OneBookShelf - Updates to Publisher Conduct Guidelines (Updated June 27th, 2022)

Here's the link to the original: https://onebookshelfpublisherservice.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/227866447-Publisher-Conduct-Guidelines

There are no prior pages saved on the Wayback Machine BTW

We have outlined below several issues that we feel would jeopardize our working relationship with publishers. The intent of this document and its contents are tripartite: to protect customers’ shopping experience, to promote the interests and business goals of all publishers, and to ensure that our team is protected from bad actors. 

Our goals are to operate a fair, ethical environment where you can sell your titles and to have a professional relationship with you, built on trust, cooperation, and mutual respect. 

Quality of Titles: The quality and content of your titles and cover images directly affects the quality of our store and our customers’ shopping experiences. 

Please see our Product Standards Guidelines for details.

Pricing: We expect fair treatment on the pricing of your titles. Please price your titles as low on our marketplace as you do anywhere else; we understand that short-term sales on backlist titles can vary between stores temporarily (for up to a week or so), but having titles constantly reduced elsewhere for cheaper, or pricing them differently upon initial release, does not constitute fair treatment in our view. Likewise, including extra content for no extra cost in alternate versions made available only elsewhere is not fair treatment. 

Release Schedule: We expect that if you create a title that you wish to sell at our store, you will release that title on our store within 24 hours of releasing it elsewhere. 

We expect that once you release a title on a particular date, you will not try to manipulate or maximize marketing exposure by re-creating or re-releasing that same title at a later date. Any unethical manipulation of site features or algorithms to get more front-page exposure for a title is unacceptable.

Links: We ask that you put a link to our store on your website. In turn, we offer consumers a link to your website from each of your titles’ product description pages. We currently allow some links to social media and news sites, which can be seen under “See More” above Description on the “Edit a title listing” tool page for any title. 

Aside from the links described above, we do not allow external links on title product description pages. An exception to this rule is that titles listed only within the Publisher Resources category may contain external links to a license or licensing guidelines or to external reviews in their descriptions. 

You may not add links or suggest even vaguely that customers should go to other websites to acquire or purchase your titles. 

If you have any questions regarding links within product descriptions, please feel free to contact us by email (at publisherservice@onebookshelf.com).

Trade Dress: We expect publishers to respect one another’s trade dress, designs, and motifs. It is not acceptable to copy the look and feel of other publishers’ titles. 

Front-Page Flooding: Please do not flood the front page of our site (under New Releases) with many releases on the same day. Not only does flooding the front page in this way use all your “new release” marketing clout up at once, but our research indicates that publishers typically see more sales from regular releases over time than from a large group of them launched all at once.

We will attempt to back-date any more than two (2) titles released on the same day. If you would like to release several titles at once, please notify us so we can adjust the release dates for you. 

Reviews: Publishers may not review their own titles or those of other publishers. Similarly, people having a professional relationship with a publisher, such as authors or illustrators, are also barred from leaving reviews of associated publishers’ titles. 

Sending complimentary copies of your title to an alternate customer email that you have created so that you can review your own titles is also not allowed.

We periodically check for publishers who abuse our marketplace review system and have suspended publishers from our marketplace for such abuse.

Note that titles listed under the “Publisher Resources” category or any subcategory thereof are an exception to this rule and may be reviewed by publishers or contributors, since such titles are meant to be purchased by other publishers. 

POD Process and Print Proofs: When you upload new files for print-on-demand (POD) to a title listing, once they are approved, you must order a proof copy of your title, at cost, to make sure that everything is working as intended.

After your POD title is activated, if you make changes to the print files and upload a new version, then that print format of your title is deactivated automatically. Without exception, you must go through the entire premedia process again, regardless of how minor the changes to your files, and you must then order a new print proof before we can reactivate your title for sale. 

Treatment of Staff: We do not expect our staff to deal with publisher clients who demonstrate abusive or threatening behavior, whether personal or professional, either in business communications or on social media.

