Hello to all, (reading all forum-reactions my German
improved, but I still have to write here in English)
I've read all input on this forum (started at 24-11)
about my info as part of a newsletter about
free/discount (review-)copies.
A few things I have to make clear:
1.
I do respect all review-copy-policies by magazins or
the reviewers absolutely. The info that I don't give
discount and about the consequences was not meant as
comment but as information.
2.
The person who mailed to this forum as the
Essen-report-writer (Bert Hess) for the Spielbox was
not the person who came to my booth in Essen.
I shouldn't have given the example, so I will be more
carefull in the future.
Now a discussion about review-copies started I've read
the very different thoughts and impressions people
have about the subject. I think a description of the
way it works will clear things up.
Bert Hess wrote:
ZITAT: "Ich kenne auch keinen seriösen (!!)
Spielejournalisten, der seine Rezensionen von
Freiexemplaren abhängig macht. Jedem Verleger, der von
so einem Schnorrer behelligt wird, sollte ihn umgehend
vom Stand schmeißen. Die Redaktionen von
Spielezeitschriften wollen mit solchen Leuten auch
nichts zu tun haben. Das Freiexemplar ist
verschwendet." :ZITAT
It seems like you were not in Essen at all.
The reality is that the reviewers and 'the magazines'
in case of smaller game-companies do have
review-price-'rules', which is right. The 'rules' are
in most cases half-price or free, mostly depending on
the number of readers.
Suppose for example someone goes to booth 284 and asks
for a review-copy for half-price for a magazin.
Suppose he gets it. Then he goes further to booth 287
and wants a review-copy there too. Suppose he gets no
discount and buys for the whole price. Would that be
fair to the company at booth 284?? All reviewers who
deal often with smaller companies know this dilemma
(most bigger companies supply free) and if they don't
buy my games or buy but don't use it for a review
because of my 'no-discount-rule', then I do respect
that very well!
I want to emphesize on the reality here which seems
normal to me in a market where the work for both
reviewers and game-sellers is largely hobby-based and
both want to hold their costs low and try to match
supply and demand.
I know several companies with smaller editions/sales
than my who got a small review plus photo in exchange
for a free copy, in the second part of a well-known
magazin (I won't give names anymore). It leaded to
some extra sales sometimes so I didn't hear complaints.
I got people from every magazin I could expect in my
booth in Essen. Now another person from Spielbox wrote
on this forum that he did write the Essen-report which
means that the Spielbox-Essen-report-writer did not
came to me in Essen while I made it hard this year to
miss the Cwali-booth and the new game "Morisi" several
days in a row and the info and reactions before and
during the release in Essen make me wonder what I
should do more to get games noticed.
On internet there are many places where to find things
about "Morisi". I made a list on the Cwali/Morisi-site. Please mail more sites, if you know. I link to
all sites, also if it wouldn't be positive. And I will
to refer to magazins too.
(Sometimes 'rules' were broken by others or me. I did
sell for half-price ones to 'a magazin' which wrote
already many times shorter and longer about my games
and did send a free copy of the issues to Holland
every time. Thereby no discount may not be my rule
forever. It depends on many things.)
Hopefully the discussion will have some positive
results. Maybe the magazins will prepare the review-
policy better with their reviewers (I think some
already do that good). But the result of that is not
necessarily better for the smaller game-companies.
As some of you already mentioned in your reactions, it
is an aspect of our free world and the profits of that
freedom may apply here too. Consider the practical
situation in a booth again. Suppose someone who makes
reviews for a magazin sees a game that looks
interesting. He takes a better look, hears a
description, looks through a rulebook, likes to get
his articles in the magazin and thinks this game has a
good chance for a review. Then he introduces himself
as reviewer and the seller tries a little more to
convince that the game is fantastic. Then the seller
tries to let the reviewer say what he thinks about the
game to see how serious he is and to see if the review
will be nice for the game. The reviewer tries to find
the possitive aspects, if he succeeds he may get a
free copy and promisses to send a copy of the review
and finally the situation leads to a happy reviewer
who is motivated to write the review, a nice article
for readers of the magazin about a game which they may
never knew about without the review and a game-company
which is happy with the copy of the nice article and
they may even get extra sales by it. Game-companies
may not be happy if they loose the possibility to
'buy' a review this way.
Like Gerd Fenchel wrote earlier: "Also alles eine
Sache von Angebot und Nachfrage."
In the Cwali-info I did write another part about the
game "Morisi" which I would like more to write about
on this forum. That is about empty hexagon-places in
the startlandscape.
In the booths in Essen and Eindhoven most visitors
played the game on a landscape with empty places (say
uncultured mountains). About three empty hexagon-
places is the best way to learn "Morisi" in case of
new players. I also like that in case of experienced
players, especially in case of 2 or 3 players.
Groeten,
Corné