I don't normally "crosspost" a lot of IPR announcement type stuff, but I just wanted to point out to folks that there are no fewer than four preorders running over at Indie Press Revolution right now, including:

• Monsters & Other Childish Things (I've gotten a look inside by way of the PDF and, holy crap! This looks fantastic. Plus, it's written by Benjamin Baugh -- "the other B.Baugh" -- who you'll be hearing more about in the months to come on this blog, hint hint.)
  
• Trail of Cthulhu, written by the inestimable/squamous Kenneth Hite (princeofcairo), using robin_d_laws' GUMSHOE system to great effect. I got a brief chance to look at an advance printing of this product at Dragonmeet, and I think this is due to be an ideal fusing of the sensibilities of GUMSHOE and setting (though I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Spirit of the Century author Leonard Balsera aka lcdarkwood has written an adventure for the Esoterrorists GUMSHOE setting which you can see a little bit about on Simon Rogers' LJ).
  
• Plus timgray's PDQ system standouts Legends Walk: Truth & Justice Edition and Questers of the Middle Realms are making their way into print with a preorder, too. If you're a PDQ fan and like having stuff in hardcopy, these will be worth your time.

Anyway, if any of these catch your attention, head over to the IPR preorder page and check 'em out. :)

It's December! Time for some sales numbers thinkery.

I haven't figured out how to get visibility to my sales numbers at e23, but I think I've made a few sales over there, in case folks have been wondering.

I switched Lulu over to monthly payments by Paypal at midmonth, after getting some confirmation that their method of payment, like OBS's, doesn't deduct a paypal commission; I didn't want to make less money in exchange for the convenience of not processing a paper check. As a result, Lulu numbers will start to become a monthly thing, though I'm going to have to play catch-up here.

YourGamesNow managed to sell no PDFs at all for me in November -- though that's not much of a drop: in the two prior months, it managed to sell one PDF per month. Overall a pretty weak performer -- some folks have said that YGN does best if there's some kind of promotion, but then, the discounts given in such a promotion would mostly offset the 10% profit gain in getting someone to go there instead of OBS, so I don't see myself pushing too hard for that in the future. I might try doing some sort of short-term exclusive PDF launch there at some point, just to take a little advantage of that -- though with that said, IPR's 15% cut vs. YGN's 25% does leave YGN as the odd man out yet again.

Anyway. On to the non-zero numbers. Lulu's first.

LULU OCTOBER
DRYH Print: 3
DRYH PDF: 1
SOTC Hardcover: 7

LULU NOVEMBER
DRYH Print: 2
DRYH PDF: 1
SOTC Hardcover: 3
SOTC Hardcover Retail: 12
SOTC PDF: 1

LULU TOTALS, OCT+NOV
DRYH Print: 5
DRYH PDF: 2
SOTC Hardcover: 22 (direct and retail)
SOTC PDF: 1

Not too shabby, given Lulu's general minimization. I love that the hardcovers continue to move a bit.

Next up, OneBookShelf (RPGNow/DriveThruRPG). I've already given the October stats for them, so this is all November.

OBS NOVEMBER
DRYH PDF: 11 (vs 9 last month)
SOTC PDF: 16 (vs 19 last month)

So, this appears to be roughly the cruising altitude for OBS sales at the moment, despite the late-October-to-early-mid-November doldrums I was seeing.

Add it all up with the Q4 numbers and DRYH and SOTC to date look like this:

DRYH: 23 PDF, 5 Print = 28 for Q4 to date
SOTC: 36 PDF, 22 Hard = 58 for Q4 to date

And lifetime:

DRYH: 1032+11+2+5 = 1050
SOTC: 2187+16+1+22 = 2226

Dragonmeet gave me some fun moments meeting fans. Apparently some of the Esdevium crew (a UK-based distributor) are really, really thrilled with Spirit of the Century -- I got gushing and requests to sign four copies of the book, as well as the important information that the bath-products store Lush has product labels that could all be turned into a variety of saucy aspects. I also met a woman who was very grateful that in Don't Rest Your Head she finally found a game that matched the level of dark she wanted, and which enabled her to make a tableful of male gamers utterly disturbed.

Q4's looking pretty good. :)

So I did the Dragonmeet gig yesterday and it was big fun. Of my 8 hours, I think I spent about 5 or more of them in the Seminar room, on the panel for four different seminars: Luke & Jared's game design world tour, the Cubicle 7 Dr. Who license panel, the breaking into the game industry panel, and the indie game designers Q&A panel.

What? Oh, right, the Cubicle 7 Dr. Who License Panel.

I worked with the C7 guys back before GenCon Indy on getting the layout done for a "here's what the game itself could look like" proposal for them to take to the BBC. I was very proud of my part in this -- the "Beeb" said it was one of the best looking proposals they'd seen -- and combined with the skills and presentation that C7 was able to bring to the table, it helped seal the deal. Now, we can finally talk about it -- and I'm liable to get a shot at doing some of the layout on the actual product, when that comes around. Pretty damn pleased, I am.

(And yeah, the Cubicle 7 guys are the same ones doing the Starblazer Adventures Fate-based game, and no, Dr. Who won't be Fate-based, much as I wanted it to be. But it's still looking pretty hot -- Dave Chapman... hope I got that name right... is the lead developer and has had a lot of experience from working on Eden's products in the past that he'll be able to bring to a newly-developed system of his own, here.)

I'm off to Dragonmeet in London, flying out Thursday afternoon. When I get on the ground, it will be Friday morning-ish and I will be trying to stay awake (hopefully using my ninja sleep-anywhere powers to fall asleep on the plane en route). I get my butt over to Leisure Games and hang there until about 1pm, at which point I leisurely make my way to my hotel for check-in.

Saturday -- the convention.

Sunday -- the recovery. I have no idea what sort of state I'll be in at this point.

Monday -- the return.

Item!

I will be at Dragonmeet in London this Saturday. I'm one of the Special Guests, second on the list after John Kovalic. IN YOUR FACE, Sorensen! I'll be out there Friday (but mainly using that day to be jetlagged) and Sunday as well, but don't expect much of me during those days. :)

Item!

My birthday's January 13th. Over Thanksgiving my mother revealed I was born 13 days late. I was nearly the Spirit of 1972... or was that its Shadow?

Item!

When we flew down to Florida for Thanksgiving, we ended up on the same plane as the two presidentially pardoned poultry prisoners, the Thanksgiving turkeys that were being sent down to Disney-town to live the rest of their lives blissfully uncooked and still totally alive. Disney and United made a big production of it, christening the flight "TURKEY-1" and meeting the turkeys on a red carpet in big black secret service esque vans at the airport. Disney gave us free stuff on the plane, and so did United when I placed second in the on-board turkey-and-Disney-trivia quiz (it helps to have grown up less than an hour from the World of the Festive Rodent).

That is all.

Attention folks who know the circumstances of Dragonmeet better than I!

I need to figure out a hotel to stay at that's in striking distance of the convention. Any recommendations? (I've tried pinging the DM gents on this, but I think they're all a-scramble with their own things...)