Sidus Publishing
by Mark · 03/07/2008 (1:47 am) · 11 comments
Another great place to get your product into the crazy world!
www.sidusstudio.com/
(still working on it)
Edited 03/08/08
I just noticed the template was the same as Bungie.net. CRAP!!!! I'll have to find another.. there arent many nice Joomla 1.5 templates out there unfortunately. Thanks for pointing that out or else I would have never even known it.
Now to answer some questions, I appreciate your feedback.
@ Martin and Leroy: Good question. The answer is no, we don't. Most start-ups dont have any customers, they have to get them. Remember, we let folks publish with other publishers so they really have nothing to lose. GarageGames follows a similar policy, Determinance for example appears to have found a box publisher (I assume) AND they have their game for sale here at GG. This is good for the creators of Determinance, giving their game more than one outlet to sell the game.
@ Ted, I agree with you. 60% seems a little nonsensical and I'm probably going to raise it considerably more, if not promoting a few games with no royalty rates, which may be a good traffick grabber,putting a few titles on the site, becoming "known" and forming relationships with artists for future releases.
@ Stefan... uhh..
@ Terry, while this may be true, you may be speaking of the big-name elites. However, Indies and start-up groups may find it appealing. I have geared this plan towards no-names, considering I am a no-name. I figure If I'm going to start somewhere, I might as well start with them: in the beginning. Publishing a Mariah Carey CD or Gears of War 2 is not my intent. This is for Indies in need of assistance. By giving them a secondary outlet AND allowing them to publish with others, they don't have much to lose.
@ Neill thanks for pointing this out. As terry said, it was a Joomla 1.5 template from NukeDesign and I plan on changing it immediately.
This really comes down to the royalties. As I said above, I may contact folks and promote their work, asking nothing in return. Over time, I suspect the site to get some page views and then I may be able to pop in a 5% royalty and continue to raise it as the site gets more popular. This seems very fair to me.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a start-up organization, we are looking for good Indie Games, Music and Films to publish. If you are interested in publishing with us, read below to get an idea of what it may be like to publish with Sidus.
You made the content, you deserve the money. We pay a royalty rate of 60%. This means you get 60% of the monthly earnings for whatever product you may be selling. You get more money than us, that's how it should be.
We let you publish your work with other publishers. This means you can have 2 or more publishers at once, as long as they allow it like we do. This can be VERY beneficial and will likely maximize your profits. You have nothing to lose!
Our knowledge in contracts keeps things easy for you. The contracts we provide are easy to read and are built to better suit YOU, not us.
Many publishers, particularly in the games industry make it look like they created the content, when they only published it - we make it very clear that YOU created the content.
You will always own the intellectual property. Everything will be yours.
-------------------------------------
Still with us? Here are some Questions and Answers:
Question: Will you put my product in stores?
Answer: We want to do this eventually when we get in contact with sales reps. Right now we are doing digital-downloads only, which may even be more beneficial than getting your product on store shelves, considering how easy it can be to market on the Internet and how easy it is to shop.
Question: How much money will I make publishing with you?
Answer: Hard to answer. It always comes down to how good your product is. If it's high quality, expect word-of-mouth alone to be the prime marketing strategy and expect sales to be very good. If your product isn't that great, it probably won't go viral. Make your product great!
Question: We are having trouble with our game/song/film! How can you help us!?
Answer: There is a limited amount we can do. However, we provide some truly great resources to get you on the right foot. We also provide a project management web tool for free if you are planning on publishing with us. It becomes very helpful for managing your team, projects and tasks, speeding up your creative process considerably. We will also provide you with your own private forum board so you can discuss things with your team and with us very easily.
Question: Contracts?!?!?!?!?!
Answer: Yes! Don't be intimidated! Almost all publishers use contracts. We understand you may not be familiar with contracts and contract law, but we are. We make it very fair, easy to read and we will always answer your questions. You can take it to your favorite attorney to have a look at our contracts, if need be!
Question: How are you going to market my game?
Answer: Advertising! We want to advertise your product to the moon if necessary! We'll submit your product across message boards, banner ads and more. Again, if your product is GOOD, expect it to sell itself.
Question: So, why should I go with a publisher?
Answer: Creating content is one thing, getting it out in the world is another. It's expensive and very time consuming - publishers eliminate all of it.
Question: How do I publish with you?
Answer: Contact me! I handle all submissions. My E-Mail is mark@sidusstudio.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
When thinking about what to include in your E-Mail, don't worry about sounding all professional and using big words. We just want very basic information:
1) What you want published. A game? A movie? A music album?
