Savage Worlds: Pricing your SWAG

The Savage Worlds Adventurer’s Guild (SWAG) launched at the beginning of this year, and there have already been dozens of products released through the program, as well as a rapidly growing community of designers on the unofficial Savage Worlds Discord server. But one area that many people seem unsure about is pricing, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look through the SWAG releases and get a rough idea of their price/page ratio, much like I did for licensee products a few years ago.

It must be stressed that these figures have very limited value when viewed in isolation, because many other factors come into play -- the page size, the font and layout, the amount of artwork, the utility and complexity of the product, and so on. However, when combined and averaged, these figures can at least give you a feel for the sort of price range SWAG products typically sell for, and by comparing your product with other products of similar size and content, you can get an idea of what customers are willing to pay.

I should also stress that this post is not intended as a criticism of other people's pricing! There's quite a lot of variation between publishers, and I think that's great because it allows us to compare and optimize our strategies. In time, I imagine we'll see products start to align more closely in terms of price -- but SWAG is still relatively young, and it'll take time to establish a set of norms.

The 65 SWAG products listed above have a total of 787 pages for $122.71, which averages out at $0.16 per page. However, this figure is somewhat distorted by the larger PDFs, where the price/page is usually much lower. If we ignore the 5 highest and 5 lowest priced products, the average comes to $0.21 per page. Ignoring the 10 highest/lowest gives $0.27 per page, and ignoring the 20 highest/lowest gives $0.34 per page.

Note: I didn't include my Wild West Countdown Deck in the above list, as I price decks differently from books. Print-on-demand action decks typically sell for $10-$15, and I sell mine for $12. I sell the print-it-yourself PDF version for $3. More information about designing and selling decks can be found here.

My Pricing Strategy

My own approach to SWAG pricing has been to pick a nice round number that falls in the range of 10-20 cents per page, not counting the cover, credits, or table of contents. In the case of my Fantasy Archetypes, I also didn't count the duplicated pages (each character had a male and female illustration on a separate page, but the text was practically identical for both versions).

For larger books, I'd gradually reduce the price per page, to a minimum of around 5-10 cents per page. So for a 150-page setting book, for example, I'd be probably aiming for something in the range $7.50-$15.00 (most likely $10, that seems to be a sweet spot for many people).

Of course, I'm still trying to get a feel for different pricing and marketing strategies, so I may well end up changing my mind in a few months. But at least this gives me a rough figure to work with.

Free, PWYW, Pseudo-PWYW and Fixed Pricing

I've released a lot of free products in the past, as well as a couple of Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) products. But over the last few months, someone has been vote-bombing all the free and PWYW products on DTRPG, damaging publisher ratings and pushing free/PWYW products down the search lists, so I've moved over to fixed pricing.

There is a middle ground though, something I keep meaning to try -- you can give a product a fixed price, but also upload the full PDF as a "custom preview", then in the product description invite people to download it for free or pay a dollar if they like it. Only those who choose to pay will be able to rate or review the product.

However, the most effective approach does seem to be a fixed price, and the SWAG guidelines even give some suggestions, noting that "the most successful price points are $1.00, $2.00, $2.95, $3.95, $4.99, $7.95, $10.00, $14.95, and $19.99."

Best Seller Medals and Hottest SWAG Titles

You may have noticed some SWAG products have a medal. These are awarded based on the total number of sales (including PWYW, as long as the customer paid at least 1 cent). It doesn't matter how much the customer paid, only that they paid something, so free downloads don't count. Note that an order containing multiple copies of a product only counts as one sale.

Copper Medal: 51+ sales.
Silver Medal: 101+ sales.
Electrum Medal: 251+ sales.
Gold Medal: 501+ sales.
Platinum Medal: 1001+ sales.
Mithril Medal: 2501+ sales.
Adamantine Medal: 5001+ sales.

By contrast, the "Hottest" lists are based on how much money your products have earned over time (based on the date they were first made public). This is why newer products tend to jump to the front of the hottest list, and then gradually slide back down. Whereas cheaper product might make more sales (and thus earn a higher medal), expensive products tend to do better in the Hottest list.

