Feats, marketing strategy, and more.

[alexandraerin]

So, my first D&D supplements have been doing pretty well. In the ten days or so since the first one came out, I’ve had over $100 gross sales (of which I net half). Not gangbusters, but nothing to sneeze at. Considering that they’re each aimed at players of a single class, and neither one is exactly the class most starved for options, and that I’m an unknown to most players who is charging $5 for ~20 pages of options, I think it’s respectable.

I’m not willing to compromise on the price as I know what my products are worth, but I figured I need an “entry level” purchase to establish my bona fides and pique people’s interest. Thus, I took a loose collection of homebrew feats I’ve been working on (including the few in my warlock and cleric books) and put them together into a collection of 36 new feats called “Feats of Heroism“, which I’m selling for a crisp electronic dollar.

The number’s not an accident. Pretty much since the DMs Guild opened, there’s been a set of 18 feats for a dollar in the top 5 products. I’ve read them. They’re not bad, but they’re not great. They just have the virtue of being something everybody has wanted more of (feats), being cheap, and having been released ahead of most of the pack.

I humbly believe that my feat collection is the better value, and would be at twice the price. I don’t know what kind of numbers it would have to pull to knock the 18 feats off the front page, or if the steady release of more flavorful and well-thought out material is just going to see packets of feats fall in the rankings. But I’m sure it’ll sell more easily to more strangers than my cleric or warlock books will, and that it represents my game design work well enough that I’ll get more people looking at my more expensive offerings.

This is technically my published thing for the week, as I am charging money for it, but I’m going to continue working on another D&D-related release for the end of the week, which will be free (or rather, pay what you will): Heroic Houserules, a pamphlet that contains my house rules for creating emphasizing the heroic, larger-than-life aspects of the game (and incidentally pumping up some of the less effectual “ribbon” abilities, like the paladin’s Divine Sense and the ranger’s Primeval Awareness). This will serve a similar purpose to the feat manual of acting as an introduction to players unfamiliar with my work.

After that, I think I’m going to give the D&D game design stuff a rest for a bit. Part of the reason I’ve had so much material to release in those ares is it’s been building up for longer than there’s been an official outlet for it.

Originally published at Blue Author Is About To Write. Please leave any comments there.