I’ve held this close to my chest for a few months now, mostly because I wanted to make sure I got all my ducks in a row first. Still a few things to work on like the character builder for the website and making sure I have tokens and templates and blank character cards in ready to print formats for download on the website but the finish line is in sight!
So how is it going to work?
I’ve been working through a lot of different ways to sell and distribute the game and the one thing I wanted to do is make sure everyone had access no matter where you were in the world for a similar price. Shipping from my tiny condo in Nova Scotia, Canada would be a little hard to do. Not only am I far from a major shipping hub but Canadian shipping in general is notoriously expensive for folks in Europe (trust me, I’ve tried).
I decided to go for a print on demand service that will deliver the physical copies and Drive Thru RPG to deliver PDF versions. As I said in my previous blog post over the last few months I ordered from several companies to see which gives me the best quality and Ingram Spark ended up being the best quality for the price. The pages feel nice, the binding is good and even though they added a few extra pages for their own barcodes at the end of the book they do not take away from the overall look and feel.
Ingram spark runs a smaller storfront called aer.io. It seems fairly basic, but it allows me to use Ingram Spark, who usually only does wholesale orders, as my distributor for small orders. This means that I get to leverage their printing services which ship from areas in North America, Europe and Australia while not having to worry about shipping items out from my home. This results in lower costs for me AND lower costs for you. I was worried with inflation and shipping costs increasing I would have to increase the cost of my book, but with the options I have in front of me I can proudly say that I will be offering PDF copies at 15 CAD and printed copies at 45 CAD, which were the prices I have been shooting for since 2019. This puts it right in line with similar sized games.
So the release date? You likely already saw the social media posts, but October 11th is the date! Can’t wait to get this in everyone’s hands! I even added new page on the website where you can click to get to the version you want. https://anthemsofwar.com/where-to-buy/
Conveniently, if you click on one of the buttons before October 11th you will get brought to a page where you can set up a google calendar reminder. I know I have!