We consider any of the following behaviors to be grounds for immediate closure of a publisher account: 

Threats of physical harm or violence

Threats to disseminate or share anyone’s personal information on the internet

Threats or derogatory comments that are homophobic, sexist, or involving other forms of discrimination based on a person’s protected characteristics

Inappropriate comments or insults regarding religion, culture, or race

Social Media Behavior: We know we are not perfect. When we make mistakes, we hope that our publisher clients will bring it to our attention first. Publishers who make derogatory or defamatory statements on social media about OneBookShelf or our staff may be subject to modification or termination of their publisher account. 

Hostile Marketing: Our policy regarding potentially offensive content (see Product Standards Guidelines) reported by customers is to deactivate such titles while they are being reviewed. Publishers who deliberately court controversy by making public declarations or accusations of censorship resulting from this process in order to draw attention to their products will be considered to use hostile marketing. 

Publishers who direct or support public accusations of impropriety or censorship toward OneBookShelf when their controversial titles are rejected or removed from our marketplace will also be considered to use hostile marketing. 

This behavior will not be tolerated. We have adopted a strict one-warning policy for those who engage in hostile marketing: The first incident will prompt a warning, and after a second incident, their accounts will be removed from our site permanently and immediately.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat vidcast on YouTube - Tenkar  

News - RPGNow merging fully into DriveThruRPG

I found this waiting in my email this morning.

Dear publisher,

Starting in February 2019, all elements of the RPGNow tool pages and storefront will redirect to similar pages on DriveThruRPG.

You most likely know this, but since RPGNow and DriveThruRPG first merged as businesses back in 2006, they have shared all the same tools and digital inventory. On the front end, they looked and behaved like two separate sites, but essentially they have just been two faces of the same site for many years. The only real differences were the color schemes and logos.

You might have some questions about the coming change, so we’ve done our best to anticipate and answer them below.

How will this affect me?

In most ways, you’ll be unaffected. Your entire catalog of titles from RPGNow is already listed on DriveThruRPG (as it always has been), and you can log in to DriveThruRPG using the same account(s) you’ve always used on RPGNow, just as you could before.

Even your old bookmarks to pages on RPGNow.com will still work: They’ll automatically be redirected to the same page on DriveThruRPG.

What about sales reporting? Will my past sales be combined?

Yes, as far as sales records and your titles’ metal rankings, we will be merging those together.

Starting in February, your sales records will show combined sales of each title across both the deprecated RPGNow site and DriveThruRPG, together. The number of unit sales will also be combined, so if you had metal rankings for titles on one or both sites, there’s a good chance you’ll find that your rankings on some titles will have increased on DriveThruRPG.

What about my Publisher Promotion Points and marketing impressions?

No worries. Your Publisher Promotion Points (PPP) are already shared across sister sites. They are compiled by publisher, not by site.

If you have used your PPP to purchase site impressions for banners or featured product messages on RPGNow, you will also be reimbursed, commensurately, for those expenditures on DriveThruRPG.

Why is this happening?

Here’s the big picture: In the 12 years since RPGNow and DriveThruRPG merged, the growth of RPGNow has tapered off constantly, while DriveThruRPG has continued to grow strongly, year over year, since it launched in 2004. We’ve reached the point where RPGNow rarely draws new customers or publishers and sells less than one-tenth the volume of titles purchased on DriveThruRPG.

To be honest, we have known this moment would come for years now. We’ve just finally decided it’s time to put the RPGNow brand out to pasture.

If you look at the two storefronts, RPGNow has always had a stronger OSR and smaller publisher presence. This does not bode well...

Plate Mail Games Hacked - 3200 Tracks Downloaded for Free before Corrected

Someone hacked Plate Mail Games OneBookShelf account and set the prices to all of the audio tracks to ZERO. While the price was so set, there were 3,200 downloads. In theory, thats about a $4,000 hit.

The reality is something different, as many of those sales were probably from folks that were curious about using music in their RPG sessions and might not have purchased a copy otherwise. So, is it a loss of 3,200 potential sales? Perhaps.

