A: Admit it: what you really want to know is “How do I get my game published?”

Well, what we did to grow ourselves back in the day is very different from what people do to grow today, and what we do on a day-to-day basis as an established company is also different from what you’d be doing as a start-up, so it’s difficult for us to give advice to fledgling game-designers at this point.

Things we did then that you might still do now, if you choose to self-publish:
•Made the smallest print run that was monetarily feasible.
•Brought it to local game stores to see if they would sell it on consignment; did local events at those stores to promote sales.
•Brought it to conventions and demo’d the heck out of it to make direct sales, and prove to larger buyers (i.e. distributors) that the game was good.

Things you might do today in addition to this:
• Hype the heck out of it on social media. We didn’t it have then, but we certainly use it plenty now. Gotta keep up with the times!
• Kickstarter is increasingly becoming the way new games make their way into the world. There is plenty of advice on how to do it right… and wrong. That said, a lot of retail game businesses are not fond of Kickstarter, so take that into consideration. James Mathe and Stonemaier Games have some collected advice columns on Kickstarter publishing. An internet search will turn up lots more.
•You have printing options which we did not have then, for smaller runs, like Print-On-Demand (POD) options.

see also:
and: What printers does Looney Labs use?

Also check out James Mathe’s collection of writings on game publishing