Ladies and Gents,
So the good news is that the new presses are turning out some great looking books so printing problems are a thing of the past! As a result of having books out of print for a few months we've had to focus our efforts in other directions i.e. finding ways to produce revenue. This has also given us a very different level of focus on working towards this being a non-part time job for us.
So we haven't been making any money for the 1st 1/4 of 08 because of the books being out of print, and that *****. A quick decision was made to put together pdf copies of the books and Matthew Grau put in some very long long nights to organize the pdfs that are up on drivethrurpg.
Additionally, it's been brought to our attention that CthulhuTech is not profitable in full color. Mr Sprange at Mongoose wants us to make some money and he approached us with a very sound business case regarding not printing in full color anymore. Trust me when I say that when the idea was brought up, both Matthew and I were screaming from the top of the mountains that it will never be printed in any format but color! It's not that the books aren't selling, it's just that color copies cost a ridiculous amount to print and as such there's no way that we'll ever see a dime for all our hard work.
The books were costing close to $40/copy to print, and that's from doing it in house! To find out how much we made, take out shipping, distribution, and then the remainder gets split between 2 different parties. To say our first check was pathetic even after selling over 1000 copies in the first month, is an understatement. Had the book been done in B&W our first check would have been 4x as much as it was. So the decision has been made that all physical books from here on out will be black and white and in full color in electronic format only. We are looking into the option of finding a POD service that wouldn't cost us any money to throw the book up on their site and make money or be charged when they print them. So for those of you that really want the full color, you'll be able to do that there.
We really do want to work on producing games full time, and at our current rate, we'd be having to quit by years end. If/when we start pulling down the revenue to afford to print a full color run of books, we're definitely going to do it. In the mean time, we're going to get back to knocking out Vade Mecum.
Cheers,
Mike Vaillancourt