long lesson. He has some stories about the early days of Pagan Publishing.
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Nov 21, 2020 16:36
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Lord_Hambrose posted:It isnt too surprising, really. Selling your product out of your garage is a time honored tradition, and splitting the profit with less middle men is obviously better when possible. Splicer posted:The economic upside of middlemen is the economy of scale. The economic downside of middlemen is the middlemen need to get paid. If the benefits of economy of scale are small enough that you can't afford to pay the middlemen a living wage then you're not actually seeing economy of scale, you're just externalising the costs of production onto the economically vulnerable. Which I suppose is why PDF and POD works so well; it's got all the time-saving benefits of using a middleman, plus tech support for downloads/sorting out print issues will 99% be down to the PDF/POD storefront you use rather than you, plus nobody needs to keep a stockpile of unsold books in their garage, plus POD is pretty solid these days and if you want to offer a version with production values that POD can't match, that's what Kickstarter's for. You lose out on chance purchases from people browsing their FLGS, but a) a ton of FLGSes of my acquaintance don't even stock indie RPGs so you weren't getting chance purchases from them anyway and b) of those that do stock indie games, I have literally never seen anything that got really prominently displayed unless it was something which had already attained a certain amount of buzz from online word of mouth, so unless you are an established name who has that sort of word of mouth you're probably only going to get minimal random purchases anyway and there's much better ways of getting your game in front of potential buyers' eyes than hoping they take the time to really dig through a small shelf at the back of their FLGS shop and spot your labour of love amidst a ton of other labours of love. CitizenKeen posted:Who would they start with novels instead of their RPG books?
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Nov 21, 2020 18:59
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paradoxGentleman posted:Does that really matter, given that they will still be perfectly fine when this blows over? Its absolutely not going to matter in the long run, Disney's a full on megacorporation at this point and the only ones harmed will be creatives they exploit.
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Nov 21, 2020 19:56
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Arivia posted:Sounds like indie RPGs need a European equivalent to Exalted Funeral, which is the big OSR store that does big commercial-level imports of stuff from Europe for NA customers. It’s not perfect - talking it over a bit, as a Canadian poo poo is enough of a mess I’m actually best off ordering UK stuff directly - but it helps a lot.
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Nov 21, 2020 20:27
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UnCO3 posted:Are there POD services that don't need ISBNs? I looked into this recently cause I'm planning on doing my first print copies of a game, but the one (big) company I looked at needed them and I've heard elsewhere that they're kinda unnecessary. https://blog.lulu.com/the-business-of-self-publishing-isbns/ EDIT: This overview suggests that Lulu may be a bad choice if your intent is to get your books into distribution, and is bad as an EBook platform. https://blog.reedsy.com/lulu-publishing/ On the other hand, I think Lulu should be fine if your intention is to link people direct to Lulu to buy print copies and or/do direct sales on your website and then order books for people via Lulu. And again, indie RPGs are a small space with lots and lots of competing titles, if you are selling a print book it is likely because someone already looked you up online and got actively interested enough to click through to Lulu rather than you popped up on someone's Amazon recommendations. In other words, if your book gets enough traction that a lack of distribution access is becoming an actual hurdle or limiting your growth significantly, then it's probably time to sort out an ISBN anyway, and so far as I can tell nothing obliges you to stay on Lulu forever if you want to give your book an ISBN later on. Warthur fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Nov 21, 2020 |
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Nov 21, 2020 20:35
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UnCO3 posted:There was a twitter thread by a pretty well-known UK indie designer (Daniel Sell, who does Troika) in the last few days on how to set up as a distributor, so maybe someone'll take that forwards in the UK or EU (or both, given how Brexit's loving everything up). ISBNs are unnecessary in a strict sense in that there's no legal obligation to have them on your book. In a practical sense they're quite important because the larger publishing ecology makes extensive use of them. I wonder if a bunch of indies could get together, buy a bunch of ISBNs, and share them out? Again, I don't know why we'd need to, but it might be an option.
