State of the Company: 2018

[Eiwynn]

There is a whole discussion thread on the issue of translations, with this post summing up CoG experiences:

@jasonstevanhill

You know, we were actually just talking about this.

The problem is, there’s no way to reach that market.

See, our English-language readers don’t need our games translated into Spanish (or PT-BR), so they’re not going to donate money to the project. I mean, some people might throw in a few dollars, but not anywhere near what you need to get to $45k.

And those who speak Spanish don’t know about us (and the ones that do, probably already speak enough English to get by with most of our games).

Moreover, Kickstarter is heavily tilted towards the English-speaking world. It’s not like there are thousands of hispanophones trolling Kickstarter looking for Spanish-language projects to support.

So, yes, we like the idea of using Kickstarter to fund such a project, but we don’t see how we could access the communities that would both be interested in the product and be willing to contribute in sufficient amounts to make it happen.

And, Carlos, you’re right that people don’t get charged if the project isn’t funded, but $45,000 means we don’t actually make any money on the project. It just means that we break even (or, actually, lose money, because Kickstarter + Amazon payments takes 10%). So, all the time that we would invest in promoting the Kickstarter, coming up with a marketing campaign, etc etc would be unremunerated.

If you want to discuss this topic more, please transfer your posting here: Publishing and Language