It is certainly the loss of some sales and one heck of a hardship on a small small publisher.

Plate Mail Games' tracks sell for $1.25 a pop.

Wes does good work and can use some community support.

Hello All,  

This morning I found out that my products had been switched to $0 and 3200 tracks where downloaded. The theory is that someone got hold of my publisher account password. Luckily, I had recently transferred my balance to Paypal, so no money was stolen. Your information is secure; it's handled on the DrivethruRPG side. So, for 24 hours, people were able to download tracks for free. I think 99% of the people that did figured I had put the prices at $0 and thought nothing more about it. I'm not rich. My family uses the money we make from sales to pay bills. I don't charge a lot for my products. There is no real recourse at this point because multiple people downloaded products, and as I said, I think they didn't understand something was wrong. If I had sold that many products, my cut would have paid my rent and a good chunk of bills. Anyway, here is what I'm asking: if you can afford to get one track today, consider doing so. If everyone was to buy one track, I would recoup the money lost over the last 24 hours.
Also, I want to thank the customer who recognized something seemed amiss and alerted me right away. That was very thoughtful and I greatly appreciate it. 

Plate Mail Games 

Thanks,
Wes Otis

Sales made via The Tavern's RPGNow links go to support The Tavern. Believe it or not, pennies and nickels do add up ;)

Publishers - Tomorrow is Your Last Chance to Sign up for Christmas in July Sales at OneBookShelf

I got this email last night and thought I should share it. I know I've been told in the past from other publishers that they've missed certain notifications from OBS and I'm trying to expand the bandwidth.

Dear publishers, 

This is a final reminder that our annual "Chrismas in July" sale, the biggest sitewide promotion of the year, is fast approaching. During Christmas in July, we offer many thousands of titles all at 25% off, across DriveThruRPG/RPGnow, DriveThruCards, DriveThruComics, and DriveThruFiction. 

If you would like to take part in this major promotion, please make sure to opt in using the "Opt in or out of site-wide sales" tool page 

(https://www.drivethrurpg.com/pub/sales_permissions.php) 

by 10 AM (EST) this Friday, July 14, at the latest.

Yours,
Scott Holden
Sales, Data, and Special Projects
OneBookShelf, Inc.
scott@onebookshelf.com

Which means for The Tavern's general readers - there's a big sale from OBS coming up soon :)

Some Further Thoughts on Why I see the OSR in General as "Underserved"

So, in Sundays interview by Erik Jensen (posted here at The Tavern yesterday), we ending it with this comment and response (edited for pertinence to this topic:

Tenkar - I see the OSR as an underserved market that deserves more respect. 5e is huge for the OSR because writing product for 5e and converting to the OSR is much easier than going from 4e or Pathfinder. There is synergy between 5e and the OSR. Some folks want to see new clones - I want to see new hacks. Hack SWL or the Black Hack or some other OSR game and give us a western, supers, space opera, sci-fantasy, godzilla monsters - whatever! I think the future of the OSR is finding new genres and not new systems. Or I could be totally wrong. But I think the OSR is just going to grow in the number of players at this point and we have 5e to thank for it.

Jensen -  Underserved?  Huh, I don't think that's a word I would've used to describe the OSR market; I often wonder how much 'product' the OSR market can actually bear.  I'm not sure it's all that much.

Now, if you firmly have your feet set in the DIY (do it yourself) corner of the OSR that very well might be true. Because really, what do you need besides some random tables and some time? More time than many of us have but time none the less.

However, the OSR as a whole is a largely untapped market. 5e is certainly bringing players in to the OSR fold and they are not mutually exclusive rulesets - you can play both and can certainly enjoy both.

Forgive me for saying so, but the OSR largely consists of older gamers who, by my experience, have more disposable income than younger gamers. The market is there, so why isn't it being targeted as much as it could and probably should be?

