The Indie Developer's Guide to Selling Games

To start things of I have read the e-book version of "The Indie Developer's Guide to Selling Games" by Joseph Liberman.

The book itself was promptly delivered as a pdf file and there was no trouble in reading it. Layout and type is fine for on the screen reading. The book or guide as it is titled is about 150 pages so it is an easy read in a couple of hours. I don't see the point in having a paperback version...

Liberman uses an easy going language and attitude and writes in plain english in a mildly entertaining way. It is a bit more professional than the average "indie" focused book, and I guess people without the "gamer" lingo can read it to.

The structure of the book is laid out to follow a game, from design to post release marketing. I guess this works quite well, but at times I think the book looses the marketing perspective and long lists of things like sound effect resouces are listed. This seem much like a space filler as these lists inevitably will be dated.

Liberman explains many important marketing concepts, ideas and tools for successfully marketing your game. This is done in a clear and easy way with examples from the (indie) game industry. Since the focus is on independent developers there is not much information on the more expensive ways of marketing such as ads but rather on how to drive trafic to your site, how to use a newsletter to your advantage etc. An important and recurring theme in the book is how to design your game demo to get the highest possible conversion rate.

The strongest parts of the book is the very interesting reasoning about designing for marketing and motivational factors in games. Here Liberman touches some very essential parts of game design from a marketing perspective.

Last but not least the book is highly inspirational, and you get a good "go getter" feel from reading it.

"Don't waste your time worrying how big your market is! Instead you should worry about if you can reach that market."