In the past I’ve been putting up Evil Hat’s sales number posts over on my personal blog, Deadly Fredly, but as of this post I’ll be sharing them over here on Evil Hat. There are a few interesting things to say about this one.
During the past quarter we ran and wrapped the Race to Adventure kickstarter, so you’ll see all those presales reflected here. Last quarter we wrapped up the Dinocalypse Now kickstarter, which is why you see a precipitous fall-off in the sales numbers there. (Fiction’s also a slow seller for us, but that’s not much of a shock, since we’re just starting to dip our toes into those strange waters.)
This quarter also included several key conventions that IPR took our stuff to (as we don’t have a lot of budget for the why-did-I-think-a-booth-was-a-good-idea-again expenses of convention attendance). We’re definitely happy to be continuing that partnership. Distribution continues to be a strong channel for us as well. While we’re getting less money per sale with distribution than any other method, that’s still positive cash flow for the company, and importantly helps us reduce our inventory volume, which can help at tax time.
When to Reprint, When to Retire
Something that’s only partially reflected in the numbers here is inventory considerations. Whenever we get low at the main warehouse, it triggers reprint considerations. Some of our products have only ever had initial printings (Happy Birthday Robot and Do, at the least), while others have had several. Each time, it’s important to evaluate how successful the product has been to date, how strong its continuing performance is, what the minimum cost of a reprint would be, and what our remaining goals are for the products under consideration.
With all of those factors in mind, we’re making a decision to let our supplies of Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Happy Birthday Robot, and Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple run dry. These products won’t be completely unavailable — physical copies still need to make their way through distribution, and a few more copies will sell over the course of this quarter and possibly next; and beyond that, the PDFs will continue to be available on the Evil Hat store and elsewhere.
I’ll talk about the decisions in a bit more depth now.
In all three cases, we’re looking at slow sales performance despite critical acclaim. We’re also looking at profits — which are shared with the creators — going on pause whenever a reprint is done, because the costs of that reprint have to be recovered first. That means Chad and Dan would be looking at one or two or more quarters of no payout whatsoever because of that slow sales performance — rate of revenue divided into current revenue generation rates adds up to long timeframes before the products would go back in the black. If, on the other hand, we let these things transition to electronic-only availability, the revenue generation continues to net cash to go in Chad’s and Dan’s pockets. So from that perspective, we find a good case to be made for letting the transition occur.
The slow sales performance also produces some problems when combined with the form factor of these games.
With both Happy Birthday Robot and Do, we’re looking at something that’s a hardcover, full color interior book. These are not things you can reprint in small, print-on-demand-sized quantities — most of our softcover, black and white interior catalog is printed through POD/short run services. So slow sales performance there means that even with a 500-750 copy reprint, we’re looking at a LONG timeframe before all of that sells through. For the 87 sales on Do in Q3 include PDF; but even if it didn’t, even 500 — the smallest we could really afford to do given the unit cost of manufacture — would take well over a year to sell out. And over time, rate of sale tends to fall off, so even “today’s” sell rate needs to be looked at with some skepticism. We could potentially look into producing black and white versions of these games, but that would be something of an affront to their original, gorgeous color incarnations. While we might explore that potential in the future, right now the better course of action is to let the colors live on in PDF.
Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies is a different beast, here. It is a print on demand title, but with particularly slow paper sales, and in a size format (my fault, admittedly) that makes it, unit-by-unit, one of the most expensive books we print in print on demand. With lifetime combined print and PDF sales approaching 2000 — fairly strong lifetime performance for a PDQ system product, I think — we’re left feeling that printing more paper versions would kill trees and keep money out of Chad’s pocket, when neither are really necessary. Here, too, the right move is to let the game live on in PDF — tho at some point we might look into something like DriveThruRPG’s print-a-copy-when-it-is-ordered POD program for this one.
So that’s the why of that decision — if you’ve been meaning to grab physical copies of any of these three, I encourage you to run on over to the Evil Hat webstore today and grab ’em while they last.
