Floppyshop 2/Floppyshop - 2.zip/Floppyshop - 2.iso/diskmags/3565-4.665/dmg-3609/news.txt/pdlibray.asc

Text File | 1993-02-16 | 15KB | 252 lines

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             ∙   PUBLIC DOMAIN - A LIBRARIAN'S VIEWPOINT   ∙
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             ∙  by Ronald Walker of The Shareware Company  ∙
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      As the proprietor of a medium-sized PDL,  I have two  major  gripes.
Loads of little ones besides,  but two basic big ones.  First off,  is the
image  that  a PDL has:  we are assumed to be making an  absolute  fortune
from sales of software that someone else has written.  The authors are the
"good guys", and we're exploiting them.

      In fact,  starting up a PDL is an expensive and risky  business.  An
eighth  of a page in a 'Glossy' ST monthly magazine can cost between  £100
&  £150,  depending on how good you are at haggling and which magazine  it
is.  You begin with no financial track record, so the ad is strictly "cash
up front", a week before the magazine goes to press.

     Your  advert  offers  -say- a free disk  catalogue,  with  a  few  PD
programs  thrown-in  to fill it up.  The average punter  doesn't  buy  the
magazine  on  the  day it hits the news  stands,  probably  doesn't  write
asking  for a catalogue the day he or she buys the magazine  either.  And,
equiped with the free catalogue (which cost you around 60p,  for the disk,
envelope  and  postage) around half then just format the disk  and  ignore
you.  The  ones who buy wait a week or so before deciding what they  want,
and expect a real live person at the other end of the telephone.

     A  month  on from spending over £100 of your savings  on  an  advert,
you've  sold  about £25 worth of disks,  and spent around £40  on  sending
people  free catalogues:  the magazine now wants you to confirm  that  you
have  another  £150  for advertising,  and their  rivals  have  each  rung
several times,  telling you how much better you'd do advertising with them
(either instead,  or as well!)  Assuming that you can afford another £150,
you write out the cheque,  and cross your fingers... things get better, as
the  laggardly punters from month one's advert begin to order  disks,  but
you're still a long way from breaking even.  If you paid heed to the siren
calls  from  the  other magazines,  you're now in  deep  shit,  as  you're
committed  to losing at least three hundred a month until things start  to
turn around!

     Slowly,  if your range of software, telephone manner, and standard of
service  is up to much,  sales will  increase;  eventually,  you'll  start
breaking  even,  and  may even start to make a  profit.  But  the  largest
portion  of your turnover,  for a long time to come,  is going to  be  the
monthly  cheque you write to the magazines for  advertising  space.  Aside
from  having to sit next to a phone,  eight hours a day (and  the  punters
have a right to expect a real person,  preferably one who knows  something
about computers, too!) you have to keep your stock up to date.

     There  is  an amazingly low degree of co-operation between  PDL's  in
this  expensive  area.  I write-around to most of the  other  medium-sized
PDL's every few months,  enclosing a list of what I've got, and suggesting
tha  we  swap.  This seems to be a unique idea:  others rely  on  buy-ins,
downloads  from  BBS's,  submissions  by  authors...  In  fact,  it's  the
cheapest  and  most  efficient  means  of  getting  new  disks,  and  it's
eminently  fair.  (You  don't  have to be another  PDL:  we'll  swap  with
ANYONE!  And we make a point of sending our catalogue to anyone who  sends
us a program they've written,  inviting them to select a similar number of
disks with our compliments.)

     Sorting through other people's catalogues,  working out what  they've
got and you haven't (and suprisingly few list version numbers!) is a  time
consuming business.  You then select what you'd like,  copy off a  similar
number of disks,  and together with a list of your wants,  post them  off.
The swaps return anything from two days to seven weeks later.

     It's  in  the nature of things that their  compilations  will  differ
from yours,  and thus 33% of what arrives,  scattered randomly across  the
disks,  is stuff you already have.   You delete it (the punters don't like
a  high level of file duplication) and re-compile the disks;  you've  also
checked  everything  for link and bootsector viruses.  If  you're  serious
about  running a PDL,  you also try out every program,  zap  every  alien,
doodle with every art package,  listen to every module...  because sure as
eggs,  the one you DON'T try out is the one that doesn't work, and the one
that  will  lose you a customer.  We assume that  our  theoretical  punter
bought  their  ST yesterday (LATE yesterday) and thus try to  ensure  that
everything works without them having to recompile the disk themselves.

