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):
(And it remains available in print form and PDF form on IPR. The Print+PDF bundle may increase in price by a buck or two come April, so this is your less than 24 hour warning on that! SOTS orders and preorders ship in early April.)
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
So, I went and dug around in the numbers for Lulu and Lightning Source to get an idea of how the two POD providers stack up against one another. As I suspected, past a certain number of copies in almost every scenario, Lightning Source wins out in the long run. But if you're looking to print and sell no more than, say, 50-100 total, lifetime, ever, Lulu may be more worth your time because it's so damned easy to get an account set up and started printing. LS definitely has some "set-up phase" hassles that won't be worth it even when the costs are better, early on, and the set-up costs on a job can run as much as a couple hundred bucks (easily, when you consider that -- at least near as I could tell last time I used 'em -- Lightning Source wants you to bring some ISBNs to the party).
At this point, there's very little reason for me not to go with Lightning Source because I don't expect to sell fewer than 200 copies of about anything, and that's well past the value vs. annoyance threshold from where I stand.
I've put together a spreadsheet that does the cost comparisons on this, which can be pretty nice for figuring out what a job will cost you to get going. I'm happy to share it with anyone who emails me and asks for it, but right at the moment I don't want to publish the spreadsheet because I'm unsure if it'd be shaky-ground territory to do so; I don't think you can get at Lightning Source's print-costs numbers easily without already having an account set up with them.
The last update I did of this nature was on November 8th or so. If older threads stayed active, they may show up on this list -- but that's not much of a problem from where I stand.
Subscribing to threads on RPG.net is half of how I achieve my "internet ubiquity" with as little effort as possible. Whenever possible, convert something you find yourself having to "pull" with regular effort into something that "pushes" itself at you whenever it wakes up. This, combined with Google Blogsearch + setting Google up to email me daily alerts of those searches, is really all a "lazy" publisher needs to do to make the effort of staying in the loop as easy as possible.
Plus, folks really love it when you appear on their J. Random Blog and talk with them about what they've said about your game. Try it!
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
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