External factors in selecting BG reviewers
Reach
Content Quality
Game taste fit
Audience niche
Past reviews
Personality

Internal factors in selecting BG reviewers
Overall reviewer pool mix
Production status
Pre-prod copy cost
Landed production cost
Shipping cost
Release date

I straddle a weird line in the industry nowadays... one that I try to be very transparent about and follow the most ethical path that I can along it. But I also have, perhaps uncommon, experience as I'm here after over 20 years of working in Fortune 50 marketing & advertising.

Like - I know what it costs to get Elizabeth Banks to appear at your party for 3 hours. I've coordinated and executed $5M marketing campaigns. I know how nice RDJ is to kids and how sincere John Cena is. I know that billion dollar companies will happily pay hundreds/impression.

All that is just cred marking because I think perspective and context matter. It's not bragging. At the end, I detested every second I spent at work and I was disgusted with the corruption and cronyism. But my career gave me perspective and, dare I say, insights. It's context.

Re BGs. There are micro and macro aspects to the system. And I see few takes that really comprehensively consider all the factors. On an individual level, production copies of games to send to reviewers are relatively inexpensive if the content gets say... 200 impressions.

Almost always, shipping a review copy is more expensive than the cost of the product to the publisher.

But the product cost and shipping DOES add up. And most board game companies are smaller than people think and running on thinner margins that people think.

So the cumulative review copy cost is impactful. The individual cost is nominal. Such is life.

But I say, with the perspective of my cross roll in this industry, sending review copies is more valuable to the publisher than the reviewer.

A review copy is not "payment" for the work of a review. Let's say the shipped production copy cost to a single reviewer is $40 (which is very reasonable for the majority of games) - and that content gets 150 "qualified impressions" ...

... it's a qualified impression because you've smartly chosen a review based on their reach/audience/enthusiasm/game taste... then you've paid $0.26 for that impression. That is, in some circles, a solid cost. In other circles, it's a ridiculous bargain.

Does it translate to a sale? You can't quantify that effectively. And I say that because billion dollar companies cannot track consumer purchase paths with accuracy. They use a lot of cookies and whiz bang data... but a lot of it is projection and infographic handwaving.

So we have to rely on things like impressions, views, trending on BGG, etc. And if that's our metric pool... then I repeat... the ROI of a smartly placed review copy is a good investment for a publisher.

I am, obviously, barely scratching the surface here.

Don't get me started about the shortened marketing windows in this industry and why that encourages embargoes or the consumer > retailer > distributor influence and demand chain and how it's evolving!