Dear friends, supporters and followers,
please allow me to assure you that the possible future tariffs on the import of print products will have no impact on our US gaming friends.
I am neither able nor willing to make any political statement, nor will I start a discussion. I am a gamer and a publisher.
How do we make sure these tariffs don’t impact our North American friends and supporters?
Well, I believe in a couple of things. One is my attitude towards other publishers. I don’t look at other publishers as competitors, but as colleagues and partners. We publish games in a niche of the hobby market. I prefer to reach out and work together. The better we do that, the better it is for the market. If the market is doing well, we are doing well too.
The biggest cost trap in publishing is in logistics and there is huge potential for savings here and also a risk in burning all profits. At Sound of Drums, we work with some publishers to consolidate shipping from the manufacturer. Ideally, we also use the same manufacturer. Behind the scenes, I invest a lot of time and energy in bringing people together. Smart publishers (and there are many of them) agree and take a hand. Some prefer to struggle alone. Fine. I’m not going to name any publishers here.
An easy-to-understand example: by consolidating our print runs we can book a 40′ container instead of a 20′ container. The 40′ is appr. 25% more expensive, but we can load twice as many copies. Instead of three publishers hiring an agent on their own, we consolidate and hire one agent and share the costs. And the same is true to ship games to Europe, we try to convince some US publishers to cooperate and bring costs down. It makes no sense to ship items to the West Coast in the US, split the container in two, have the games cross the continent and then have the games shipped from the East Coast to Europe.
This being said, please allow me to tell you you about my other two believes: one is that I believe in life cycles of games (having them available once their are published) and volume which will bring the costs per copy down which again allows us to offer the best possible quality. As you know, we are very ambitious to pay attention to each and every detail in our games. I know that perfect games don’t exist. But we want you to hold our games in your hands and feel that we are trying to be “close to perfect“.
Therefore, I want to say, due the tariffs the quality of our games will not be lower. The exact opposite it the case. Please expect with Vol. 2 of BoN even better counter quality than you saw in Vol. 1 Eylau.
Enough talk about my publishing philosophy 🙂
Let’s game! Vive l’Empereur !
Your Sound of Drums Team
Join the campaign of Quatre Bras 1815 here:
Quatre Bras at Gamefound
🥁🎲⚔️
About the series
Sound of History is the latest initiative from the board game developer Sound of Drums, renowned for creating high-quality board games focusing on military historical periods, with satisfied customers worldwide. This new project aims to publish introductory books catering to both readers and board gamers who wish to delve into selected battles, military campaigns, and significant events in world history. We are proud to have James R. Arnold as the author of Volume 1: The Battle of Quatre Bras. A unique addition to your pledge of the game.
Similar to Sound of Drum’s ambitious board games, the books will be developed with an emphasis on high quality and in a format that is easy to carry on the go, whether traveling by train, metro, or plane. To ensure the academic standard of the content, the books will be written by qualified historians from a global network of writers. The topics will be diverse, ranging from World War II to antiquity, and from the Napoleonic Wars to the American Civil War.
The books will not be your average introduction books but cover well-known topics from different perspectives. Like the fall of Berlin 1945 from the German and the Soviet side or the Battle of the Bulge seen from an American perspective as well as from the German.
With the Sound of History book series, Sound of Drums aims to offer a strong analog reading experience that allows for immersion in a time characterized by digital noise and social unrest.
And there are plenty of future volumes heading for the press covering topics like the battle of Aspern-Essling 1809, Eylau 1807, Waterloo 1815, Market Garden 1944, Bull Run 1861, Gettysburg 1863 and many more as Sound of History dives into the world of history.
James R. Arnold is the author of over thirty military history books including seven Napoleonic campaign studies. He has received the 1995 International Napoleonic Society Literary Award and the 2018 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award.