Well, there is the perception that OSR gamers are cheap. We want our gaming inspiration and material for nothing, or close to it. I personally think that is approaching things from the wrong direction. I think content creators for the OSR are extremely generous. As a community, we have evolved with community driven (and written) rulesets that can be grabbed for free in PDF (and occasionally print). I can say that my experience with the OSR Extravaganza Sale is that OSR gamers WANT OSR gaming material but no one bothered to cater to them prior. No one said "Hey, we know you are a tight community, here's a sale aimed and your wants and desires."

Sale numbers suggest to me that the OSR has been overlooked and underserved. Maybe that will change going forward. I sure hope so.

If the OSR is to continue to grow - and if we look at convention attendance of conventions such as Gary Con, NTRPG Con and Gamehole Con over the past few years, you see the number of attendees is steadily increasing each year, the OSR market should take the opportunity to grow along with it.

I'm not suggesting we need the glut of the D20 era, but with POD that's impossible anyhow - today's OSR market is largely PDFs and POD. Having a warehouse full of goods might be doable by the larger companies, but smaller publishers don't need that overhead nor investment, and that is good.

Do we need more rulesets? I dunno. As I said above, I want to see genre hacks of existing rulesets, but in the end, the community will decide. You'll be surprised at how far a little respect goes. I'm sure RPGNow / OBS is happily surprised at how well the OSR sale went.

Here, I'm going to make an open suggestion to the powers that be at OBS - you know how you have tracks for Hottest Titles, Newest Titles, Hottest Small Press and the like? Well, add a track for Hottest OSR and you will see sales jump for OSR releases. Often, OSR releases get lost in the noise of general releases.

No need to thank me. Just doing my service to the OSR Community ;)

(if you think I'm full of shit or off my rocker, feel free to add your thoughts. Heck, add them even if you do agree, as I doubt you'll agree on all my points)

How NOT to use the OneBookSelf Mail to Sell Your Goods - Columbia Games Loves to Send its Customers Spam

Columbia Games, when is enough fucking enough? Three emails for three different products in 40 minutes? Are you fucking for real?

This isn't a knock of OneBookShelf. They know how to run an online digital and print storefront with minimal hiccups. I'm just pointing out a publisher that abuses the tools given to all publishers and is potentially putting that tool at risk.

Ever hear of "less is more?" Try it sometime...

Somehow I missed April 21st - Four fucking emails!

Banned Again - Venger - Guardians of Galaxy XXX

Yep, Venger Santanis has a product removed at OBS - yet again. The link goes to his blog post about the latest product removed - Guardians of Galaxy XXX.

Haven't read it yet, but Venger is offering it as a free download via Dropbox.

Now, could it have been removed for trademark / IP issues? Perhaps

Does Venger often needlessly stir up shit? Perhaps Definitely. It is his trademark ;)

Is OBS obligated to sell everything submitted? No

Isn't there an Adult Content filter to take care of stuff like this at OBS? I thought so

Did I plan on DLing Guardians of Galaxy XXX? Probably not. While Venger's earlier OSR fantasy releases were in my wheelhouse, his more recent SciFi SlutPorn or whatever he calls it is not. Doesn't mean it doesn't have its fans.

Ah well. Interesting times.

OBS' Offensive Content Policy - 1 Year Later (First in a series)

In late August of 2015, a product entitled Tournament of Rapists was noticed on DriveThruRPG/OBS. The title and publisher’s description drew immediate and harsh criticisms from across the blogosphere (including here at Tenkar’s Tavern - (WTF Were They Thinking? Tournament of Rapists (OGL), Aug 27, 2015), lead to at least one publisher pulling their materials from the site in protest (Exploding Rogue and DTRPG, Aug 30, 2015), and even drew harsh condemnation from such industry leaders as Erik Mona of Paizo while, in other circles, the product’s publisher received strong support. Within a few days of the beginning of the affair, the matter was abruptly resolved by the publisher voluntarily pulling the product and the introduction of a new content policy from OBS CEO Steve Wieck on September 1.

