Hi, I have heard from various people that a good deal with a publisher would be 20% royalties. But to my knowledge this includes when an Advance is recieved. What would be the case if you create the entire game without their help or advanced money with a team of over 10 people and spend a lot of our own money into making it professional quality. All the publisher would do then is distribute it. They wouldn''t need to provide the cases, manuals, CDs, Customer support, Advance check, mutiplayer servers, or anything else such as those and we will do it all ourselves. Then would it be possible to negotiate a fair deal such as 50%-50%.. It does not make sense for a publisher to take 80% of sales if we will be doing all the work. Also if the game is a massive-multiplayer-game which has a small monthly fee along the lines of 5 or 6 dollars/month. Will they be taking part of that money too? Most of the monthly fee is required for keeping things running and I hope they''re not going to be taking that away too. Thanks alot for any help anyone could provide me with

If you are producing the CDs and stuff yourself you''d need more then 20%, but it is not so simplistic as you state it I guess. A publisher does more then just ship products into stores and collect 80%. Stores ask huge advance payments for adverts and end caps + they have the right to return all (yes all!!!) stock to the publisher''s warehouse if it does not sell enough. In CompUSA you have to meet a target of units you require to sell in order for them to consider it worthwhile to keep you on the shelf. And how does a publisher do that? By spending huge amounts of money (again) on advertising and promotional activities. Not to mention the staff they employ to do all this. Everything takes a lot of time also. Sometimes months if your timing is off as in the summer period nobody wants to ship products into the stores while everyone is on holiday. Also timing for Christmas is delicate. Don''t even dream of getting in if you supply a product to a publisher''s sales team after August... Also slow is January/February of the year as retailers clear out the stock they bought prior to Christmas.

In other words publishers actually do work for their money and they do not ''take'' 80%. At least 50% gets gobbled up by various costs like marketing, storage, promotion, sales commissions and wages for staff. Can you blame them for taking 30% and you 20%? I know eGames offer 10%, Crystal Interactive 25% and the rest is somewhere in between. Even 10% could be nice if you know for sure they sell tons of your product.

And last but not least: Advances. Of course it''s nice to get some money in your pocket right away since you''ve worked very hard to earn it. Unfortunately avances are almost always advances on royalties. So this means you do not get any money for a long time. Personally I''ve made deals for my games in which I only got a small advance and higher royalties or no advance at all. And still I''m happy with the outcome as you get a fair price if your game sells well. And believe it or not but for budget games you simply cannot expect an advance since these publishers get so much stuff thrown at them, you would not believe. They can pick and choose. Let''s see, one guy gives me a good quality game for $5,000 + royalties and the other one an equally good title for just royalties. Tough choice... Not! That''s what you essentially say to a publisher when asking an advance: "don''t pick me, pick someone else!". Stupid, I know, but also reality...

Good luck!

Mike

Thanks for the help.
Makes sense...
How about the monthly fee that would be charged for a massive multiplayer game?
Is it possible to make a deal along the lines of 10 to 20% royalties of sales but get 100% of the monthly fee? Or will the developer be left with 20% of the monthly fee as well? I am willing to go down to 5% of sales only if the monthly fee can be left untouched. Atleast that way there'll be a decent monthly profit for a while as opposed to one good pay check.

Edited by - Cameron on April 3, 2001 2:54:56 PM

Well, you could of course ask. It''s your game so why not go to a publisher saying you want 100% of the monthly fee. The worst thing that can happen is they try to negotiate you down a bit. Like 75% or 50%. I''ve spoken with some of the smaller companies and they tend to make everything negotiable. Without saying you should contact anyone in particular, I think outfits like eGames, Crystal Interactive and perhaps Cosmi would be worth a try. But whatever you do, don''t feel obliged to pin yourself down on anyone in particular. You could also try a sales + marketing team like Tri-Synergy but with those guys it''s "watch your pockets" at all times.

Mike

Thanks alot for your help

My two cents,

From surfing around I saw somewhere....not sure where but, You could offer a time deal. Whatever percent plus a percent of monthly revenue for a year. Then all monthly fees after that first year are yours. After all that is where your money is if successful. I hope this helps.

Prof