2) A description of your product. What is it? What genre?
3) Provide us with DEMOS! This is very important! We'll ignore your E-Mail if you don't show us anything.
For games, we want screenshots and videos.
For films, we want trailers and clips.
For music, we want music samples.
We will review your submission and decide whether or not we would like to publish your product. Remember, it's not only customers looking for quality - it's also publishers.
Expect a close relationship with Sidus Studios!
Publishing Submissions - mark@sidusstudio.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.sidusstudio.com/
(still working on it)Edited 03/08/08
I just noticed the template was the same as Bungie.net. CRAP!!!! I'll have to find another.. there arent many nice Joomla 1.5 templates out there unfortunately. Thanks for pointing that out or else I would have never even known it.
Now to answer some questions, I appreciate your feedback.
@ Martin and Leroy: Good question. The answer is no, we don't. Most start-ups dont have any customers, they have to get them. Remember, we let folks publish with other publishers so they really have nothing to lose. GarageGames follows a similar policy, Determinance for example appears to have found a box publisher (I assume) AND they have their game for sale here at GG. This is good for the creators of Determinance, giving their game more than one outlet to sell the game.
@ Ted, I agree with you. 60% seems a little nonsensical and I'm probably going to raise it considerably more, if not promoting a few games with no royalty rates, which may be a good traffick grabber,putting a few titles on the site, becoming "known" and forming relationships with artists for future releases.
@ Stefan... uhh..
@ Terry, while this may be true, you may be speaking of the big-name elites. However, Indies and start-up groups may find it appealing. I have geared this plan towards no-names, considering I am a no-name. I figure If I'm going to start somewhere, I might as well start with them: in the beginning. Publishing a Mariah Carey CD or Gears of War 2 is not my intent. This is for Indies in need of assistance. By giving them a secondary outlet AND allowing them to publish with others, they don't have much to lose.
@ Neill thanks for pointing this out. As terry said, it was a Joomla 1.5 template from NukeDesign and I plan on changing it immediately.
This really comes down to the royalties. As I said above, I may contact folks and promote their work, asking nothing in return. Over time, I suspect the site to get some page views and then I may be able to pop in a 5% royalty and continue to raise it as the site gets more popular. This seems very fair to me.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a start-up organization, we are looking for good Indie Games, Music and Films to publish. If you are interested in publishing with us, read below to get an idea of what it may be like to publish with Sidus.
You made the content, you deserve the money. We pay a royalty rate of 60%. This means you get 60% of the monthly earnings for whatever product you may be selling. You get more money than us, that's how it should be.
We let you publish your work with other publishers. This means you can have 2 or more publishers at once, as long as they allow it like we do. This can be VERY beneficial and will likely maximize your profits. You have nothing to lose!
Our knowledge in contracts keeps things easy for you. The contracts we provide are easy to read and are built to better suit YOU, not us.
Many publishers, particularly in the games industry make it look like they created the content, when they only published it - we make it very clear that YOU created the content.
You will always own the intellectual property. Everything will be yours.
-------------------------------------
Still with us? Here are some Questions and Answers:
Question: Will you put my product in stores?
Answer: We want to do this eventually when we get in contact with sales reps. Right now we are doing digital-downloads only, which may even be more beneficial than getting your product on store shelves, considering how easy it can be to market on the Internet and how easy it is to shop.
Question: How much money will I make publishing with you?
Answer: Hard to answer. It always comes down to how good your product is. If it's high quality, expect word-of-mouth alone to be the prime marketing strategy and expect sales to be very good. If your product isn't that great, it probably won't go viral. Make your product great!
Question: We are having trouble with our game/song/film! How can you help us!?
Answer: There is a limited amount we can do. However, we provide some truly great resources to get you on the right foot. We also provide a project management web tool for free if you are planning on publishing with us. It becomes very helpful for managing your team, projects and tasks, speeding up your creative process considerably. We will also provide you with your own private forum board so you can discuss things with your team and with us very easily.
Question: Contracts?!?!?!?!?!
Answer: Yes! Don't be intimidated! Almost all publishers use contracts. We understand you may not be familiar with contracts and contract law, but we are. We make it very fair, easy to read and we will always answer your questions. You can take it to your favorite attorney to have a look at our contracts, if need be!
Question: How are you going to market my game?
Answer: Advertising! We want to advertise your product to the moon if necessary! We'll submit your product across message boards, banner ads and more. Again, if your product is GOOD, expect it to sell itself.
Question: So, why should I go with a publisher?
