Selling maps?
Dear mappers, I'm looking for some honest advice.
I've been making maps as a hobby and for personal use in my games, and have received positive feedback from the community here and elsewhere (thank you all for that!). Most of the maps I made are remakes of black and white maps from classic RPG sourcebooks, I've seen others sell similar maps on online platforms, and on one occasion someone even purchased CC3 to be able to view my maps.
This got me thinking, perhaps I could do the same, especially with the increasing popularity of VTTs. I'm not planning on doing this for a living but it would be nice to earn a little extra doing something I enjoy. I'd have to touch up/finish some of my older maps, and make high res renders for use with VTTs.
What do you think, would this be viable? Looking at my gallery, are my maps even worth charging for? And what would I need to improve or change to possibly make it worth it?
For anyone with experience selling their work, where to get started and what are the best platforms? And also, what would you consider reasonable and fair prices?
Thanks again for all the advice and feedback, and my apologies if this comes across as incoherent rambling. Just something I've had on my mind.
Comments
You seem to have some reasonably good maps in your galleries.
Have a really close look at other maps for sale in the same general category as yours. There are quite a few out there that aren't made by humans these days, but you can usually tell because AI doesn't recognise the difference between roads and rivers (just one of the more obvious examples). Once you've weeded out the AI stuff, look at the prices the human artists are setting for their work, the quality of the goods (size and resolution), and compare it with what you are offering.
The final price per copy is up to you to decide, and you might not gauge it right the first time. Better to be a little higher than too low, so you can drop the price if you don't sell anything. Once you've got it right, though, pricing the rest of your work after the first few will be a lot easier.
I can only give feedback on one point. Yes, your maps are great. I think the love that you put into them is important, and it shows in the output.
However, you may be asking the wrong crowd. We're probably the least likely to want to buy maps, so maybe we don't know as much about the needs of other people. We can make our own maps!
Seriously though, you're on the right track.
I've worked in the RPG business since the mid-80s. The only advice I'm going to offer is that you cannot sell copies of pre-existing maps. Those are copyrighted by the company and/or cartographer who first created and/or published them. Your material has to be 100% original and your own work.
Best of luck. It's very satisfying to do something you love and to be able to make a little extra money doing it.
This question if very timely for me because I have just started to dip my toe into trying to sell maps…so I, too, have more questions than answers.
I am trying to sell mine on DriveThruRPG. My storefront is called Royal Scribe Imagiinarium. I have five maps up right now and two more pending review. Your first month or so selling on DTRPG, you’re considered “unverified.” During that period, everything you submit for sale has to be reviewed by staff before it goes live, and some of the other tools are limited (including not being able to put up a logo, etc, yet). Once I’m verified, I will have more tools to work with to promote my stuff.
I can’t tell yet whether it’s a waste of time. I have had about 101 map downloads. Some are priced and a few, for promo purposes, are set at “Pay What You Will.” But of these:
1 paid full price - but I know from the positive review they left that it was a friend of mine
1 paid $5 for a pay what you will map - same friend
3 were free downloads from a comp link I sent to my rpg group
And 95 were the pay what you will maps where they chose to pay $0. Hopefully they will someday convert to being paid customers.
Maybe once I’m verified I will be able to promote it better
Happy to chat more here or in DMs.
You bring up a good point. I'm not an expert on copyright laws but as I understand it would be considered transformative work and it's not my intention of claiming authorship of the original work. I believe it would be more of an intellectual property issue. In any case I should look into this further to avoid legal trouble.
Looking at the DMsGuild (a branch of DriveThruRPG in partnership with WotC) content guidelines it looks like selling maps is allowed, for example https://www.dmsguild.com/product/242842/Zhentil-Keep--Forgotten-Realms-Stock-Maps is very similar to the maps I have made. This only applies to Dungeons & Dragons content however. I suppose the best thing would be to contact them about the finer details.
Thanks, that is very insightful. 'Pay What You Will' sounds like a good idea actually, at least to start with. Ultimately the most important thing is to provide fellow gamers with nice maps for their games. Best of luck!
Thanks all for the feedback, as always it's very appreciated.
Ahh, after reading up a bit more on copyright laws I think you're right @ScottA, it would be a derivative work and not transformative. Perhaps the argument could be made that making maps for VTTs alters the meaning/purpose of the original work. If anyone happens to be knowledgeable on copyright laws and can give some insight on this that would be interesting.
I'd be very wary of trying to sell through DM's Guild. My recollection (admittedly, from some years ago now), was that by selling there, you were effectively signing over ownership of your materials to Wizards of the Coast, such that you could no longer modify even your own original work published there. That was according to a couple of folks I knew online who were thinking of selling that way, and who decided against it for exactly this reason (as it was explained to me, at least). That may have changed since, but I'd be very careful in checking the small print before signing-up to that just in case.
@Royal Scribe - You may find it helpful to contact other small-publishing sellers on DriveThru that sell a lot of products as Pay-What-You-Want - Crooked Staff (papercrafting textures, maps, scenarios, and excellent papercrafting YouTube videos) springs to mind. I know Kris slightly who runs/is Crooked Staff, and he often comments about exactly this kind of matter on his Discord. He also runs a successful Patreon, and that might be another option to consider, assuming you feel comfortable ensuring a regular monthly output of new items.
Well, something to keep in mind: whatever your intentions and thoughts of "derivative" vs "transformative," you could face legal issues with a corporation whose pockets and reach would be larger than your own. Do you want to chance legal troubles and possibly waste money and time on something that is, at this point, a hobby? Most RPG companies I'm familiar with are very protective of their IPs because letting things slip through sets precedents for more future use of their material and possible loss of copyright/trademark (in extreme cases).
Another idea might be to put together sample packets of your maps and send them out to various game companies. You might pick up some cartography work that way...
You're right, it's not worth getting into legal trouble for. DMsGuild seems like the best place for D&D maps but it's also very restrictive on what is allowed (only campaign settings supported by the current edition of the game etc.). My best bet is to focus on making more original maps then.