One of the major things in the modern sphere of gaming is "selling your product." I'm not one beholden to that, yet, but a degree in random marketing stuff informs me of how selling products works. There are three things to know about trying to sell a product in the modern gaming sphere.
1. It is overflowing
2. It is easy to pirate
3. The big boys already own the lion's share, we compete over the scraps.
Let's start from the top shall we?
There are hundreds of games in the market and many, many, many more out there in binders, documents, and forums. Breaking into said market is an experience reserved for the big bucks or the heavily niche, hence whey crowdfunding (primarily though Kickstarter and such) are so prevalent. When designing a game the key idea is to appeal to a smaller demographic than you would normally aim for. A shooter video game needs to appeal to fans of the shooter genre, or mil-sim fans, or third-person action shooters, but there's a large amount of overlap.
There is no such thing in tabletop games. Smaller markets means smaller crowds willing to buy, and later I'll discuss while that small market is already taken up, but I digress. You need to appeal to your niche more than anything else, you can't just have "a game" you have to have "THE GAME THAT DOES THAT ONE THING REALLY SPECIFICALLY." Now, note I don't say it has to be "mechanically good" anywhere in here. There are hundreds of games that people pay for that can be summarized as "narrative experiences" or as I like to call them "pretend with dice." Their concept is bigger and more appealing than a well put together, but boring sounding game.
Which brings me to the second point. Piracy.
Admit it, you've pirated a game book. Don't worry I don't blame you, they're expensive sometimes and you don't want to buy something only to not play it. Bigger companies can protect their things better with the holy power of lawyers or a dedicated smaller dev protecting his IP (even though it's just a shameless rip off another setting and system, but hey) can protect their own, but you? Ha, good luck hunting down every illegal copy out there.
Some people embrace it, Infinity is a solid skirmish game that makes all the rules free, only tying lore and artwork to the books they intend to sell. Most other games have gone fully into SRD (System Reference Document) territory, putting all the rules in an easily read format online. When selling your game you have to incentive people to buy it. You CAN just look up the rules, but you'll be missing out on this great art and lore. You CAN just find that little thing, but then you'll miss out on this cool limited edition (and $1.50) map!
Finally, we address the colossal Indominus Rex of the conversation, the big dogs owning the market.
We would like to say that we can Attack and Dethrone God, which in this case is D&D, Pathfinder, World of Darkness, and various others "big names" in the industry. These guys own the market, they know they do, and will continue to own it until they make a MAJOR goof, which isn't likely. Smaller games fight over the scraps in the shadows of these Mega-Tyrants, they don't much care if something makes waves as they'll just overtake it by virtue of inertia.
You'll be selling to people who don't want to play those games and are daring enough to get a group of people to play something else, which fun fact, is rough. If your concept isn't strong enough, it'll get thrown into the "Like X" bin, but if it's too out there, no one will want to buy said game due to being too specific (looking at you Nechronica, our lovely Necro-Guro-Loli Murder Simulator). So you have to understand where you stand and appeal to a specific market, but not too specific to alienate any of them. You can of course circumnavigate these problems by having an ingrained fan base, case and point Lancer with Abaddon (of K6BD fame) who can get people to buy his game through his fame and artwork. If I tried to sell any of my game right now, I'd get a dull thud and a pity buy from my mother.
To summarize, market your game as a concept, and idea that hasn't been done before. Novelty surpasses quality in this market unfortunately, so creating something novel as well as high-quality is a good start selling your product to the small amount people willing to buy it.
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