2019 was a landmark year for Shewstone Publishing. We definitely had our ups and downs. We had one significant setback and passed one major milestone. We earned our first revenue and published our first product. We’ll be ready to launch or first full-length RPG, Magonomia®, the game of Renaissance wizardry, in 2020.
Magonomia® Schedule - Crowdfunding in March
First things first. We will be crowdfunding Magonomia® on the specialty platform Game on Tabletop. The launch date of our campaign is March 14, 2020. Until recently, we had been aiming for February, but I decided to delay one month so we don’t have to rush the artwork.
Becoming a Real Publisher
In May of 2019, we released Magonomia® Starter Rules for pay-what-you-want on DriveThruRPG.com. This is literally our first product. As of yesterday December 31, we had exactly 400 downloads. Not bad! Since this is pay-what-you-want product, most people downloaded it for free, which is totally fine and encouraged. Enough folks did put some money in the digital tip jar that I can report business revenue on my 2019 taxes, which is a huge milestone. It takes a long time to get a business off the ground and earning revenue is the first milestone on the road to actual profitability.
I also had the pleasure of working with my friend and former gaming buddy John Tibbetts, who wrote our first published adventure for Magonomia®: “Curse of the One-Eyed Witch”. We have two products!
You’ve probably noticed the word Magonomia appears many times in this post with the little ® symbol next to it. In 2019, Magonomia® and the Magonomia logo became U.S. registered trademarks. What this means for customers is that Magonomia will be easy to find in a web search. For us, it was another step on the path to becoming a real publisher.
There’s just a lot of value in the experience of getting products out the door. Both of these products are serving well to help promote Magonomia. What I didn’t expect is that even with these free promotional products, I learned the ropes in this business. In 2019, I leveled up!
The 2019 Kickstarter: Less than Success
The big RPG publishers launch their Kickstarters a week before Gen Con so they can hype them at the convention. We tried to follow that lead and launched the Kickstarter for Magonomia in late July. This turned out to be a mistake. The major RPG publishers had big, polished projects to unveil and professional publicity to promote them. Magonomia’s Kickstarter got overshadowed. Our first Kickstarter did not reach its funding goal. Timing was only part of the story. There was a whole lot I thought I knew about crowdfunding an RPG, that wasn’t correct or that didn’t apply to us.
I cancelled the Kickstarter for Magonomia shortly before it was due to end. At the time, I was expecting to re-launch on Kickstarter after replanning the project due to lessons learned. However, I found out that Kickstarter, the company, had fired some employees who were trying to organize a union.
The remaining union organizers have asked creators and backers to continue using Kickstarter, but I prefer to take my business elsewhere. I’m not willing to become dependent on a business partner that abuses its workers and is needlessly combative toward union supporters. I shopped around for a new funding platform and I’m happy to say, the folks at Game on Tabletop have been very supportive and helpful. I’m working with them continuously to prepare for a successful funding campaign for Magnomia.
I made several mistakes with the first Kickstarter due to inexperience. Here is what will be different the next time around:
There will be original artwork on the crowdfunding page. I thought the awesome cover illustration by Claudio Pozas would be enough, but it wasn’t. The common reaction was “where’s the artwork?” The RPG market has set certain expectations. More artwork up-front, coming soon!
The market expects a funding goal of $5,000 or less from a small RPG publisher. I originally picked a higher goal ($12,000) because that was the break-even point based on my cost projections. I learned that the $5,000 expectation is real and I have to plan the project to be viable at that level. I found a way to do that, so we’re prepared for success next time around!
Now I have a whole new marketing strategy that will actually work. It will rely more on Facebook and Twitter and much less on word-of-mouth. I had a lot of people promise me face to face they would back my Kickstarter, but only a few of them did. In other words, I learned a lot about marketing, very much from the school of hard knocks.
Most importantly, a lot of gamers are leery of backing an RPG project that doesn’t look finished. I’ve personally backed multiple RPG projects that missed their delivery date by two years or more. So here’s another market expectation: you need to convince backers there’s a good chance they will actually get the game. That stings a little because I take pride in being reliable, but of course there is no reason for a stranger to believe I can follow through on a promise. The best I can do is get the manuscript completely done before asking again for people’s money, so that’s what’s happening for the 2020 relaunch.
Looking back, I was not properly ready for the Kickstarter campaign. I thought I knew what readiness looked like, but I didn’t. I had to go through the experience. Now that I have my priorities right, I’m fully confident we can fund Magonomia successfully on Game on Tabletop.
The Kickstarter was not all bad, though. Some things went very, very right! Strangers got excited about Magonomia. So many of the backers sent me kind words and helped to bring friends on board. The global Magnomia community started to take shape during the Kickstarter. It’s full of wonderful people. I am more eager than ever to deliver a great game for them so I can feed that community and be part of it as it grows.
Becoming Part of the Creator Community
The one person who did the most to help Shewstone Publishing rebound from the Kickstarter in good spirits is Jacky Leung of Death by Mage. One of the smartest moves Shewstone made in 2019 was to host a seminar on Magonomia at Gen Con. Jacky attended and he has been a fan, booster, and mentor since that day. He helped me plan the timing of the funding relaunch and he wrote a very warm review of the game based on the Starter Rules. He gave me a few words of advice on how to get started using Twitter and introduced me to the Discord creator community hosted by Domille’s Wondrous Works.
Connecting with other creators online has been a blast. I have made several new friends, been inspired, given back, grown, and loved every minute of it. In fact I would say finding my tribe online has leveled me up again!
Shewstone Publishing is starting 2020 as a third level publishing company. We’re now seriously ready for the challenge ahead: to secure funding for Magonomia artwork and layout and get the project completed by the end of the year!