     Finally,  everything is written up in the catalogue - more than  just
"game":  the more you tell them, the more likely the punters are to make a
purchase.  (Remember, you have to shift well over 100 disks per advert per
month  just to cover the advertising costs,  plus the cost of  the  disks,
plus  the  postage...) On a good day,  sorting out each new  disk  in  the
catalogue  takes an hour,  and for every ten you've received,  three  have
now  been  re-formatted,  from  when you  deleted  files  and  re-compiled
everything.

     Running a PDL,  or at least, starting up one, is hard work, and soaks
up savings.  There are few sources of advice, and plenty of chances to get
it  wrong  (like advertising in everything going from  the  start!)  over-
extending  yourself,  and winding-up broke.  It's NOT the license to  mint
money  that  some imagine.  The hours are long,  the  pay  abysmal...  but
eventually it can lead to a small (if precarious!) income.  By that  time,
the STE will probably be out of production!

     As I look through the TSC catalogue,  which contains at least 90%  of
everything (except demos and licenseware,) I'm forced to wonder what  goes
through  the  minds of some authors.  In the case  of  "Demo"  authors,  I
wonder  if they have minds at all ("What,  take two brain cells  into  the
shower?"  A demo writer would have to borrow at least one of  them!)  Does
the  world really need yet ANOTHER clone of Tetris?  Is it crying out  for
yet  another  copier that isn't half as good as Richard  Karsmacher's  "F-
Copy"?   If you think the answer to these questions is "Yes",  then you're
probably   already   an  establised  Shareware   author,   wondering   why
registrations  haven't  financed even one spark plug for the  Ferrari  you
were hoping to buy.

     Our PDL aim's itself at the "over 25's" market:  we don't do demos AT
ALL,  and  although we have over 200 disks of games,  they represent  just
20% of the total collection.  (Clipart and utilities are the next  largest
components.)  The Atari ST is a damn' good all-round machine,  and the  PD
and   shareware  available  for  it  (unlike  the   Amiga   games-machine)
represents  the wealth of things you can do with an  affordable  computer.

     One  area  that  I'd like to see more  of  is  educational  software.
There  are a handful of gifted authors who have produced a  few  excellent
titles each.  In the UK,  "The History Files" stand out for  praise,  from
the  USA we have the excellent "Knowlege Vine" series,  and an  author  in
Australia  has  produced several disks in STOS - one of which  is  superb,
(although  he  hasn't replied to my letter offering to  swap  anything  we
have for the remainder of his work!)

     Aside from these three giants,  the rest tends towards the  mediocre.
There  are a series of childrens' programs each called  "Kid-"  something,
which  will  be found in just about every PD  catalogue  around,  on  both
sides  of  the  Atlantic.  Bettering them is well within  the  ability  of
almost any UK PD games author...  but instead they produce yet more clones
of Tetris,  more failed F-Copy beaters.  I received two submissions in the
same week,  one sourced from the USA, one from Germany, both clones of the
same  commercial game!   A letter to the US author,  suggesting that  he'd
have  more  elbow  room if he shifted to  educational  stuff,  elicited  a
suprise  'phone  call  from North Carolina,  asking for  examples  of  the
current standard of educational software.

     While  there  are  doubtless senior citizens  reading  this  who  are
addicted to Arkanoid etc.,  *I* associate games with teenagers, and unless
teenagers have run into money since I was one,  asking a fourteen year old
for  a  fiver  to register is a candidate to replace  "banging  your  head
against  a brick wall" "nailing jelly to the ceiling",  or "trying to  get
blood out of a stone" as an exercise in futility:  they don't HAVE a spare
fiver!  Educational software,  however,  will tend to be bought by  adults
old  enough to have kids of an age to use it.  For the  most  part,  we're
talking  a  monthly  real-disposable-income  that's  orders  of  magnitude
larger than that of a teenager.

     Write Educational shareware,  and maybe registrations WILL reach  the
level  at  which  you CAN buy a spark plug for  that  Ferrari!  I've  been
leaning  on every games author who'll listen that now is a great  time  to
write   Educational  stuff.   Amazingly,   the  reaction  has  been   100%
favourable.  Just to sweeten the pill, TSC offers programming utilities at
cost  (30p a disk and postage) to any author who can go some  way  towards
demonstrating  that  they need them to develop  educational  programs;  we
have  a LARGE range of them.   We're considering starting  an  educational
Licenseware label-remuneration in direct proportion to the number of  each
author's sales,  not to the number of "potboilers" they churn out;  we see
it as an incentive towards excellence.

