Podcast Archives - Board Game Design Lab · Gabe Barrett

How to build a million dollar publishing company with Amy and Dusty Droz

·1 hr 38 min·5 clips

Dusty reveals that a 10% tariff on a $10 game costs just $1, not the $6 many publishers panic over.

The problem is simple. If somebody wants a game, the publisher has to make it easy to find and buy right then. The guest brings up Jamie Stegmaier. The exact line is not remembered, but the point sticks: wanting the game is only half the job if the customer cannot get it. That is why they begin with Shopify. It gives them a storefront they control, somewhere to send attention, and a clear way to see whether people will buy. Then ads come in. The guest rejects the idea that advertising is automatically shady, especially when YouTube already runs on ads. The test is pretty clean: tell people the game is on Shopify, make the offer visible, and see whether anyone bites. They do. That answer becomes the base for a wider sales setup instead of a reason to wait around for discovery to happen. Amazon comes after that. Listing there themselves keeps more control and makes the game available nationwide once FBA is ready. Target gets treated with more caution. Store shelves are limited, and more expensive games have a harder fight for space, so a few slots are not the same as reliable reach. Distribution has its own bargain. Distributors can sell for you, but they also put distance between the publisher and decisions about placement, stock, and access. Barnes & Noble sounds exciting, and it is, but the risk is plain: a retailer can stop carrying games or make calls the publisher cannot steer. The host keeps pulling it back to practice, ending by connecting their choices to his own publishing work and asking what he can borrow.

As heard by us

A clear look at the control-versus-reach tradeoffs behind direct sales, Amazon, and distribution.

The episode follows a board-game publisher’s growth with a practical eye, never pretending distribution is easy. Amy and Dusty Droz weigh direct sales, Amazon, and broader distribution against one another, and the thread that holds it together is simple: where does a company…

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Why you'd press play

If you want the business logic behind a publishing company growing through direct sales and retail, start here.

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