Some of the gamers who read this journal will have heard by now: RPGNow and DriveThruRPG have merged into a new company — OneBookShelf.com.
This is something which began back at GTS in March, and we’ve kept a lid on it until the official announcement today. If you’re interested, the press release can be found all over the place — here, for example.
Basically, the overall gist of it: RPGNow and DTRPG will continue operating two websites for the next 6 months or so, as a new site is programmed from the ground up. Until then, any product you upload at one site will be automatically listed at the other. The new site (currently un-named — they will be running a fan contest to come up with one) will take over operations, with the old sites turning into re-directs for the new one. What’s more, they’ve signed agreements with the two largest RPG forums, ENWorld and RPGNet, to run affiliate shops linked to those forums (again, which will be storefronts of the new unifed operation). This replaces the existing ENWorld GameStore, and launches a PDF sales site for RPGnet.
What does this mean for me? Well, I’ve been handling customer service emails for RPGNow for a few years now, as a consultant. I’m still doing that for the next few months at least. So that means that I’ll be busy as hell, mostly with helping publishers get used to the new set-up.
For Adamant, though, it’s a good thing — it’s massively cutting down on the amount of work I have to do to get products up for sale. I now only have to do it once, and it gets listed at RPGNow, DTRPG and ENGS, which I used to have to do separately…..and we’re getting a new sales site (RPGNet’s new PDF sales affiliate shop). The percentage that I make on each sale is dropping slightly (new company, different fee structure), but I feel fairly confident that the shortfall will be more than made up in increased sales.
So yeah….big changes. Interesting times.
