I goofed up and didn't do an IPR summary on April 15th. I plead taxes. So this is a double-feature, hitting both the close out of last quarter, and the beginning of this.
2009Q1: January-March, IPR
What's particularly interesting about our IPR sales is the volume to retailers. Do some quick thumbnailing to figure out the approximate percentages, and you'll see what I mean.
DLYM PDF: 16 DLYM SC: 62 (41 to retailers, 3 at cons)
DRYH PDF: 29 DRYH SC: 85 (52 to retailers, 2 at cons)
SOTC PDF: 14 SOTC SC: 174 (107 to retailers, 2 at cons)
A solid quarter in a downturned economy. I'm happy.
2009Q2: April - OBS, Lulu, e23, YGN
Q2 2009 starts off with S7S getting into the mix. Remember, I don't include IPR numbers until the 15th of the month following the end of the quarter, so this is strictly other sales sites.
OBS: DLYM PDF - 10 DRYH PDF - 14 SOTC PDF - 20 SOTS PDF - 2 S7S PDF - 44
Lulu: DRYH PDF - 3 DRYH SC - 1 SOTC PDF - 3 SOTC HC - 1
YGN: DRYH PDF - 1
e23: DRYH PDF - 2 SOTC PDF - 2 SOTS PDF - 1
2009Q2: DLYM PDF - 10 DRYH PDF - 14 + 3 + 1 + 2 = 20 DRYH SC - 1 SOTC PDF - 20 + 3 + 2 = 25 SOTC HC - 1 SOTS PDF - 2 + 1 = 3 S7S PDF - 44
Second month of the quarter. SOTC got a bit of an "Indy Bump" over on OneBookShelf thanks to a promotional 30% off sale. Seeing as we sold double what we did last month, I'd say the discount was more than made up for. The other salesfronts were, as usual, dwarfed by the OBS gorilla.
Lulu DRYH Soft - 2 Lulu SOTC HC - 3 Lulu SOTC PDF - 2
YGN SOTC - 1 (on sale discount -- seems to be the only way I can move product at YGN)
e23 DRYH - 1 e23 SOTC - 1 e23 SOTS - 3
OBS DRYH - 20 (12 via bundle) OBS SOTC - 51 (Many on sale; 12 via bundle) OBS SOTS - 11
Spirit of the Season tapered a bit, not shocking now that we're past the initial release, but SOTC really packed a whallop. This was our second biggest month on OBS ever. Our lifetime update:
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
Surprising exactly no one, YGN sold no copies of EHP PDFs in December.
e23 sold 2 copies of Spirit of the Century.
OBS sold 14 copies of SOTC and 7 copies of Don't Rest Your Head. This is pretty solid, but follows the "slowly dropping off" pattern expected with OBS.
Lulu sold 4 hardcovers of SOTC and 3 softcovers of Don't Rest Your Head -- no PDF sales.
IPR numbers won't be available until mid-month.
From this post:
DRYH gains 7 PDF and 3 print sales. SOTC gains 16 PDF and 4 hardcover sales.
Updated quarter:
DRYH: 33 PDF, 8 Print = 41 for Q4 to date SOTC: 57 PDF, 26 Hard = 83 for Q4 to date
So, I mentioned in a recent post that I hadn't worked out how to get sales figures from e23. Well, that got fixed. :)
I'm just going to lump these into the q4 numbers rather than try to back-tally the pre-October bits into things.
e23 sells only PDFs. Looks like this:
DRYH PDF Sep: 2 Oct: 1 Nov: 0
SOTC PDF Sep: 1 Oct: 2 Nov: 2
e23's outstripping YGN at the very least.
Updated quarter:
DRYH: 26 PDF, 5 Print = 31 for Q4 to date SOTC: 41 PDF, 22 Hard = 63 for Q4 to date
Updated lifetime:
DRYH: 1050+3 = 1053 SOTC: 2226+5 = 2231
When I get a chance, I'm hoping my next post will be about the completion of my first offset printing job, to the tune of 1100 new copies of Spirit of the Century, now all boxed up and sitting in one of my storage rooms.
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.
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
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.
So we've had another full month of OBS (OneBookShelf/DriveThruRPG/RPGNow) sales. How'd they do this time around?
Spirit of the Century: 23 PDFs sold (compared to 23 last month, 45 the month before) Don't Rest Your Head: 14 PDFs sold (compared to 16 last month, 24 the month before)
Pretty hot -- I can't say I had expected the second-month-plus sales to stay steady, but as you can see they pretty much have. Even only getting 65% of the sales revenue, I'd be pretty happy to see a sustained 23-or-so SOTC and teenish DRYH sales trend.
We got onto YourGamesNow at about mid-month, so I haven't been expecting much there. And not much is what I got:
Obviously I'd like to see more through that sales channel, but my expectations, so far, aren't high. Which is fine, really -- PDF sales are not Evil Hat's backbone, they just happen to help. :)
We also got listed on the e23 store within the last week, but I don't have any visibility into whether or not that amounted to anything yet.
The running lifetime totals:
DRYH: 848 SOTC: 1723
In my next post -- Lulu numbers. IPR numbers won't be coming until mid-October.
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