Answer: Creating content is one thing, getting it out in the world is another. It's expensive and very time consuming - publishers eliminate all of it.
Question: How do I publish with you?
Answer: Contact me! I handle all submissions. My E-Mail is mark@sidusstudio.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
When thinking about what to include in your E-Mail, don't worry about sounding all professional and using big words. We just want very basic information:
1) What you want published. A game? A movie? A music album?
2) A description of your product. What is it? What genre?
3) Provide us with DEMOS! This is very important! We'll ignore your E-Mail if you don't show us anything.
For games, we want screenshots and videos.
For films, we want trailers and clips.
For music, we want music samples.
We will review your submission and decide whether or not we would like to publish your product. Remember, it's not only customers looking for quality - it's also publishers.
Expect a close relationship with Sidus Studios!
Publishing Submissions - mark@sidusstudio.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
About the author
#2
03/07/2008 (5:09 am)
Quote:The most interesting question will be: Do you have customers?My thoughts exactly!
#3
It makes me wonder why I would give you 40% of my profits. I mean, if you have no current path to a boxed market, lean on viral marketing, and don't seem to want to fight to market a product, then how does that merit 40% share of anyone's profit?
I think those points should be worked on: Building at least potential paths to physical markets, more marketing options and the attitude of trying to get your client's products sold. And honestly, unless a publisher kicks at least some assistance in with the game, then it's easier for a company to set up a shopping cart and go the self-publishing route than yield such a huge sum for what currently basically amounts to a download portal.
03/07/2008 (7:19 am)
Between:Quote:You made the content, you deserve the money. We pay a royalty rate of 60%.And:
Quote:If it's high quality, expect word-of-mouth alone to be the prime marketing strategy and expect sales to be very good. If your product isn't that great, it probably won't go viral. Make your product great!And:
Quote:Right now we are doing digital-downloads only, which may even be more beneficial than getting your product on store shelves, considering how easy it can be to market on the Internet and how easy it is to shop.
It makes me wonder why I would give you 40% of my profits. I mean, if you have no current path to a boxed market, lean on viral marketing, and don't seem to want to fight to market a product, then how does that merit 40% share of anyone's profit?
I think those points should be worked on: Building at least potential paths to physical markets, more marketing options and the attitude of trying to get your client's products sold. And honestly, unless a publisher kicks at least some assistance in with the game, then it's easier for a company to set up a shopping cart and go the self-publishing route than yield such a huge sum for what currently basically amounts to a download portal.
#4
03/07/2008 (9:51 am)
Uhm.
#5
I've set up a site with a multi-vendor store front myself, but don't plan on making any money on it. The store section is just a place where people can market a product that they can't get placed on a site like GarageGames for whatever reason.
The idea is good, but unless you already have a pretty high traffic rate on the site I don't think people will cut loose on that kind of percentage. The site looks pretty good, though...
03/07/2008 (10:51 am)
The above posts are pretty much right on, Mark. This is a hard business to get into without connections and backing capital. Most people with a product will only pay higher percentages for the service of some kind of mass marketing, and they want their product to be visible to a large number of people from day one. (Not stealing lines from Hillary Clinton)I've set up a site with a multi-vendor store front myself, but don't plan on making any money on it. The store section is just a place where people can market a product that they can't get placed on a site like GarageGames for whatever reason.
The idea is good, but unless you already have a pretty high traffic rate on the site I don't think people will cut loose on that kind of percentage. The site looks pretty good, though...
#6
03/07/2008 (1:57 pm)
Have fun getting business when the layout you're using has a background stolen right from bungie.net.
#7
03/07/2008 (3:31 pm)
Neill, it's just standard Joomla! using a template, though it does look a lot like Bungie... 
#8
In any case, it's probably worth noting for Mark to make sure he's aware that things could be a bit shady.
03/07/2008 (3:41 pm)
It's not exactly the same (except the top two inches) - but the entire site design was clearly based off of Bungie's. I doubt Bungie's big web team is going around borrowing styles and color palettes from open source sites (especially since their current site came out while they were still owner by MS).In any case, it's probably worth noting for Mark to make sure he's aware that things could be a bit shady.
#9
The only point I was making was that I don't think it was something that was "stolen from Bungie" as much as someone just looking for a template that looked like a game site. I just don't think it has anything to do with stealing or being shady. In any case, what does it matter, it's just another guy trying to make a buck...