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Nov 21, 2020 22:36
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potatocubed posted:ISBNs are unnecessary in a strict sense in that there's no legal obligation to have them on your book. In a practical sense they're quite important because the larger publishing ecology makes extensive use of them. Buying ISBN's in bulk isn't that bad. It's not really that big of an obstacle, especially if you're kickstarting a book or working in tandem with a publishing collective. ISBN's, as stated, aren't really necessary unless you plan on selling within a bookstore as far as I can tell. Even that, I don't think it's necessary for Amazon or even a FLGS.
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Nov 21, 2020 22:54
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potatocubed posted:I wonder if a bunch of indies could get together, buy a bunch of ISBNs, and share them out? Again, I don't know why we'd need to, but it might be an option. Access to a communal owned pool of ISBNs was a thing we did in the San Jenaro Co-Op, I don't know if anyone eventually made use of them, but I remember it being really appealing for some people.
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Nov 21, 2020 23:29
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I was really curious for reasons why you wouldn't get an isbn, before I realised that in America you need to pay for them. That atleast satisfies my curiosity for why I don't see isbn on small indie ebooks, whereas if I in the future ever put out even a long pdf for public consumption I would probably get an isbn if only because it wouldn't cost me anything here in Sweden.
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Nov 22, 2020 00:18
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potatocubed posted:ISBNs are unnecessary in a strict sense in that there's no legal obligation to have them on your book. In a practical sense they're quite important because the larger publishing ecology makes extensive use of them.
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Nov 22, 2020 01:37
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Buying ISBN's in bulk isn't that bad. It's not really that big of an obstacle, especially if you're kickstarting a book or working in tandem with a publishing collective. When I worked in a bookstore, ISBNs made it easier to order from Ingram and other distributors. Lots of self-published and very small press stuff didn't have it in the 90's though and you could still order those books. It did sometimes lead to weird gently caress ups from distributors.
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Nov 22, 2020 01:41
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Hel posted:I was really curious for reasons why you wouldn't get an isbn, before I realised that in America you need to pay for them. That atleast satisfies my curiosity for why I don't see isbn on small indie ebooks, whereas if I in the future ever put out even a long pdf for public consumption I would probably get an isbn if only because it wouldn't cost me anything here in Sweden. - Set up in Sweden. - Receive ISBN requests from Americans - Obtain ISBN. - Accept payment of less than it costs for a US-based company to acquire an ISBN. What am I missing here? EDIT: OK, it turns out that ISBNs are non-transferable (save if you outright purchase the publisher or what have you). On the other hand, I still don't see how this stops someone setting up a Self-Publishers' ISBN Co-operative where all the ISBNs will in theory be in the name of the group somewhere overseas and provide cheap ISBNs to US self-publishers. Warthur fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Nov 22, 2020 |
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Nov 22, 2020 04:14
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Thomamelas posted:When I worked in a bookstore, ISBNs made it easier to order from Ingram and other distributors. Lots of self-published and very small press stuff didn't have it in the 90's though and you could still order those books. It did sometimes lead to weird gently caress ups from distributors. Yeah, it's mostly an ease of access thing but they aren't that important outside of bookstore inventory.
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Nov 22, 2020 06:48
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Huh, I wonder. *google* 'How to Get an ISBN For Free from the Government of Canada' Well, drat!
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Nov 22, 2020 07:14
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paradoxGentleman posted:Does that really matter, given that they will still be perfectly fine when this blows over? Disney was very close to bankruptcy in the 70s and 80s and even once the Disney Renaissance started in the 90s, the company's leadership took a few bad gambles that could've pushed them back over the edge. They were always a giant media conglomerate willing to throw its legal weight around, but it's only been in the past 30 years, and really more like 15 where it's hit this critical mass dominating so much of popular culture through all the poo poo it's absorbed. They'll survive the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, since at this point the only thing that'd really kneecap them would be forcing them to break down into composite parts to dissolve their monopoly on so much of the media landscape. It would be possible to put Disney down, but it'd require a government that cares to stop it.