And Now, the Sales Numbers
Here’s how we did.
| Title | Sales Last Q | Sales This Q | LQ vs TQ | Prior Lifetime | New Lifetime | Type |
| Penny | 56 | 60 | +7% | 1273 | 1333 | RPGs |
| Diaspora | 200 | 252 | +26% | 1627 | 1879 | RPGs |
| Do | 104 | 87 | -16% | 1442 | 1529 | RPGs |
| Do:BoL | 20 | 21 | +5% | 124 | 145 | RPGs |
| DLYM | 101 | 74 | -27% | 1898 | 1972 | RPGs |
| DRYH | 300 | 206 | -31% | 4823 | 5029 | RPGs |
| DFRPG:OW | 525 | 595 | +13% | 12392 | 12987 | RPGs |
| DFRPG:YS | 835 | 799 | -4% | 15384 | 16183 | RPGs |
| HBR | 54 | 31 | -43% | 732 | 763 | RPGs |
| SOTC | 383 | 361 | -6% | 8248 | 8609 | RPGs |
| SOTS | 31 | 32 | +3% | 807 | 839 | RPGs |
| S7S | 51 | 27 | -47% | 1864 | 1891 | RPGs |
| DRTB | 478 | 238 | -50% | 478 | 716 | Fiction |
| DinoNow | 1664 | 148 | -91% | 1664 | 1812 | Fiction |
| DinoBeyond | 1520 | 0 | Not Yet | 1520 | 1520 | Fiction |
| DinoForever | 1520 | 0 | Not Yet | 1520 | 1520 | Fiction |
| PharaohHK | 1520 | 0 | Not Yet | 1520 | 1520 | Fiction |
| AmeliaStone | 1520 | 0 | Not Yet | 1520 | 1520 | Fiction |
| KhanOfMars | 1520 | 0 | Not Yet | 1520 | 1520 | Fiction |
| KingKhan | 1520 | 0 | Not Yet | 1520 | 1520 | Fiction |
| RTA | 0 | 1018 | New | 0 | 1018 | Board |
And to dig into the sources for each of these…
| Title | Source | Direct | Retail/Distro | Virtual | Convention/Other | Total |
| Penny | EHP Store | 7 | – | 7 | – | 14 |
| Diaspora | EHP Store | 11 | – | 10 | 7 | 28 |
| Do | EHP Store | 13 | – | 5 | – | 18 |
| Do:BoL | EHP Store | 10 | – | 5 | – | 15 |
| DLYM | EHP Store | 4 | – | 10 | – | 14 |
| DRYH | EHP Store | 10 | – | 26 | – | 36 |
| DFRPG:OW | EHP Store | 50 | – | 65 | – | 115 |
| DFRPG:YS | EHP Store | 57 | – | 73 | – | 130 |
| HBR | EHP Store | 3 | – | 1 | – | 4 |
| SOTC | EHP Store | 13 | – | 45 | – | 58 |
| SOTS | EHP Store | 2 | – | 1 | – | 3 |
| S7S | EHP Store | 2 | – | – | – | 2 |
| DRTB | EHP Store | 13 | – | 9 | – | 22 |
| DinoNow | EHP Store | – | – | 2 | – | 2 |
| Penny | OBS | – | – | 7 | – | 7 |
| Do | OBS | – | – | 18 | – | 18 |
| Do:BoL | OBS | – | – | 6 | – | 6 |
| DLYM | OBS | – | – | 26 | – | 26 |
| DRYH | OBS | – | – | 47 | – | 47 |
| DFRPG:OW | OBS | – | – | 58 | – | 58 |
| DFRPG:YS | OBS | – | – | 84 | – | 84 |
| HBR | OBS | – | – | 3 | – | 3 |
| SOTC | OBS | – | – | 92 | – | 92 |
| SOTS | OBS | – | – | 5 | – | 5 |
| S7S | OBS | – | – | 6 | – | 6 |
| DRTB | OBS | – | – | 17 | – | 17 |
| DinoNow | OBS | – | – | 5 | – | 5 |
| Diaspora | OBS | – | – | – | 31 | 31 |
| Penny | e23 | – | – | – | – | – |
| Diaspora | e23 | – | – | 1 | – | 1 |
| DLYM | e23 | – | – | 1 | – | 1 |
| DRYH | e23 | – | – | 1 | – | 1 |
| DFRPG:OW | e23 | – | – | 1 | – | 1 |
| DFRPG:YS | e23 | – | – | 1 | – | 1 |
| HBR | e23 | – | – | – | – | – |
| SOTC | e23 | – | – | 1 | – | 1 |
