For the first decade of Galaxy Science Fiction’s 30-year-run, Ed Emshwiller illustrated a total of eight Christmas-themed issues featuring the same character. The version of Santa Claus on these 1950s-era covers had an appearance exactly in line with mid-century America's expectations, but for one big difference: He had four

The end of an era in science fiction publishing and distribution

Kobold Press CEO and Kobold-in-Chief, Wolfgang Baur, is here to give you some insight on the state of the industry! The work of making a small game company live, survive, and thrive is odd stuff. Some is obvious, like hiring game designers and layout folks, printing games, and paying artists or licensors. Other elements are more mysterious, such as game editing or the work of a publisher or creative director or producer. ## Whaddya Do? The Basics At the most basic, every publisher is a little bit J. Jonah Jameson, the grumpy cigar-chewing fellow who shouts “Get me pictures of Spider-Man!” at Peter Parker. I have a better barber, but every publisher has blind spots, me very much included. The role is one of direction, similar to a Hollywood showrunner or senior manager. You’re choosing a project and gathering a team. So in that larger sense, Jameson is just about right. He knows what he wants to print, he knows who to ask for it, and he’s persistent about it. He knows there’s an audience for what he’s putting on the schedule. Everyone wants to know about Spider-Man! Put another way, with less web-slinging, the publisher in any publishing house or game company determines the financial and legal acquisitions budget, sets or approves the overall creative direction, and he promotes and sharpens the themes and flavor of a book imprint, a game line, or a whole division of creatives. Over the years, their influence shapes the public perception of the company, though they might never design, edit, or illustrate any work directly. Still, a publisher defines what that company becomes known for based on who they hire, what they commission, the sort of covers they approve, the genres they lean into or avoid—even logo and color choices. The publisher’s role is to carve out a particular space in gaming by appealing to a particular audience. ## Whaddya Want? Audiences Often, a publisher is a veteran of the industry, but over time has become less active in the hobby world compared to a game designer or novelist. They might or might not attend trade shows, conventions, or award gatherings. In other words, the first step in understanding the audience is understanding that YOU AS PUBLISHER is not the same thing at all as YOU AS A FAN. You might be J. Jonah Jameson with a fondness for Cuban cigars and poker and BBQ. But on the job, you must reflect what the newspaper audience wants, which is Spider-Man, gossip columns, city news, and the funny pages. Jameson probably hates gossip columns and the funny pages. He reads the weekend Cigar & Cuisine section of the Daily Bugle (which is partially there because he likes it, although he wouldn’t run it if there was NO audience for it) and the details of city politics around transit spending and developer kickbacks. But he knows that his interests don’t perfectly overlap with the reader’s interests. But if you, the publisher, are not a member of the audience, how do you know what they really want? There are several ways to do this. ## Audience Mind-Reading One part of game publishing is pure black magic: choosing what to publish. The most direct form of this is “ask the audience,” which seems reasonable and straightforward until you read the answers. To be clear, I am very interested in knowing what you want. It is literally my day job to figure it out and give it to you. However, when a publisher asks an audience member what they want, often the answers are things that already exist, that the competition has published, that we just published nine months ago, that have been tried in the past to gross commercial failure, and so forth. Asking the audience is not worthless, but mostly people tell you about things that already exist. Audiences, in other words, don’t necessarily know what they want next. The conventional wisdom in the publishing business is that collectors, fans, gamers, readers, and other audience groups want the “same but different.” Part of the publishing gig is interpreting that contradiction in a delightful way. ## Finding a New Audience Providing an existing audience with what it wants is necessary for a functional publishing house or movie studio, or any professional creative venture. However, the way to get ahead is to find new audiences and show them something awesome. This expands a company’s base of support, gives you a bit of insurance against changes in style or taste, and it increases revenue so you can make more, better stuff. The hard part is figuring out where and how you connect a new game or new subgenre with an audience that doesn’t know that they would love it. #### The Sudoku Analogy Put another way, if Sudoku is so new that no one knows how to play, how do you know whether to invest in printing and promoting it? Or if a company known for high fantasy thinks there’s an audience for a rules-light cottagecore game with roots in Edwardian England, how do you prove that? One way is to just bull ahead and do it, and hope that everyone sees the fun in Sudoku or RiverBank RPG, and it becomes the new thing for the audience, expanding their enjoyment or giving them a new angle on a familiar hobby, and perhaps attracting all-new people. This approach is common in small press publishing: a bit of market research, some scouting online communities, taking the temperature of the community via crowdfunding. Suddenly, you know that there’s a chance, and you move quickly to make something that works for that new audience. There’s a slightly more involved way to do this than vibes and community gossip ( “Sharks are hot! Werecreatures are cool! Weresharks are the Biggest Trend Ever!”). The more involved way is to consult with people who are the natural audience. Let’s go back to Sudoku. To consider launching a Sudoku project, you’d mock up a product, then show a few notable puzzlers what Sudoku is and how it works. You test the reaction of the tastemakers and superfans with playtests, previews, and first looks. They might love it or they might tell you it’s not what they were looking for. Then make your calls from there. Kobold Press has used both approaches. Launching a new thing that we believe in mostly as a crowdfunding experiment is a relatively easy way to try something now. We’ll see that approach in the upcoming **Night Hunters** project in January, where Kobold Press takes a **deep look at horror and epic villains**. We also ask playtesters for reality checks, poll Discord members for armchair reviews and interest checks, and visit communities far from the Kobold regulars to see whether we’re on track with projects that are not necessarily meant for our primary D&D and Tales of the Valiant RPG players. That’s more the case with the RiverBank RPG, which has found new players among those who love talking animals, social mayhem, and a cozy visit to the dangers of the holidays (appalling relatives are indeed a challenge often encountered in RiverBank, with generally hilarious results). ## Other New Directions? All of this brings us to the verge of 2026, when Kobold Press will have other new projects, some very much in the D&D style, and others entirely new. I look forward to discussing them here. In the meantime, let’s try out some of that showing-Sudoku-to-puzzlers energy. If you’re here, you’re already more invested than a casual player. Maybe you don’t consider yourself a “superfan” but you’ve likely seen a few pictures of Spider-Man in your day. What sort of game would you like to see from Kobold? ## Kobold Press New Directions for 2026 and Beyond URL This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. I would like to see Kobold Press focus on (check as many as you like): More Cozy Fantasy (Like RiverBank RPG) Daggerheart Support D&D 2024 Support High fantasy for TOV and D&D 5E Horror and Dark Fantasy Labyrinth Adventures Midgard Setting Support Science Fiction Shadowdark and OSR-style RPGs Try New Things/Surprise Me I Have Specific Opinions I Wish to Share with You, in Brief Specifics Tell us what you want! Δ * * * **Tags:** poll, RiverBank, Tales of the Valiant

Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy recut into a single 4-hour film