CRAP Design and Good Typography

Based on an excellent suggestion from +Eric Simon of Four-in-Hand Games, I've recently been reading the Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams (no, not that Robin Williams). It contains a lot of great advice, but one thing I've found particularly enlightening is the "C.R.A.P." principle, which stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. This principle is discussed in many places online, but in short it works like this:

• Contrast: Elements on a page should never be just "similar", they should either have the same style or be very different.
• Repetition: Using the same style throughout the document gives it a feeling of consistency and cohesion.
• Alignment: All elements on the page should be visually connected to each other.
• Proximity: Related elements should be grouped together.

Now that I have a new cover for Saga of the Goblin Horde, I'd like to update my earlier releases to use the same style, so I figured this might be a good opportunity to apply what I've learned so far. I've obviously still got a lot to learn, but I've always learned better through practice, so I decided to have a play around.

Sneak Peek-a-Boo

Rather than just update the archetypes supplement, I thought it might be worth turning it into a free primer - it would still contain the archetypes, but would also include an overview of the setting and a sneak preview of some of the new mechanics.

But this raised the question of what I should use for the cover. I don't want to use the same cover as the setting book, but neither do I want to commission a second cover. I considered using the front cover with a different goblin illustration, but it would be extremely difficult to find any existing art that matched the same style, and the two covers would still end up having a bit of a "samey" look that I wanted to avoid.

So after some consideration I decided to use the back cover (which I probably wouldn't include in the PDF anyway), and I'm thinking of doing something like the mock-up on the right.

The title font is the same one I've used in my other releases - "Mountain's of Christmas", which is free for commercial use, and I think captures the slightly comical feel I'm aiming for (when I discuss the setting with non-roleplayers, I describe it as "Gremlins meets Lord of the Rings").

Following the rule of contrast from the CRAP principle, the "Sneak Peek-a-boo" text has a completely different color and font to "Saga of the Goblin Horde", although both text elements are placed close together (proximity), and are aligned with each other as well as the logo (alignment).

The placement of the goblin's head also uses the Rule of Thirds as best I could manage, with the eye placed along the bottom grid line. Because of the position of the rip in the center of the page, it's not possible to align the eye with a grid intersection point, but at least it's on a grid line.

The "Sneak Peek-a-boo" text is also aligned with the goblin's eye, and is an amalgamation of "Sneak Peek" and "Peek-a-boo" (which is also why the "Peek-a-boo" is split over two lines) - this is typical of the sort of wordplay I use in Saga of the Goblin Horde.

The goblin's face is also facing slightly towards the text. The intent is that the eye is the first thing to catch the viewer's attention, and that directs them towards the "Sneak Peek-a-boo" text.

Normally I would have placed the "Saga of the Goblin Horde" on the left, but one thing the Non-Designer's Design Book discusses is that you shouldn't be afraid of empty space. It would also be difficult to align it with the "Sneak Peek-a-boo" text horizontally.

Repetition and Typography

I decided it would also make sense to update my One Sheets to the new style, and I wanted to apply some improvements to the typography, which is another subject I've been reading up on, and which +Marcelo Paschoalin has also been giving me some advice about.

Now that I've got a custom cover and interior page design for Saga of the Goblin Horde, I thought it would make sense to redesign my One Sheets in the same style - not only to make them consistent with the setting, but also to correct some typography mistakes I've been making.

As you can see from the about comparison, I've changed to the new paper design, updated the banner to use the same texture as the cover, given it a more subtle drop shadow, added the goblin head as a logo, and redone the title to match the cover.

The goblin illustration by the talented +Rick Hershey has been recolored (because the goblins in Saga of the Goblin Horde are always green), the body font has been changed to Crimson (which I prefer to the previous Open Sans), and the subheadings now use the narrower Booter Zero Zero font, rather than Booter Five Zero.

I've also made a few corrections to the typography (you can compare the numbers with the screenshot on the right):

1. The text rows are now aligned across the columns (see here).
2. The first paragraph after each subheading is flush left, instead of being indented (see here).
3. Removed the space between paragraphs, as it's not needed if you also indent (see here).

Note: Although you can't see it on these screenshots, I've also started using a custom "goblin head" Wild Card symbol for the NPCs; personally I think all settings should have their own special Wild Card symbol :)

Summary

No doubt I'm still making plenty of mistakes, and it wouldn't surprise me if I go back and redo all of this a few months from now, but the important thing is that I'm learning and improving. I personally feel that the quality of my supplements has noticeably improved over the last year, and I hope to keep improving them in the future.

If nothing else, I've certainly gained a hefty appreciation for the hard work of professional layout designers!