Jukebox PDF Fulfillment and Community Copies
The Jukebox Journal (Devlog)
Hey folks. It's been a rough few months. I hope everyone is doing as well as they can and holding their communities close.
We've sent out a ton of Jukebox copies to Kickstarter backers. All PDF rewards have been delivered, and the first round of physical rewards (everyone who placed their orders with Plus One Exp a month ago) is done. I've been getting pictures of folks receiving their physical copies, which has been a joy!
Most importantly, the 223 community copies went up yesterday. These are entirely free copies of the Jukebox rulebook and all 16 playsets for anyone who is experiencing economic hardships that would make it hard to purchase the game. These copies were funded by the generosity of Jukebox backers. If this describes you, you can head over to the itch.io page to grab a community copy.
Using itch.io for your Crowdfunding Campaign
I like keeping this newsletter informative, so I figured I'd do a quick post about how I did PDF fulfillment and community copies for Jukebox via itch.io. Much of the information is provided in FAQs on the itch.io website, which I will link to. The focus of this post is a walk-through of my personal experience using itch.io to deliver Jukebox to backers.
PDF Fulfillment for Crowdfunding
Before going too much into it, fulfilling Kickstarter PDFs itch.io was very easy. It took roughly 30 minutes of work, and it's free. If you run a Kickstarter that has digital rewards and you want to get those rewards to backers, itch.io is a great option.
Choosing a service for PDF fulfillment?
So, what is fulfillment? Fulfillment, in terms of selling a product, is how you intend to get your product to your customer. For a PDF, this is a lot simpler than a physical product, but there are still some options for how you can do it. When you finish a Kickstarter, you get a spreadsheet with a bunch of backer information, including backer emails - you technically could send them all PDFs to their emails if you wanted to. This isn't a great idea, because if you end up updating your PDF, there's no easy place they can go to re-download the game. It's also easy to lose track of an email.
Itch.io and DriveThruRPG – two of the places you can sell PDFs, mentioned on Where are you Publishing? – support sending PDFs to crowdfunding backers. DMsGuild doesn't support fulfilling crowdfunders because the whole point of DMsGuild is you're only allowed to sell content on their website (and crowdfunding inherently is selling content not on DMsGuild).
Why choose itch.io for fulfillment? I was already using itch.io as the main website where folks could buy the Jukebox PDF. I was selling primarily on itch.io because I got to keep more profits than on the other websites, and I found itch.io's user experience a little easier to work with. That said, I've only heard great things about DriveThruRPG, and their customer support team is top-notch. I personally would base the decision on whether to fulfill with itch.io versus DriveThruRPG based on where you're already selling the PDF and where your backers are likely to have accounts.
How to Fulfil Kickstarter PDFs with itch.io
The full walk-through is on the itch.io website - it'll be more likely to have up-to-date screenshots:
In short, you'll be grabbing a spreadsheet from Kickstarter of all the backers who need your game digitally. Then you'll use the spreadsheet to create a mass email to all your backers. That email will let each backer add your game, for free, to their itch.io game library.
Here's a little more depth if you've never used itch.io, with some thoughts:
1. Get setup on itch.io: You'll need to make an itch.io account and make a sales page for your game. Setting up your game is as easy as filling out a form with details about your game, the price of your game, and the actual PDF files for your game. You'll also want a few screenshots (960px width for images in the description) and a cover image (630 by 500 pixels).
A few notes about getting paid (note that this doesn't apply to Kickstarter distribution since your backers already paid you when they backed):
For getting paid if you're a US seller, you'll likely need to do this tax interview, which is the most bureaucratic part of the process and can take time to sort out (so just do it a few weeks before you plan to process a payment).
There are a bunch of different ways to get paid, I've chosen to do itch.io Payouts (meaning that I request a payout and get a lump sum versus being paid on every transaction) and via PayPal (instead of Payoneer).
While itch.io can be "free" (as in it doesn't charge any fees for its service), by default, it adds a 10% fee. You can change this to another percentage (including 0%) in Seller Settings.
2. Import your Kickstarter backer information into itch.io: That's described here. You start on the Kickstarter website and download a csv file (a type of simplistic spreadsheet file) of all your backer information, then you'll import that file into itch.io. It'll then generate a free copy of your game for each backer (tied to their email), which you can share with them via an individualized URL. This individualized URL, where you can download the game, is called a "download key".
3. Send the copies to your backers: Now that you have special URLs for each of your backers, you could manually send each backer their URL to access the game. That's a lot of work. If you have hundreds of backers (and personal emails have limits on how many messages you can send), folks usually use a mass email service (tools like MailChimp).
If you don't already have one of these tools set up, itch.io provides an "Emails" tool that does exactly this - it sends emails to your backers, giving each one the correct download key, which is described here. The one caveat is that someone from itch.io support needs to approve your email, which takes time. It took about 4 days for them to OK my email (and 2 more because my itch.io email didn't match the one I sent the support ticket with).
And that was it; Kickstarter distribution done!
Community Copies
Community copies are free or reduced-cost copies, usually set aside for folks who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford full-priced copies of the game. In my post about pricing, I go over why having a sliding scale or community copies, as opposed to PWYW, is a great option. It provides your games to folks for whom it would legitimately be a struggle to buy your game, while also acknowledging that your work costs time and money to make for those who can pay.
Setting up community copies on itch.io took around five minutes once I got started, and I followed the steps here:
Diana Jones Emerging Designer Award
In unrelated news, I learned this last weekend that I’m one of four folks who won the Diana Jones Emerging Designer Award, which means I’ll be at GenCon this year!
This is a yearly award focused on new creators (hence the “emerging”), specifically designers in their first three years of publishing. It’s meant to be accessible to new designers, and winners get an all-expense-paid trip to GenCon and support for furthering their game design career. Submissions are in February, and it’s an easy process where you can nominate yourself. I’ll share more about what participating in the emerging designer program is like after GenCon.
Alright, that’s all for now. For anyone who’s been reading, my posting cadence has dropped severely since my work on the Cosmere RPG has ramped up. It might be a few months, but I hope to write an article or two about playtesting. Till then!
Over and out,
- 🫙 👁️ 👁️
Great post, Lyla! I appreciate you mentioning that 0% is a valid percentage to allocate to itch, I’m not sure how many designers know that. Also, congratulations again on the Diana Jones Emerging Designer award!