These numbers conclude the books for Evil Hat's first quarter of 2008. They're for Indie Press Revolution's sales alone, covering all three months of the quarter (January through March 2008); all other sales venues (PDF and Lulu POD) are accounted for in earlier posts.
The newcomer this time was Spirit of the Season, which was in preorder for 99% of March, its only month of sales in Q1:
SOTS Direct Sales: 52 SOTS PDF Sales: 5 SOTS Retailer Sales: 42 Total SOTS: 99
Spirit of the Century continued to do well. As the product matures (and awareness of it continues to grow), it seems to tip more in favor of retail sales, I think (though PDFs take up the "slack" here between direct print sales and retail sales, putting them nearly dead even). A modest showing at Dreamation, Gamestorm, and OrcCon rounds it out. Since Retail and Convention tracks net us a significantly lower payout per sale, the move to do an offset print run of SOTC looks to have been well-advised, as it lets us maximize the margin there. It COULD be said that SOTC print sales have slowed a bit past its first year, but by "slowed" that means it's gone from something like 100 units/month to 85 units/month: still way stronger than we ever imagined.
SOTC Direct Sales: 117 SOTC PDF Sales: 30 SOTC Retail: 131 SOTC Convention: 8 Total SOTC: 286
Don't Rest Your Head is no slouch here either. Its form factor and esoteric elements motivate a higher percentage of volume as PDF sales, but much like SOTC, the direct and retail sales are pretty close to each other.
DRYH Direct Sales: 41 DRYH PDF Sales: 30 DRYH Retail: 43 DRYH Convention: 6 Total DRYH: 120
So what's that look like for all of Q1?
Q1 2008's running tallies, combining this with January+February's data:
DRYH: 43 to date, +120 = 163 in Q1 2008. SOTC: 97 to date, +286 = 383 in Q1 2008. SOTS: 1 to date, +99 = 100 in Q1 2008.
Spirit of the Century has broken 3000 copies! (Yes, that's with the PDF included, but still, holy crap!) Our sales on SOTC started at the tail end of Q3 of 2006, IIRC, which means we've hit 3000 sales in about 18-20 months. I'll take that. :)
But with all of that, still, reality exerts a little pressure: I'm fairly confident most if not all of the check coming from IPR for the sales represented above is going to go into paying Evil Hat's taxes for 2007. Ah, success -- such a harsh mistress!
March felt pretty strong from what I saw of it. This was definitely helped in the PDF market by the GM's Day promotion (and some "echoed" promotions on other sites -- I ran one from February 29th through the end of the GM's Day promotion over on YourGamesNow, too).
Again, remember that Q1's numbers still don't include the numbers for the quarter from IPR -- I won't see those until I get the end of quarter report from IPR around April 15th.
e23: 1 copy of SOTC
YGN: Best month at YGN ever -- and almost entirely due to the sale. YGN seems to get sales only when I discount my products, with a small number of exceptions, which sort of undercuts the whole "smaller cut than OBS" angle. 3 SOTC, 5 DRYH, and 1 Spirit of the Season
OBS: GM's Day promotion was a huge success. This was the best month I've had with OBS ever in terms of volume AND revenue (even with the promotional discounts), with the only exception being the first full month I had on OBS (July 2007) when all the products were new to that audience. 38 SOTC, 16 DRYH.
Lulu had a surge in hardcover sales: 9 SOTC Hardcover, 1 DRYH Softcover.
March's DRYH sales are the equal of January and February combined: 21 DRYH PDFs, with a bonus of 1 softcover sale (total of 22 sales).
On the SOTC front, 42 SOTC PDFs were sold and 9 SOTC hardcovers were sold, for a total of 51 -- which also beats January plus February's totals combined.
March also marks the first sales of Spirit of the Season (1 copy), of which we'll see more at mid-month when the IPR preorder and PDF sales report comes in.
Q1 2008's running tallies, combining this with January+February's data:
DRYH: 21 + 22 = 43 (42 PDF, 1 softcover)
SOTC: 6 HC + 9 HC = 15 HC's 40 PDF + 42 PDF = 82 PDF's. Total SOTC so far: 97
Spirit of the Season: 1 PDF!
Lifetime tally (which already included January and February):
February felt spotty as I was going through it, but that may have been more on the print sales side -- and those we won't see until I get the end of quarter report from IPR in April. Let's see if that actually stands up to the numbers.
All of these are electronic sales figures.
e23: 1 copy of SOTC YGN: starting to show some movement -- due in part to the "Leap Week" sale I mentioned earlier -- with 3 DRYH (2 from the sale) and 1 SOTC (from the sale) OBS: back with a vengeance -- 23 SOTC (up ten over January), 9 DRYH (up five over January).
Lulu has a smattering as always: 4 SOTC Hardcover, 1 SOTC PDF, 2 DRYH PDF.
February doubles January with 14 DRYH PDFs vs. the 7 we had last month. It almost doubles SOTC's figures as well: 4 SOTC HC's (vs 2) and 26 SOTC PDF's (vs 14) for a total of 30 (vs 16).
Q1 2008's running tallies, combining this with January data:
DRYH: 7 + 14 = 21 (all PDF) SOTC: 2 HC + 4 HC = 6 HC's 14 PDF + 26 PDF = 40 PDF's. Total so far: 46
Mostly small fry stuff for the first month of the year. I do think interest in SOTC, at least in the PDF markets, may be slacking a bit, and that's fine. We've got a few interesting new things planned for 2008.
All of these are electronic sales figures.
e23: 1 copy of DRYH YGN: a SHOCKING 1 copy of DRYH AND 1 copy of SOTC OBS: 4 DRYH, 13 SOTC
Lulu brings in a couple print bits: 1 copy DRYH PDF, 2 copies SOTC Hardcover
So our tallies for 2008 start off with:
7 DRYH (All PDF) = 7 total DRYH 14 SOTC (PDF), 2 SOTC (Hardcover) = 16 total SOTC
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