hey guys. i'm starting to venture into redistribution of my products. i have no experience whatsoever in this... what is a good price to charge, and should i charge per time period, like a 6 month distribution right, 1 year distribution right, etc.... or by # of copies or what... what' sthe best way and whats a decent price to charge?

thanks

Well... Your question isn't all that clear. But supposing a second company offers to publish/sell/distribute your product, there are a number of ways that the deal can take place. Probably the most standard are...

1) One Time Fee
2) Royalties (ie percentage of sales)

And another issue is whether the deal is exclusive (ie only they can sell the game) or non-exclusive (you're free to sell it again to other companies). Sometimes the exclusivity will be for a particular area. Like only Italy for an Itialian distributor.

A fair price is whatever you feel comfortable with. Average retail royalties seem to be in teh 10-40% range (usually on the lower end) and online royalties in the 20-50% range.

One time fees vary quite a bit, but there are many companies offering 1000-2000$ for games. Personally I think that's too low and won't sell the distribution rights for that amount. I've heard of fees up to 10-20k for smaller games.

Does anybody know how much that 2nd company would get? Like, say I want to put my own product in a number of stores (assuming the stores will deal with me directly). What sort of percentage of the retail price should I negotiate?

Retail Stores usually take a markup of like 20-30% I believe, but don't quote me on that.

However, they make their money on shelving fees. Expect to pay a couple thousand dollars to get a title on a shelf before you can begin to pay them their percent. Price will depend on the store and how many stores your game appears in, but it will be pretty expensive.

You dont normally deal directly with the retail stores, normally you deal with a wharehouse. I don't have any links to the wharehouses that typically distribute games right now, but im sure someone does.

-Joe, the not quite helpful.