| SOTS | e23 | – | – | – | – | – |
| S7S | e23 | – | – | – | – | – |
| DRTB | Amazon | – | – | 61 | – | 61 |
| DinoNow | Amazon | – | – | 27 | – | 27 |
| DRYH | Amazon | – | – | 14 | – | 14 |
| SOTC | Amazon | – | – | 49 | – | 49 |
| Diaspora | Amazon | – | – | 28 | – | 28 |
| DRTB | B&N | – | – | 16 | – | 16 |
| DinoNow | B&N | – | – | 3 | – | 3 |
| DRYH | B&N | – | – | – | – | – |
| SOTC | B&N | – | – | 4 | – | 4 |
| DRTB | Robot Trading Co | – | – | 4 | – | 4 |
| DinoNow | Robot Trading Co | – | – | 6 | – | 6 |
| Penny | Distribution | – | 13 | – | – | 13 |
| Diaspora | Distribution | – | 130 | – | – | 130 |
| Do | Distribution | – | 26 | – | – | 26 |
| DLYM | Distribution | – | 14 | – | – | 14 |
| DRYH | Distribution | – | 68 | – | – | 68 |
| DFRPG:OW | Distribution | – | 403 | – | – | 403 |
| DFRPG:YS | Distribution | – | 559 | – | – | 559 |
| HBR | Distribution | – | 13 | – | – | 13 |
| SOTC | Distribution | – | 139 | – | – | 139 |
| SOTS | Distribution | – | 24 | – | – | 24 |
| S7S | Distribution | – | 19 | – | – | 19 |
| DRTB | Distribution | – | 94 | – | – | 94 |
| DinoNow | Distribution | – | 105 | – | – | 105 |
| Penny | IPR | 1 | 22 | – | 3 | 26 |
| Diaspora | IPR | 1 | 22 | – | 11 | 34 |
| Do | IPR | 1 | 2 | – | 22 | 25 |
| DLYM | IPR | – | 14 | 1 | 4 | 19 |
| DRYH | IPR | 2 | 23 | 2 | 13 | 40 |
| DFRPG:OW | IPR | – | 7 | – | 11 | 18 |
| DFRPG:YS | IPR | – | 5 | – | 20 | 25 |
| HBR | IPR | – | 3 | – | 8 | 11 |
| SOTC | IPR | 2 | 7 | 3 | 6 | 18 |
| SOTS | IPR | – | – | – | – | – |
| S7S | IPR | – | – | – | – | – |
| DRTB | IPR | – | 14 | – | 10 | 24 |
| DinoNow | IPR | – | – | – | – | – |
| RTA | Kickstarter | 850 | 168 | – | 1,018 |
/me makes a note to head over to my FLGS to pick up that copy of Swashbucklers that I’ve been eyeballing.
Thank you for the continued transparency. Really appreciate it!
You should take a look at DTRPGs new color options — Lightning Source’s new “standard color” process. (The old color is now called “premium color”)
The price is pretty reasonable (this is the breakdown for a 188 page softcover):
Black & white $5.36
Premium color $20.60
Standard color $7.24
The paper is a bit thinner, but the quality is good. I’d recommend checking out a sample. It might give you a POD option for Do and HBR.
Worth a ponder. Thanks!
Honestly, put S7S on OBS PoD. If it was previously on Lightning Source your files should be ready to go. And ideally get Chad to do a PDF of additional setting content!
The new low-cost colour option is intriguing. It’s the same weight paper as b&w, and it’s an inkjet process, so – I’m told – there can sometimes be patterning effects. I may give it a try for something to see how it goes. Sounds ok for cartoony spot art but no replacement for offset.