10 Features and Perks of a No-Nonsense TTRPG Publishing Platform
Direct competition to the big dogs, but is it?
DriveThruRPG and itch.io (a very, very distant 2nd, which means there's plenty of space to compete) are so wildly different in what they offer, I think this kind of thing is legitimately in a league of its own.
Which means I have a monopoly on the niche.
1. Absolutely No Political Nonsense (for publishers or customers).
I get the sense that some people just want to publish and play games and stop with the politics bait. If you want to be an activist, write a great game that gets people to think about your position and experience your point of view.
But, don't come into the Discord server and start a fight. (There probably won't be a Discord server - community management is a giant PITA - my publishers want to sell and ship, they can converse elsewhere).
2. AI is Allowed.
No problem with AI helping publishers get off the ground.
3. No asset pack spam.
This is where people abuse AI - they spam the marketplace with AI generated crap and it's all token art, etc. While we might sell some art assets, they'll be well curated. No spam.
4. Start off curated. See how it fares.
There's no reason for you to compete with the 99% of horrible trash on a self-publishing marketplace. Yes, you should be able to self publish with confidence. No, you shouldn't have to be up against randomly placed garbage. Quality matters and good healthy competition matters.
5. Dirt simple publishing tools.
There's no excuse for a shoddy publisher backend.
6. Up-to-date reporting and sales metrics.
You want a publishing suite that has important reports at your fingertips and/or automatically generated at intervals that you care about.
7. Basic customer outreach toolset.
We're not your mailing list. We're your sales platform. We can hook into your newsletter, perhaps, through an API later. To start, you get some lightweight sales management and customer communication tools (to have a paper trail for things like payment disputes, etc.)
8. Confirmed purchase ratings and reviews only.
Nobody gets to rate a product without having bought it or getting it from the publisher gratis. You can trust the ratings system is accurate.
9. No physical book sales (to start).
Print on demand is nice, but it's a whole other bucket of worms. Right now, we want to be your one-stop digital publishing storefront. PDF and epub only.
10. The platform eventually is the product.
At some point, the integrated digital publishing sales platform is the product. Someone might want to buy it out and use it for their own business (and/or license it, etc.)
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