Insurance

Insurance is the least exciting purchase in publishing and the one you will be gladdest to have exactly once. For a board game publisher the relevant policies are general liability (covers injuries and property damage connected to your business, often required to exhibit at conventions), product liability (covers claims that your product hurt someone, the classic example being a child swallowing a component), and cargo or marine insurance (covers your inventory while it crosses the ocean).

Product liability sounds paranoid for a board game until you remember that games are full of small parts and are sold to households with children. This is also why safety testing and age labeling exist: games sold as intended for children face mandatory testing requirements in most markets, and even games labeled 14 and up carry some risk. Many retailers and distributors will not carry your game at all unless you carry product liability coverage, so this often becomes a requirement of growth rather than a personal choice.

Cargo insurance is the easy one to understand. A container of games worth tens of thousands of dollars spends weeks on a ship, and standard carrier liability if something goes wrong is a tiny fraction of the cargo's value. Insuring a shipment typically costs a small fraction of one percent of the insured value and is usually arranged through your freight forwarder with a checkbox and a declared value. Skipping it to save a small amount on a shipment you cannot afford to lose is a bad trade.

Small business policies bundling general and product liability commonly run from a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars a year depending on revenue and coverage limits. An insurance broker who works with consumer product companies can quote your actual situation in a phone call. As with the legal topics in this section, treat this as general information and let a professional size the coverage.