Going Digital! Nosolorol or a Different Way of

Creating Books in the 21st Century

Dr. Héctor Sevillano Pareja

University of Salamanca

Main PointsIntroduction to role-playing games

Nosolorol publishing house

Context and comparison with other publishing houses

Digital edition in Nosolorol

Conclusion

A role-playing game book is not a video game.

You need to read and to control the story, rules and it´s characteristics to play the game properly.

Electronic book will make easier to play anywhere you go accurately.

Let’s remember…

Spanish Electronic Edition

The production and demand of electronic books has grown every year all over the world and Spain is not indifferent.

Statistics shows that the rise of ISBN´s number given to electronic publishing has been increased more that 500% since 2004 (Panorámica, 2014).

FactorsThere are few companies that publishing role as electronics books.

Teenagers and university people are their potential clients of the sector and Nosolorol could be a good example of a role-playing game company.

Nosolorol

The significance of Nosolorol is that is the only one major Spanish company, in the role-playing sector, which is working with digital evolution.

Nosolorol Publishing House

Manuel J. Sueiro is the C.E.O. of the company. In 2003, he published an on-line magazine called Nosolorol specialized in role-playing games, story tales, freak books and alternative films.

In 2005, he started the company as a publishing house and he was the only one official staff of the company.

In 2010 started Aquelarre sponsorship formula. Aquelarre is the oldest Spanish role-playing game which was written by Ricard Ibáñez and its first edition was in 1990.

2010 was also the year of the beginning of electronic edition in this company.

AQUELARRE

Nosolorol has featured 70 titles, 14 of them last year.

In an economical crisis, Sueiro has been able to multiply by 10 the staff of the company in 10 years.

CONTEXT AND COMPARISON WITH OTHER PUBLISHING HOUSES

Role-playing games started in 1974 with Dungeons & Dragons, created by Gary Gigax.

In Spain, the first publishing role-playing game was a translation into Spanish of Dungeons & Dragons. It was publishing in 1985 by the publishing house Dalmau Carles Pla.

CONTEXT AND COMPARISON WITH OTHER PUBLISHING HOUSES

There are 44 publishing houses that work or have worked in role-playing games in Spain.

In Spain there are now 13 companies publishing role-

playing games:

Edge EntertainmentHolocubierta

Demonio SonrienteEl AutómataOther SelvesThree FourteeTrasgotauro Ediciones

La Factoría de IdeasMaqui Edicions

Devir Iberia

NosolorolEdiciones SombraLudotecnia

DIGITAL EDITION IN NOSOLOROL

Nosolorol is now publishing in PDF format and is thinking in ePUB as their next step.

Nowadays all books in print are also available as electronic books.

Selling throw digital platforms

Nosolorol started working with Lulu Online Self Publishing Book & eBook Company.

They have now only one title on Amazon as a pilot experience.

Is also involved in social payment working with Lektu. In this platform, Nosolorol has almost its electronic books catalogue with 77 items.

They was not using platforms such as Verkami or Kickstarter

Pre-sale, deluxe editions and sponsorship campaigns

There are three different types of promotions:

Presale.

Deluxe Edition.

Patronage or Sponsorship.

Nosolorol good example of it’s sponsorship formula, in 2014, with Vampire 20th anniversary, they collected 178.123€ .

Every book bought to Nosolorol has a code, which allows you to download the digital edition of the book from their website . In case you have bought the digital edition, it gave you a code with a discount to buy the physical edition in Nosolorol website.

Promotions, sales and results

Talking about electronic books, campaigns as Black Friday, Cuesta de Enero or World Book Day with discounts between 30-75% helps a lot in final results.

Promotions, sales and results

They usually offer a special reduction in the digital format during 72 hours after launching one new book.

Promotions, sales and results

Encouraging by Lektu, Nosolorol sometimes offers its electronic products by free.

Promotions, sales and results

Deluxe products are mainly making as a question of quality and company image, and not because of sales results.

Promotions, sales and results

Digital book presents an upward trend but it is still long far than physical books. Represent 15% of all the company sales.

EBooks and piracy

Many publishers are not using electronic books because they think that new electronic formats are an easy way of creating illegal copies of their books.

EBooks and piracy

Nosolorol consider that reducing prices of electronic books and with a good policy of sales they encourage people to consume Nosolorol products and it fights against digital piracy.

EBooks and piracy

They prefer trusting in customer’s responsibility. In their own words “Just because of these combinations of good prices and responsibility, Nosolorol’s products are not very much pirated”.

CONCLUSION

Nosolorol has increased its staff and its production during an economical crisis.

Creating electronic books, presale and patronage are the key of it success.

Why other companies are not considering doing the same? At the same time companies like Devir Iberia or Edge Entertainment have had economical problems.

Nowadays Nosolorol is the only main company that is betting on the future of publishing because is taking in to account potential customers, that are mostly digital natives, so they are going to demand eBooks. If companies of this sector of role-playing games want to survive they will have to adapt their production to electronic books.

As Gil & Jiménez (2008) said:

“The future of publishing books consisted of adapting and innovating to this new market with different formats and media”