First off, these are long posts, more an essay really, so I've decided to break it up in pieces over several posts at the start of the thread - so excuse my walls of text provided.

Secondly, I thought of posting this in the Publishers Discussion Forum, but this idea really concerns cartographers specifically, moreso than just to RPG publishers, so I thought it better posted here.

Trying to Develop a New RPG Publishers model...

In traditional RPG publications, a cartographer is hired on a per commission basis like a freelance artist. Based on pre-agreed pay rate, conditions and deadlines, by contract the cartographer creates specific maps and is a promptly paid after completion. This is both traditional and the least amount of risk to the cartographer, as no matter the success of a given product, the cartographer is already paid. Even if a given publication product is a marketing failure, the cartographer is still paid up front, however, if the product is an overwhelming financial success, the cartographer is not entitled to any further payments. (Most of the commission map work I do, falls under this production/payment process.)

Another traditional but less common method of payment is through royalties, which is based on ongoing and total sales of a given product over its lifetime and is generally paid in miniscule amounts, so that appreciable amounts can be achieved only with many months or years of continuous sales success. A royalties payment model works best when a product generates a high amount of sales, which consequently is not the expected results for most RPG publications - making this payment method largely undesireable.

Wolfgang Bauer's Open Design Project works using the patronage system, where the contributors, designers and intended end-users pay for the development of a product up front, using a design by committee process, the final product is kept in a closed market exclusive to the patrons that paid for the project ahead of time, and generally not sold to the open market. While a viable production method, this involves "too many cooks" and little potential for greater sales as the marketplace is a closed one, neither of which interest me.

Those cartographers creating their own publication products are generally limited to map packs for print or VTT usage and map symbol collections, but tends to include very little textual content beyond key lists for various locations in a map. These products are generally created by one-man cartographer/publishers, and not created by publishing team efforts. Marketability based on comparison with such products at various online RPG sales platforms like RPG Now seems to be limited to the $5.00 price point and historically are not big-time money makers.

The only other known method of RPG publication is to become a publisher yourself, take on all the risk, develop all your own material and farm out to freelancers, whatever you can afford - however, the latter is often too great a cost for the start up third party publisher, so this really means doing everything yourself. Although I have been developing my Kaidan RPG for Pathfinder in this way, it is slow in development, heavy on risk and very time-consuming. It also minimizes how many products I can make available, thus minimizes the total profit margin overall.

I have been trying to develop a new and different RPG publishing model that spreads the creative efforts between a capable team effort, thus able to create more content and more products in a shorter amount of time, maximizing overall marketing efforts. In this method, the cartographer becomes an active partner of the publishing house. All members of this team equally share in the profits throughout the sales process.and usages for the given maps.