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You will find F1 a bit friendlier than your usual Licenceware vendor as we DO CARE about your product and we work hard to make it available to the Amiga software buying public, after all it's our living!
Just take a look back over the last year in all the Amiga magazines around the world and you will see more than 250 reviews of F1 Licenceware products. We have even won awards for best games software of 1994 from Amiga Format. Any one of those reviews could of been yours, what are you waiting for?
O.K let's be realistic, not all of our programmers make much money, some very little indeed, all we can do is get your reviews in the mags, spread demo versions into the P.D and ask our distributers to promote your products the best they can in their adverts and catalogues.
It is a fact that some software will sell like hot cakes and other titles, no matter how good, just do not sell. This part is up to you, send us something that people want, make it of a very high standard and you are well on your way. For example our best seller so far is GRAC with over 800 copies sold worldwide, our worst seller has never sold 1 copy, yet.
Here at F1 we recognise the need for speed, we won't keep you on tenter-hooks waiting for months to find out if your product has been accepted or not. As a general rule you will receive a reply from us within FOUR DAYS, yes I will repeat that, F O U R D A Y S, not six months or even worse, no reply at all. We ALWAYS reply to your letters. We would appreciate a stamp if you have never submitted to F1 before though, to keep costs down. (overseas don't worry about it, allow up to 14 days for a reply outside UK)
1) The program you are submitting must be 100% your own work, you will be personally responsible for any breaches of copyright and as the copyright of your program will stay with you and not F1, we will be sued and have to sue you for compensation. Also the program must be exclusive to us and previously unreleased, except in demo form or if you have upgraded the software sufficiently. There may be other exceptions, ask us if you are not sure, we can only say no at worse.
2) Please tell us truthly if you have released your program before, even if it was a demo in the pd or as Shareware, this is VERY important to us if you do not tell us the whole story you may have your title withdrawn and you could be blacklisted from future releases with F1 and other Licenceware schemes.
3) Please include the following details about your program: Basic outline of what it does, Language written in, Cheat modes (if any) How many levels (if applicable) which Amiga`s you have been able to test it on. Your name, address and phone number.
4) Please supply full documentation on disk in ASCII or AGuide, or in the program itself. *PLEASE NOTE* INSTRUCTIONS ARE ESSENTIAL.
5) The final version for distribution must be standard AmigaDos format. No custom formats please. We need to be able to DMS it and have it run from a CD.
6) If accepted, we will require you to insert an IFF picture file (supplied) of the F1 label INSIDE your main executable.
7) Please supply a stamp with all correspondence if you want a reply. If you are outside the UK don`t worry about it though.
If you want to enhance your chances of sales please supply us with a demo version for the Public Domain (Saying how much and where to buy it) We will give it to our distributers to spread, probably upload it to the Aminet and you can send it where you like too, if you want.
PLEASE supply us with any built in cheats/codes/passwords etc. And/or a complete solution as we get customer requests sometimes.
One other thing you can do to help us/yourselves is to supply a screenshot of your game/program that we can use in advertising/on the F1 cat disk and more importantly send to the mags with your review copy. It means less work for the mags and enhances your chance of a review.
Your program will be sold for �3.99 if it is on 1 disk �4.99 2 disks etc. Your royalty per copy sold will be approx 25% of the selling price for example: Sold at �3.99 (�1 royalty) �4.99 (�1.25 royalty) etc. Don't be fooled by other schemes that offer 50% of the PROFIT, this will often work out a lot less than 25% of the RETAIL price.
Every quarter (three months) you will receive a cheque from F1 if your program has earnt �5.00 or more. If it has not earnt you �5 then that money will be held over until the next quarter or until you have earned �5+ or you request payment.
If we cannot accept your program we will let you know within a week, maximum. We will usually tell you what we think is wrong with it and may offer advice and/or ideas to make your program acceptable to us.
A. Royalties are calculated at roughly 25% of the purchase price of your program so if your program is being sold at �3.99 you will receive �1.00 for each and every copy we sell for you. Cheques will be sent directly to the programmers every quarter.
Q. What type of programs are F1 looking for?
A. Anything of quality, including games/utilities/educational/Hyperbook etc.
as long as your program is of better quality than a good P.D equivelent
then you have a chance of acceptance, only about one in five programs are
accepted by us though as the standard is quite high. SEE WANTED DOC
(on the F1 Cat disk)
* * PLEASE NOTE, we will NOT accept games written using S.E.U.C.K. * *
Q. What else can F1 offer us programmers apart from our royalty?
A. Not a lot! Well you can get 20% off of all our Licenceware products, and a friendly/fast/helpful service.
Q. How are you going to sell my program?
A. We will do everything in our power to sell your product, At the time of writing we have 5 distributers selling F1 products. We will send review copies of all our products to the relevant mags and will be coaxing news stories and plugs in any and every mag on the market. We do the ocasional advertising ourselves but not to much effect so far! We will upload most good demo versions to the Aminet giving your program a World Wide audience. Selling your program is the only way we can survive so you can be sure we will be doing our best.
Q. How do we know you will pay us the correct amount of royalties?
A. You don`t! This is a trust thing, but saying that 99% our income will be from postal customers and they will mostly be paying by cheque which will have to go through the F1 bank account which the taxman will have his eye on for any discrepancies, we will publish sales records of every disk which will be sent to you with your cheque, in any case we are honest people (Husband, wife and two kids) trying to make an honest living and we want F1 to be a long term job for us and to do this successfully we have built a bond of trust with our programmers. I have been stitched up in the past myself and you get to know who the straight people are very quickly, we wouldn`t last long being dishonest it is in our interest to be straight with you in the long run. Just ask yourself why F1 has suceeded where other Licenceware schemes have failed! It's because we are HONEST. F1 has been going for over three years now and we have paid out thousands of pounds in royalties (�2,500 is our record royalty payout in a single quarter so far) so I think it would be safe to assume that we are straight!
Q. What happens if my program just simply does not sell?
A. We will give it every chance but if sales are very bad we may offer to release it back to you.
Q. Can I put adverts in my program for other products of mine not Licenced to F1?
A. Within reason, yes you can, most other Licenceware outfits won`t allow it. We don't mind as long as you don't go over the top. There may be some subject limitations to this though, please ask.
Q. How long before I get some dosh!
A. From the day we take a new title on it can take anything between 4 weeks to 3 months for your title to get reviews and into our distributers adverts/catalogues. So your first royalty cheque may be quite small. Normally your second royalty cheque will be your best. In a nutshell it could take anything from 1-6 months to get some decent royalties under your belt. Having said that two of our most succesful titles sold loads almost straight away. It all depends on timing and of course wether your program sells or not.
Q. Will my programs get reviewed?
A. As I have said, we send all our titles to ALL the relevent magazines. We have no power over what gets reviewed, in fact we have a few titles that have never been reviewed. But then again we have some that have been reviewed in EVERY magazine. Basically if your program is good enough (In the eyes of the reviewer) it will get reviewed.
Q. I am in a programming team consisting of five people how much money will we get each?
A. The same as everyone else, you will have to split the 25% between you I am afraid. Think about it, we would never cover our costs and the system would be open to abuse ("I wrote this game with 10 other mates" etc.)
Q. How do I get my program released as an F1 Gold title?
A. We approach you if we think it is good enough and the right type of program for the gold range.
Q. Will my program(s) go on a F1 CD Rom.
A. It all depends, we reserve the right to release all our contracted programs on CD, you will be paid an equal share royalty. Our first 100 titles have been released on CD and it all depends on this CD`s success wether another CD will be released when we get to 200 titles. We are looking into an F1 Gold CD when we have enough titles.