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Lazy Research: Sudden Sales Dearth at OBS. Theories?

After some pretty regular sales (one-a-day-ish for several months) on One Book Shelf's site, Evil Hat's PDF sales seem to have come to a sudden halt (or at least a drastic reduction in rate). I saw those sales as bonus extras, so I'm not exactly upset, and I'm speaking with a relatively small data set -- I've only sold one each of SOTC and DRYH in the past two weeks, which is odd compared to the previous rate (2 in the last two weeks compared to 18 in the two weeks before that). But while I have some vague theories of my own as to why it might be happening, I'm curious to hear what other folks think could be up (whether you're an OBS customer, publisher, expert, or novice).

Thoughts?
Filed Under: EHP Business, obs, sales numbers Tagged With: , , , ,

Countdown to Endgame: Why Endgame Rocks

As you've seen elsewhere on my journal, I'm going to be at Endgame in Oakland, CA this Saturday for their sixth anniversary party. Drop on by!

So one thing some folks might be wondering, what's the big deal about Endgame? Well, there are a few reasons, a lot of which revolve around Chris Hanrahan's efforts to create awareness of the store and a community around the indie games there (Chris has a killer back-up band in the form of everyone else who works there, but I've met Chris, so he's the first guy I think of when I think of Endgame).

Consider this:

  • Chris has gotten the word out on two podcasts: His 2D6 Feet In a Random Direction podcast and occasional appearances on The OgreCave Audio Report.

  • Endgame has partnered with RPG.net to host a series of in-store mini-cons that have been especially good to us here at Evil Hat -- I believe they've had at least four Spirit of the Century events across the ones they've held that have always filled up enthusiastically and early. This directly connects the act of trying out and playing these indie games to the opportunity to buy them; it's a killer (see below).

  • Endgame has figured out the right way to display the smaller-format indie games in their store, and it's done well by them, producing solid floorspace-to-sales ratios. Take a look at this and and this.

  • Endgame staffers get out from behind the counter and hands-on with the games they carry. They'll walk up to you and speak knowledgably about the stuff on their shelves. They play what they carry; Spirit of the Century wouldn't have done nearly as well if the Endgame guys weren't fans themselves. And by forging a bond of play with their community of customers, they convert their customers into a sort of extended sales staff. (Followers of my blog might notice that this has some familiar patterns to how Evil Hat's customer service presence works; when we create fans, we treat them as brother and sister gamers, as partners -- which turns around and helps to build our word of mouth. No real shock that Endgame's doing something similar here.)


But let's get specific about Evil Hat's games, directly. What's Endgame done for us, there?

How does singlehandedly accounting for over 3% of our print sales sound?

To date, in the first year of the game's existence, Endgame has sold seventy copies of Spirit of the Century -- 25 at local conventions, and 45 in the store. Don't Rest Your Head hasn't done too shabby either -- 19 copies in all, 15 of them off the store's shelves. How do those numbers compare? Well, consider that in the past two years of Endgame's store sales, they've sold under 60 copies of the Dungeons and Dragons Players' Handbook. Now, sure, the PHB's been out since July of 2003, so we're not exactly talking apples to oranges, but it's still a solid benchmark, and it's one we've managed to beat with SOTC, at Endgame, thanks to all of the stuff Endgame does that I've been talking about here.

This would all be well and good if they weren't also just good people. But they are, and I can't wait to meet more of them -- and more of their customers -- when I get out there this weekend.
Filed Under: EHP Business, ipr, sales numbers, spirit of the century Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

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?
Filed Under: EHP Business, obs, sales numbers, spirit of the century Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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