    When the Atari ST is officially killed off (and how far off  can  that
be?)  an interesting situation will arise:  some PDL's are  already  doing
their "rat" impressions,  and jumping ships to the Mac, the Archimedes and
printer ribbon-re-inking.  I think they've missed the point:  how long has
the  Sinclair Spectrum been officially "dead"?   And yet there  are  still
thousands,  maybe  tens of thousands,  of users,  two  monthly  magazines,
innumerable  fanzines,  peripherals still launched...  If Atari dumps  the
STE  tomorrow,  it'll  still  be  alive and kicking  well  into  the  next
century.  (And  I'd be suprised if the Speccy wasn't,  as well!)  Besides,
how will anyone be able to TELL if Atari stops supporting the ST??!

     The  large software houses will withdraw support - as  they're  doing
already  in some cases- leaving an interesting market.  If the  number  of
suppliers  drops by 33% each year,  but the number of users drops by  only
10% per year,  then each supplier (be it a software house or a PDL)  winds
up  with  a  much  bigger slice of a  slightly  smaller  pie.  PDL's  will
probably  find themselves the main source of ST software,  which leads  to
another interesting situation, which I'll call "The Anais Syndrome".

     A  while  back,  a  large parfumier came up with  a  new  concept:  a
quality  perfume  at an affordable price - the "Square Deal Surf"  of  the
fragrance  world.  They called it "Anais",  probably after much  expensive
research, and it was a total flop. Perfume is a luxury item, and a cheap
luxury  is  a contradiction in terms.  The marketing experts  were  called
back,  and  asked  "What  went wrong?!"  After  lengthy  deliberation  and
research,  they came up with an answer:  the price was doubled -as was the
name,  to "Anais Anais" - and it was relaunched.  It's now (I believe) the
UK's  best selling brand,  or close to it.  People wouldn't buy it at  one
price,  but queued up to do so whan the price was doubled.  "If it's  that
cheap,  it can't be any good!"  Wrong, suckers, it's the same damn' stuff,
in the same bottles.

     Could  it  be  that  PD would have a better image  if  it  wasn't  so
cheap?!


                                                             Ronald Walker



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STEN:  Thanks for the article, Ron.  It makes very interesting reading but
there's  a couple of points that I'd like to add to it.

     I  don't  know  of  any  shareware  author  who  wrote  a   programme
specifically  to make money - very few programmers are  that  naive.   The
majority  of shareware programmes are ones that began as a pet project  or
interest,  and  then  expanded to the point where the  programmer  thought
that  they  might  be of value to  other  users.    The  programme's  then
tidied-up, has a Doc file added to it and is sent out to the libraries.

     And  that's where the tricky stage begins.....   If  the  programme's
useful and offers value for money, then most users will be willing to send
the  registration fee.   The problem is that,  with the best will  in  the
world,  most  users never get around to it.   "I'm out of  stamps",  "Next
week,  when  I've got some cash"....  It isn't that users  are  dishonest,
it's  just that we're fallible human beings with a hundred  other  demands
on our money.

     What's needed is an *incentive* to register.   If registration brings
something that wasn't included in the version from the library - the  full
programme, utilities to go with it, or a manual - then users are much more
likely to send off their cash and comments.

     Re  the PD ramdiscs,  copiers,  and utilities that offer  the  'same'
features.   The  majority of these were written as personal  projects  and
then released as PD,  so I think we ought to be grateful for them,  rather
than moan about duplication.   I personally like the idea of choosing  the
exact  utility  that you want from a range of very similar ones  -  surely
it's  in everyone's interest to encourage this and add to the  variety  of
the PD resource?

     Educational  software.    Most  of  the  discs  that  I've  seen  are
mechanical  and unimaginative.    What's needed are programmes that  catch
children's imaginations and stretch them,  but without appearing to do so.
I'm  certainly  not  an educationalist,  but perhaps what's  needed  is  a
wider approach - programmes that encourage creativity and problem-solving,
rather than spelling and maths drills?

                                                               John Weller



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