03/07/2008 (5:11 pm)
I don't know Mark from Adam, so it doesn't really mean anything to me, I was simply noting that he got a template (yes, designed to look like Bungie's) for Joomla! from a place called NukeDesign and threw up a site. The background is like Bungie's, but I don't think anyone can copyright a drafting paper grid background. And even with the NukeDesign template the site look is still basic Joomla!.The only point I was making was that I don't think it was something that was "stolen from Bungie" as much as someone just looking for a template that looked like a game site. I just don't think it has anything to do with stealing or being shady. In any case, what does it matter, it's just another guy trying to make a buck...
#10
Now to answer some questions, I appreciate your feedback.
@ Martin and Leroy: Good question. The answer is no, we don't. Most start-ups dont have any customers, they have to get them. Remember, we let folks publish with other publishers so they really have nothing to lose. GarageGames follows a similar policy, Determinance for example appears to have found a box publisher (I assume) AND they have their game for sale here at GG. This is good for the creators of Determinance, giving their game more than one outlet to sell the game.
@ Ted, I agree with you. 60% seems a little nonsensical and I'm probably going to raise it considerably more, if not promoting a few games with no royalty rates, which may be a good traffick grabber,putting a few titles on the site, becoming "known" and forming relationships with artists for future releases.
@ Stefan... uhh..
@ Terry, while this may be true, you may be speaking of the big-name elites. However, Indies and start-up groups may find it appealing. I have geared this plan towards no-names, considering I am a no-name. I figure If I'm going to start somewhere, I might as well start with them: in the beginning. Publishing a Mariah Carey CD or Gears of War 2 is not my intent. This is for Indies in need of assistance. By giving them a secondary outlet AND allowing them to publish with others, they don't have much to lose.
@ Neill thanks for pointing this out. As terry said, it was a Joomla 1.5 template from NukeDesign and I plan on changing it immediately.
This really comes down to the royalties. As I said above, I may contact folks and promote their work, asking nothing in return. Over time, I suspect the site to get some page views and then I may be able to pop in a 5% royalty and continue to raise it as the site gets more popular. This seems very fair to me.
03/08/2008 (6:08 am)
I just noticed the template was the same as Bungie.net. CRAP!!!! I'll have to find another.. there arent many nice Joomla 1.5 templates out there unfortunately. Thanks for pointing that out or else I would have never even known it.Now to answer some questions, I appreciate your feedback.
@ Martin and Leroy: Good question. The answer is no, we don't. Most start-ups dont have any customers, they have to get them. Remember, we let folks publish with other publishers so they really have nothing to lose. GarageGames follows a similar policy, Determinance for example appears to have found a box publisher (I assume) AND they have their game for sale here at GG. This is good for the creators of Determinance, giving their game more than one outlet to sell the game.
@ Ted, I agree with you. 60% seems a little nonsensical and I'm probably going to raise it considerably more, if not promoting a few games with no royalty rates, which may be a good traffick grabber,putting a few titles on the site, becoming "known" and forming relationships with artists for future releases.
@ Stefan... uhh..
@ Terry, while this may be true, you may be speaking of the big-name elites. However, Indies and start-up groups may find it appealing. I have geared this plan towards no-names, considering I am a no-name. I figure If I'm going to start somewhere, I might as well start with them: in the beginning. Publishing a Mariah Carey CD or Gears of War 2 is not my intent. This is for Indies in need of assistance. By giving them a secondary outlet AND allowing them to publish with others, they don't have much to lose.
@ Neill thanks for pointing this out. As terry said, it was a Joomla 1.5 template from NukeDesign and I plan on changing it immediately.
This really comes down to the royalties. As I said above, I may contact folks and promote their work, asking nothing in return. Over time, I suspect the site to get some page views and then I may be able to pop in a 5% royalty and continue to raise it as the site gets more popular. This seems very fair to me.
#11
03/10/2008 (1:32 pm)
Mark, just a friendly comment here, but publishing is not something to go into lightly. You need legal resources, marketing resources (possibly the most important part), IT infrastructure resources, DRM, accounting resources, community management, industry experience, capital or VC, and a critical mass of games and developers with some kind of exclusive content or angle. Developers DO have something to lose by publishing with you -- the cost in time that it takes them to interact with you and get on your label. If they spend more time than they get in sales, they have lost money. Manifesto Games is an example of a publisher that had all of the above ducks in a row except marketing and they have failed by missing that one thing alone. Unfortunately the message of "if your product is GOOD, expect it to sell itself" is simply incorrect -- it takes real marketing to alert people about the existence of a product in the first place, independent of whether it's good or not. 
Torque Owner Martin Schultz