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Nov 22, 2020 18:03
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Disney's parks revenue is suffering but the company still makes billions per quarter, and paying the licenses what they're owed would cost a tiny fraction of a percent. It's purely a case of wanting to establish legal precedent for the future acquisitions of IP the company might pursue. Their legal team is already on retainer so it costs them little to try it and they will absolutely not lose any significant amount of customers even with this little blip of negative publicity. Fortunately, they are almost certainly going to lose and will settle out of court. Unfortunately the creators will be out their own huge legal fees, will undoubtedly have to sign agreements to shut up as a condition of settlement, and will not end up with all the income they were owed.
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Nov 22, 2020 18:34
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https://johnwombat.wordpress.com/20...eZVs4ecgQQ7YCOI This is a pretty good blog on the background of how the new Warlords of Erehwon Mythic Americas game came to be. I had been wondering from the announcement if they actually had anyone indigenous working on it, and apparently the answer to that is yes, which is pretty awesome given the industry. It seems to be just one dude and his family being the creative force behind everything, and obviously they can't represent all native peoples from the Americas, but that the idea came from them first and they seem to be in control sets them heads and shoulders above everyone else. I'm now fairly optimistic that the portrayal of the Americas will be if not necessarily super authentic than at least respectful.
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Nov 23, 2020 12:24
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Atlas Hugged posted:https://johnwombat.wordpress.com/20...eZVs4ecgQQ7YCOI It's nice to have good things happen every now and again 
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Nov 23, 2020 18:45
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All the talk upthread of Cortex made me want to keep talking about it, but it's not Industry related (except that their Compendium is my new gold standard for reading rules). So I made an effort-post. Cortex Prime: Step Up 2dStreets
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Nov 23, 2020 19:22
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Edit: wrong thread.
Hiro Protagonist fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Nov 23, 2020 |
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Nov 23, 2020 19:34
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Atlas Hugged posted:https://johnwombat.wordpress.com/20...eZVs4ecgQQ7YCOI That is extremely cool. Those minis look rad too
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Nov 23, 2020 23:34
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Leperflesh posted:Disney's parks revenue is suffering but the company still makes billions per quarter, and paying the licenses what they're owed would cost a tiny fraction of a percent. It's purely a case of wanting to establish legal precedent for the future acquisitions of IP the company might pursue. Their legal team is already on retainer so it costs them little to try it and they will absolutely not lose any significant amount of customers even with this little blip of negative publicity. Having chatted to some people in other publishing companies about it, that 'trying to establish precedence for future things' is the only thing that makes sense other than it actually being in the contract. It's not as if this is some vast amount of money they're witholding, and we haven't heard of them doing it for all the other authors of Star Wars novels, so either there's something hinky in that specific contract and someone in their legal department didn't think about how enforcing it would look bad, or they want to push this in the future for when they acquire other things.
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Nov 24, 2020 11:50
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Realistically it's also a "Why not?" situation. If they succeed it's free money, if they fail there's a tiny, quickly forgotten public backlash and maybe a slap on the wrist in punitive damages.
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Nov 24, 2020 12:18
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The trouble with that theory, I think, is that success actually hurts them worse than it helps them. If they establish a precedent that you can buy a contract without its liabilities, every single license holder is going to do a corporate shuffle and stop paying Disney their licensing tithes. Contract lawyers are already lining up, knives out. Success for Disney here is probably keeping this case tied up in red tape forever, or at least until Foster gives up, never actually ending in a firm legal decision and never paying the contract.
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Nov 24, 2020 13:27
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5D chess interpretation: they're worried about that happening so they're creating a precedent by setting themselves up to lose 
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Nov 24, 2020 14:11
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They're comrades doing their part to destroy capitalism.
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Nov 24, 2020 14:19
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Tendales posted:The trouble with that theory, I think, is that success actually hurts them worse than it helps them. If they establish a precedent that you can buy a contract without its liabilities, every single license holder is going to do a corporate shuffle and stop paying Disney their licensing tithes. Contract lawyers are already lining up, knives out. Even success for Disney makes no sense given the legal fees likely to be involved.
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Nov 25, 2020 02:18
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