Promoting a Game



Since June of 2020, we've been refining Tortured Earth 2.0. The process hasn't been easy: making sure the document is clear and concise while maintaining a degree of interest. Rules must be checked in play tests, written, rewritten, examples created, and checked for compatibility with all other rules in the system. 

The editing process alone has taken fifteen months to complete. Once the document is prepared, the fun job of finding a publishing house begins. For those not familiar with this little joy in the process, allow me to enlighten: each publishing house has its own set of standards and terminology. Aside from the standard publication jargon, setting margins, spine width, page counts, and all the other components required to produce a professional copy must be learned and sorted through. 

Novelists reading this will recognize some of the heartaches. The main difference between the struggles of a novelist and a game developer falls in the degree of art associated with the work. Games traditionally have illustrations and borders to add interest to the technical document. These components add complexity to the final document to be printed and requires time to align with the print standards of the printing agency. Fortunately, this hurtle is also one which will eventually be crossed.

Finally, we come to the promotion of the product. This has been an ongoing dilemma and debated topic for our team. Kickstarter is most often pointed to as an avenue to quickly launch oneself onto the national market. This problem with Kickstarter is the cost associated with the production of the advertisement: videos, visual presentations, color schemes, etc. are not within our immediate skill set and require additional efforts to learn. Efforts which distract from the growth and development of the company itself.

For Tortured Earth, the convention circuit continues to serve as our primary source of promotion. It's a slower method of growth but we are finding sales of the new system are continual. With each new convention, residual sales for a few weeks continue. Granted, it is not the catapult launch of Kickstarter but it is consistent. 

The process gives us a chance to interact with other game developers and discover what trials they have undergone and their solutions to those problems. It has also given us a chance to learn how our publishing house operates and what programs they offer to promote our product. Today, I received an email stating our books are now available for online sellers. On a whim, I searched for our books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books-a-Million. Sure enough, they are there as well.

As we continue to grow and our product line expands, more and more of our products will be available for large scale distribution. The next phase of our promotion will be to create business cards with our publishing house information on it, allowing retailers to purchase our books at wholesale prices.

The growth process of any business is a slow and tedious process. However, with a little luck and a lot of dedication, Tortured Earth will eventually carve a niche for itself.


Thanks for reading!

-K. B. Kidder

The 2.0 version of Tortured Earth are now available through the following links:

Amazon:

Tortured Earth Core Rule Book 

Tortured Earth Supplemental: The Unofficial Account of Gavin Harris

Tortured Earth Supplemental: The Travel Journal of Mica Greer 

Barnes & Noble:

Tortured Earth Core Rule Book

The Unofficial Account of Gavin Harris

The Travel Journal of Mica Greer

Books-a-Million:

Tortured Earth Core Rule Book

The Unofficial Account of Gavin Harris

The Travel Journal of Mica Greer


Mountains of Mists and Mystery is available as a free download to those wishing to purchase the system and are waiting for the next line of modules.

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