I mentioned that it was on its way, but it looks like as of today the RPGNow Pulp Sale is ON!
SOTC is available there for $10.50, along with a bunch of other swank PDF merchandise from other publishers. Have at!
Deals and Steals for Doctor Jones
With the new movie around the corner, Spirit of the Century PDF is available for just $10 at YourGamesNow, through May 27th.
RPGNow is going to be doing some sort of promotional dingus for pulp games, so stay tuned for that. (They're the ones driving that particular bus, so I don't know their specific plans.) And I feel I would be remiss if I did not also mention that Adamant Entertainment is offering every product in their THRILLING TALES line for One Dollar apiece, from May 21st through May 27th:
RPGNow is going to be doing some sort of promotional dingus for pulp games, so stay tuned for that. (They're the ones driving that particular bus, so I don't know their specific plans.) And I feel I would be remiss if I did not also mention that Adamant Entertainment is offering every product in their THRILLING TALES line for One Dollar apiece, from May 21st through May 27th:
Digging in the Digital Dirt: OBS Sales
I'm looking at my numbers on One Book Shelf (DriveThruRPG/RPGNow) right now, messing around with their sales analysis tools. I'm not trying to draw any conclusions from what I'm seeing right now so much as simply exploring the data.
Here are the top ten publishers whose products have also been on Spirit of the Century's to-date 113 sales, currently averaging 32/month (Spirit of the Century is now "Silver" -- it'll need to sell 138 more to hit "Electrum", or 388 more to hit "Gold", so higher ratings are a ways off even at current sustained rates):
#1 20 Adamant Entertainment
#2 13 Postmortem Studios
#3 12 Green Ronin
#4 11 LPJ Design
#5 10 The Forge Studios
#6 9 Wizards of the Coast
#7 8 Hotz Stuff
#8-11 7 Bailey Records, Malhavoc Press, V Shane, White Wolf
Don't Rest Your Head's top 10 features some similar names, with 75 units sold to date, currently averaging 20/month (26 more to hit Silver).
#1 15 LPJ Design
#2 8 Malhavoc Press
#3-4 7 Alderac Entertainment Group, RPG Objects
#5-6 6 Highmoon Media Productions, UDON
#7-13 4 Chaosium, Clint Krause, Green Ronin, Precis Intermedia, Skortched Urf' Studios, White Wolf, Word Mill
Moving on from those stats, I'm also looking at the on-site marketing data. There are two ways to push yourself, really: "front page impressions" and "banner impressions". The front page bit is a small text blurb and your cover image showing up at the top of the front page of a storefront; the banner is something that you can get 8 times as many impressions of for the same cost (in publisher promotion points-- which you generate "for free" off the sales you make month to month), but shows up at the bottom of pages instead, and thus is less likely to be seen.
So, front page impressions. Some of these numbers might be mildly screwy (the data didn't look right at one point), but here's the performance I've seen to date. You'll see the total # of impressions for a given blurb at a given storefront, the number of clicks those impressions generated (where the person who saw it actually clicked through to the product), and the percentage of the impressions that those clicks represent.
Don't Rest Your Head (dtrpg) 5505 64 1.16%
Don't Rest Your Head (rpgnow) 8341 122 1.46%
Don't Rest Your Head (enworld) 804 16 1.99%
Don't Rest Your Head (flamesrising) 48 7 14.58%
Don't Rest Your Head (rpgnet) 130 3 2.31%
Total DRYH clicks: 253
Spirit of the Century (dtrpg) 3239 79 2.44%
Spirit of the Century (rpgnow) 5764 89 1.54%
Spirit of the Century (enworld) 545 14 2.57%
Spirit of the Century (flamesrising) 43 5 11.63%
Spirit of the Century (rpgobjects) 28 22 78.57%
Spirit of the Century (rpgnet) 34 1 2.94%
Total SOTC clicks: 254
Neck and neck! That's amusing.
Next up we've got the banners. Interestingly, DRYH's banner is the clear leader here. I think it's because the presentation is a bit more dramatic, it involves less reading due to fewer words in the text, and it creates a mystery by not constantly identifying what the game is -- you've got to click to find out what they're talking about.
DRYH Banner:
IMPRESSIONS: 98335 CLICKS: 485 RATIO: 0.49%
SOTC Banner:
IMPRESSIONS: 100000 CLICKS: 379 RATIO: 0.38%
As far as the ratio of impressions to clicks goes, the banners don't fare as well vs. the front page impressions -- but in terms of the volume, the actual number of clicks, they're generating more -- which was what the conventional wisdom had been suggesting. Bravo. :)
OBS also offers a "sales source report" which basically tries to give you information on where your sales actually originated.