Rather than satisfying either side of the controversy, both groups expressed displeasure with the new policy and the solution that it presented. Publishers sometimes seen as controversial, such as James Raggi, expressed concern over the possible far-reaching impact this new policy may have on creativity and participation within the industry while heated discussions carried on at rpg.net, reddit, and other sites. In the end, the policy put in place offered no hard and fast guidelines for what would be deemed offensive or not, instead harkening back to the old adage “we’ll know it when we see it”. Community opinions on whether this system would be immediately abused in attacks against particular publishers or if it would be overly permissive were just as heated as the original discussions about Tournament of Rapists.

It has now been over a year since the policy was put into place and we at the Tavern decided to dig a little deeper. We spoke with Scott Holden, Manager of Promotions and Business Intelligence at OBS to see what impact the new offensive content policy has had at OBS.

TT: With an already existing "Adult" filter, is there any reason for OBS to have a content review system for matters other than copyright/trademark infringement?

SH: We believe so, yes. If you did a Venn diagram of adult content and offensive content, there would be overlap, but the two things are not synonymous.

TT:  The majority of the OBS review system as originally cited boils down to "We'll know it when we see it", in an attempt to avoid "bright line" rules. Is this still the case, or has the system become more rigidly structured?

SH: That is absolutely still the case. Each instance is handled individually, and we discuss it internally after we've all reviewed the titles thoroughly. Only once we've all chimed in and given our "vote" do we take any action. And to date, as the record shows, our policy leans toward acceptance and leniency.  

TT: Since the policy has been put into place have any products not been approved or been removed that fell afoul of "know it when we see it" after having been identified internally?

SH: Thus far we have only reviewed titles reported by customers, and per above, no RPG titles have been banned. (We have banned a few non-RPG titles.)

TT: To date, what is the feeling on the level of success of the review process?

SH: I think we're quite happy with it. Everyone on our staff who has chimed in on these titles has been very open-minded, even when they might have been personally offended or at least made uncomfortable by some of the material in question. And the results speak for themselves. From the customer side, very few people seem to have tried to abuse the system (and I think it's both interesting and telling that the couple who have done so almost certainly did it out of resentment for the system itself). The policy and the tools have been working pretty much as intended.

TT: Looking back to the Tournament of Rapists controversy that led to the policy being implemented, how would the new policy have caused OBS to have handled that matter differently?

SH: I think there would be little change. The title would have been reported at release; we would have suspended the title for thorough review and discussed it with the publisher.

Since the policy’s implementation, the number of products reported for review to OBS is about thirty. Among RPG products less than ten items have been reported as offensive. These products have been spread across seven publishers, five authors, and seven complainants. Of the reports filed, only one complaint was found by OBS to be abusive.

“Interestingly, the only customer account to have reported multiple titles (three of them) did so as a revenge tactic against our temporary suspension of another title while it was pending review,” reported Holden.

Among non-RPG titles, six items have been reported as offensive, while the remaining products have been RPG products submitted over IP violations (whether intentional or unintentional). These numbers exclude “community products” (e.g. DM’s Guild) for which complaints tended towards IP reasons.

Further, between six and eight titles, all non-RPG, have been banned since the implementation of the policy. Five of those titles belong to a single publisher and were removed after the reporting of a single product lead to the removal of an entire product line.

To date, OBS in unaware of any publisher pulling their materials in protest of the Offensive Content Policy.

The results can be viewed in a number of ways. One could say that one third of products reported among RPGs are solely abusive complaints. One could say that the number of complaints is so small as to have no real effect on the industry. But the numbers don’t tell the full story of the impact of the policy, and in our next installments we will be questioning several publishers and authors on both sides of the issue, four of whom having had direct experience with the policy.

Bob Brinkman has been playing RPGs since the days of OD&D. Recently he has written for both the Goodman Games Fifth Edition Fantasy and DCC RPG lines and has completed a project for the Crossroads to Adventure books for GP Adventures. He co-hosts the monthly Sanctum Secorum podcast focusing on Appendix N in relation to DCC RPG.