Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:50 pm
Great question Jim, I am glad that you are interested and would like to give a peek behind the curtain for others who have been extremely supportive of our efforts over the piece..
Foundry and GW are relatively speaking big companies in the cottage industry that is wargaming. They may both have personnel rolls of 50+ although I have no real idea. They have cross funding products which will mutually support sales or provide loss leaders into other parts of their ranges. They have designers, artists, managers, technicians, sculptors, researchers, QA people, proof readers etc etc. They will distribute tasks to a wide team of people and their credits lists do testify to that. They also have well established business relationships and the ability to pass large volumes of printed work to 'single sources' thus ensuring costs are minimised and profits are maximised. That is cool because that is how business works.
Clarence and I are but two chaps seperated by 3,500 miles of ocean who basically do what we do between us. We are it. The writers, researchers, photographers, editors, proof readers, playtesters and bankrollers. He has a busy job in the Communications industry, I run the UK arm of an international company. We fit our hobby in around the day jobs(although some might think it's vice versa ). R2E has taken about 18 months of not continuous but fairly intensive work. When it comes out it will be 154 pages long, full colour, have 210 photographs be on 130 gsm paper with a 350 gsm soft cover. It will have a full colour 6 sided gatefold playsheet and will retail at approx £25.00. I investigated a hard cover but to get that done in the UK was cost prohibitive. Letting the print process go out of the UK was a gamble I was not prepared to take this time although BLB WAS printed in a foreign land.. and a mighty good job those Tyroleans did!!
Our goal is actually to give wargamers like ourselves and like you what they want. We don't want to cheat on the cheese. That is why it has taken so long. As you know the proofs for R2E are somewhere between England and Virginia right now as CH has to OK it before we press the go button on the print run. It is a risk for us but I think we'll recoup on our outlay reasonably quickly once it hits the market. Printing it in the UK was definitely not the cheapest option as I could probably have gotten it done at 50% of the price offshore.
We want to provide more products and that is the reason for this thread. So your views and those of everyone out there are really important to us.
Sometimes I might be a little slow in responding to rules queries or questions but it is normally because I am travelling back from somewhere I probably not like to be and not because I can't be bothered
We really do care about supporting our products and rules and if we think we can bring hardbacks to the market at a price that doesn't cost us or leave you feeling ripped off believe me we'll do it. There are plenty of books left in us yet!!
It may be that we will even solicit the contributions of like minded individuals in the future with regard to publications. By the look of the lists already up here on this thread I would have my work cut out researching all of the stuff the forum members would like to see in our next work!
We would at least consider the commercial viability of certain ideas and if the financing was right we would look at publishing other people's work if we though it fitted with our product lines too.
I think we are probably good for two publications(self authored) per year. Three or four if we were acting for others. This is of course a real possibility for example.. if someone came to us with 12-15 well researched BLB scenarios that could be the basis of a new book which we could format, do figures and photographs for and get out much quicker.
I hope this post is not too rambling but it was a bit of a stream of consciousness and I was unaware of how long it was getting until I had a quick trawl through..
Keep talking to us folks.. we read everything you post and pay attention to the vast majority of it
All the best
B
Foundry and GW are relatively speaking big companies in the cottage industry that is wargaming. They may both have personnel rolls of 50+ although I have no real idea. They have cross funding products which will mutually support sales or provide loss leaders into other parts of their ranges. They have designers, artists, managers, technicians, sculptors, researchers, QA people, proof readers etc etc. They will distribute tasks to a wide team of people and their credits lists do testify to that. They also have well established business relationships and the ability to pass large volumes of printed work to 'single sources' thus ensuring costs are minimised and profits are maximised. That is cool because that is how business works.
Clarence and I are but two chaps seperated by 3,500 miles of ocean who basically do what we do between us. We are it. The writers, researchers, photographers, editors, proof readers, playtesters and bankrollers. He has a busy job in the Communications industry, I run the UK arm of an international company. We fit our hobby in around the day jobs(although some might think it's vice versa ). R2E has taken about 18 months of not continuous but fairly intensive work. When it comes out it will be 154 pages long, full colour, have 210 photographs be on 130 gsm paper with a 350 gsm soft cover. It will have a full colour 6 sided gatefold playsheet and will retail at approx £25.00. I investigated a hard cover but to get that done in the UK was cost prohibitive. Letting the print process go out of the UK was a gamble I was not prepared to take this time although BLB WAS printed in a foreign land.. and a mighty good job those Tyroleans did!!
Our goal is actually to give wargamers like ourselves and like you what they want. We don't want to cheat on the cheese. That is why it has taken so long. As you know the proofs for R2E are somewhere between England and Virginia right now as CH has to OK it before we press the go button on the print run. It is a risk for us but I think we'll recoup on our outlay reasonably quickly once it hits the market. Printing it in the UK was definitely not the cheapest option as I could probably have gotten it done at 50% of the price offshore.
We want to provide more products and that is the reason for this thread. So your views and those of everyone out there are really important to us.
Sometimes I might be a little slow in responding to rules queries or questions but it is normally because I am travelling back from somewhere I probably not like to be and not because I can't be bothered
We really do care about supporting our products and rules and if we think we can bring hardbacks to the market at a price that doesn't cost us or leave you feeling ripped off believe me we'll do it. There are plenty of books left in us yet!!
It may be that we will even solicit the contributions of like minded individuals in the future with regard to publications. By the look of the lists already up here on this thread I would have my work cut out researching all of the stuff the forum members would like to see in our next work!
We would at least consider the commercial viability of certain ideas and if the financing was right we would look at publishing other people's work if we though it fitted with our product lines too.
I think we are probably good for two publications(self authored) per year. Three or four if we were acting for others. This is of course a real possibility for example.. if someone came to us with 12-15 well researched BLB scenarios that could be the basis of a new book which we could format, do figures and photographs for and get out much quicker.
I hope this post is not too rambling but it was a bit of a stream of consciousness and I was unaware of how long it was getting until I had a quick trawl through..
Keep talking to us folks.. we read everything you post and pay attention to the vast majority of it
All the best
B