Selling on the internet

In the weblinks section, there is a link for Fair Play Games. They will sell your game in quantities as small as five units (if they approve it). So if you could produce five, they would be willing to sell them for you.

Another option is to sell them on e-bay one at a time. There is a guy who sells Talisman expansions on e-bay and has sold quite a few (I think he said over 100). I have asked him to join BGDF, and I hope he comes on board soon. I fear your game might have difficulty selling on E-bay also, since no one has ever heard of it.

Probably the best option would be to offer your game for download for free, and then offer to sell the finished game online. As I said in chat earlier, people would rather pay for a produced game then take the time to download and construct the games themselves. Time is a valuable commodity. I think if they were able to look at the game and get a good idea of what it

Miscellaneous,

Using common items you can get from office supply and craft stores and desktop publishing software, you can make a very professional looking game. Of course, it would not be cost effective to produce board games like this in mass quantities, it would work on a per order basis, until you feel you can invest the money to have the game printed professionally. There is a fellow on E-bay who sells Talisman expansions that he created, and it

Well, that's the classic conundrum. Produce it yourself (Very expensive) or try to sell it to someone else.

I've tried option one, producing my first game myself. I'll be honest with you, I'm not sure I would do it again the way I did it. I went in blindly, risking my own dough and reputation producing my game. Producing the game yourself means you are also responsible for the sales, promotion, packaging, marketing, taxes, etc. All of those extras add up to a lot of work, most of which I hadn't planned well for (but I'm learning through the school of hard knocks!)

Also, to produce a game yourself, you should probably have a marketing plan. (Something I didn't have.) How can you cheaply and effectively get folks to try your game? People have a limited amount of money to spend on games, and it's much more likely that they'll spend it on something they know or trust or heard about in a review, than some other game.

On the other hand, I think publishers will be hesitant to publish something from a first-time designer unless your name is out there somehow. But you can get your name out there by self-producing your own game. Cheap PDF copies can be sold, and although you will probably not make any money on them, perhaps, but it will get your name out there. Also it will help you hone your craft. Lastly (and this is the biggie for me) you will be able to move on with your craft. I only get better when I create and finish games. Publication would force you to come to a point and say, "I'm done!"

(Tip: The free office suite "OpenOffice.org" will make PDFs for free. For my latest proto, I'm making them using the OOo word-processing package.)

Send in your best stuff to various contests. I'm thinking about Hippodice here, but there may be others. Winners of that tend to be noticed by publishers.

I hope this helps. Sorry for rambling, but if any of you decide to make the crazy move to self-publication, I'd like to help any way I can. Let me know.

-- Scott S.

Oops. :-)

-- Scott S.

Paypal takes a small cut, but it's very reasonable for what it does.

If you can build a site and log onto paypal, that's all you really need. Aside from the game, of course.