Don't Rest Your Head's sales sources:
52 sales from FrontPage
15 sales from Unknown
3 sales from evilhat (i.e., came direct from Evil Hat's website)
1 sales from googleadwords
1 sales from Internet
1 sales from MySourceCode
1 sales from PDQfooter
1 sales from XXX
Spirit of the Century's sales sources:
78 sales from FrontPage
16 sales from Unknown
5 sales from evilhat
2 sales from PDQfooter
1 sales from 12to24footer
1 sales from A Mailing List
1 sales from ENWorldReview
1 sales from footer
1 sales from ICE
1 sales from Internet
1 sales from MySourceCode
1 sales from Newsletter
1 sales from RPGShop
1 sales from Specials
1 sales from The Guild Companion
1 sales from TheLeGames
So here, at least, it seems pretty clear that the lion's share of sales simply come because the product is on OBS's sites. Folks go there, and then go looking for the product, rather than (say) coming to evilhat.com first.
That's it for the data I've got to share today. Share your thoughts; what do you make of it?
Here are the top ten publishers whose products have also been on Spirit of the Century's to-date 113 sales, currently averaging 32/month (Spirit of the Century is now "Silver" -- it'll need to sell 138 more to hit "Electrum", or 388 more to hit "Gold", so higher ratings are a ways off even at current sustained rates):
#1 20 Adamant Entertainment
#2 13 Postmortem Studios
#3 12 Green Ronin
#4 11 LPJ Design
#5 10 The Forge Studios
#6 9 Wizards of the Coast
#7 8 Hotz Stuff
#8-11 7 Bailey Records, Malhavoc Press, V Shane, White Wolf
Don't Rest Your Head's top 10 features some similar names, with 75 units sold to date, currently averaging 20/month (26 more to hit Silver).
#1 15 LPJ Design
#2 8 Malhavoc Press
#3-4 7 Alderac Entertainment Group, RPG Objects
#5-6 6 Highmoon Media Productions, UDON
#7-13 4 Chaosium, Clint Krause, Green Ronin, Precis Intermedia, Skortched Urf' Studios, White Wolf, Word Mill
Moving on from those stats, I'm also looking at the on-site marketing data. There are two ways to push yourself, really: "front page impressions" and "banner impressions". The front page bit is a small text blurb and your cover image showing up at the top of the front page of a storefront; the banner is something that you can get 8 times as many impressions of for the same cost (in publisher promotion points-- which you generate "for free" off the sales you make month to month), but shows up at the bottom of pages instead, and thus is less likely to be seen.
So, front page impressions. Some of these numbers might be mildly screwy (the data didn't look right at one point), but here's the performance I've seen to date. You'll see the total # of impressions for a given blurb at a given storefront, the number of clicks those impressions generated (where the person who saw it actually clicked through to the product), and the percentage of the impressions that those clicks represent.
Don't Rest Your Head (dtrpg) 5505 64 1.16%
Don't Rest Your Head (rpgnow) 8341 122 1.46%
Don't Rest Your Head (enworld) 804 16 1.99%
Don't Rest Your Head (flamesrising) 48 7 14.58%
Don't Rest Your Head (rpgnet) 130 3 2.31%
Total DRYH clicks: 253
Spirit of the Century (dtrpg) 3239 79 2.44%
Spirit of the Century (rpgnow) 5764 89 1.54%
Spirit of the Century (enworld) 545 14 2.57%
Spirit of the Century (flamesrising) 43 5 11.63%
Spirit of the Century (rpgobjects) 28 22 78.57%
Spirit of the Century (rpgnet) 34 1 2.94%
Total SOTC clicks: 254
Neck and neck! That's amusing.
Next up we've got the banners. Interestingly, DRYH's banner is the clear leader here. I think it's because the presentation is a bit more dramatic, it involves less reading due to fewer words in the text, and it creates a mystery by not constantly identifying what the game is -- you've got to click to find out what they're talking about.
DRYH Banner:
IMPRESSIONS: 98335 CLICKS: 485 RATIO: 0.49%
SOTC Banner:
IMPRESSIONS: 100000 CLICKS: 379 RATIO: 0.38%
As far as the ratio of impressions to clicks goes, the banners don't fare as well vs. the front page impressions -- but in terms of the volume, the actual number of clicks, they're generating more -- which was what the conventional wisdom had been suggesting. Bravo. :)
OBS also offers a "sales source report" which basically tries to give you information on where your sales actually originated.
Don't Rest Your Head's sales sources:
52 sales from FrontPage
15 sales from Unknown
3 sales from evilhat (i.e., came direct from Evil Hat's website)
1 sales from googleadwords
1 sales from Internet
1 sales from MySourceCode
1 sales from PDQfooter
1 sales from XXX
Spirit of the Century's sales sources:
78 sales from FrontPage
16 sales from Unknown
5 sales from evilhat
2 sales from PDQfooter
1 sales from 12to24footer
1 sales from A Mailing List
1 sales from ENWorldReview
1 sales from footer
1 sales from ICE
1 sales from Internet
1 sales from MySourceCode
1 sales from Newsletter
1 sales from RPGShop
1 sales from Specials
1 sales from The Guild Companion
1 sales from TheLeGames
So here, at least, it seems pretty clear that the lion's share of sales simply come because the product is on OBS's sites. Folks go there, and then go looking for the product, rather than (say) coming to evilhat.com first.
That's it for the data I've got to share today. Share your thoughts; what do you make of it?
If you buy a physical book of ours from a brick & mortar store at full price, we’ll give you the PDF. Period.