Ok, then... lets try this. I'm going to make the following changes and see how they go. I'm afraid the longer lists make it harder for low-speed internet connections, but let me know your feedback. Here's what I did:
1) Increased the HOT SELLERS list to use past 30 days of sales.
2) Increased the HOT SELLERS list to a top 20.
3) Increased the Best Sellers (of all time) list to Top 40
4) Increased the number of products shown on the front page from 18 to 24
As for letting people/reviewers know about new product - we have a mailing list link on the top center of the site that you can join.
I would hate to see the Top 30 on rpgnow go away or even be significantly changed. Personally, it would make the site a lot less useful to me as both a publisher and a consumer.
First, it shows overall a good hallmark of quality. It's unwise to think that everyone going there has been there before. To a newcomer, it gives them an idea of some of the older, established products as well as the brand new ones displayed on the front page. This clearly happens, or I still wouldn't be selling my backlist products as much as I am.
Second, it is still dynamic, just not as dynamic as it was. Bonds of Magic: Cabal just entered the list last week or so, and now it's up to #25. I certainly hope that with the release of Book of Eldritch Might III: The Nexus tomorrow, we'll get on the list with that one pretty soon as well.
I don't agree that pdf sales windows are short. In fact, I'd say that they are longer than for print products. We're still selling 3-4 copies of Book of Eldritch Might every day, for example (from both our venues). And that's after 18 months. Sure, we were selling a lot more than that when it first came out, but that 3-4 copies a day has been steady for the last 6-12 months.
As for sales being down, well, Book of Eldritch Might III will be a good test for Malhavoc Press. If it sells significantly less than BoEM II in it's first week, I'll agree. Otherwise, I'm not so sure.
(Actually, I'm sure that overall, pdf sales are way up. They might be down for individual publishers or individual products, but clearly more people in general are buying pdfs than a year ago. We measure sales on a first day, first week, first month, etc. basis. I can tell you that, for example, Requiem for a God sold as well as If Thoughts Could Kill in its first week, so I'm not sure that sales for us are actually down.)
I still think pdf is a great way to deliver a product to a consumer. The best thing about them, I think, is speed. You can be sitting at home, read about a product you like, and in 3-20 minutes (depending on your connection speed) you're reading it. That's cool. I'm also happy that it's a way for our products to reach people who live far from a game store.
With 20 "Hot" and 40 "Best" listed it's overload on the site now. What could be done to make it easier for people to tell at a glance what's hot? As it is now my eyes glaze over and a puddle of drool forms on my keyboard as I look at the page.
I propose modifying the center area as follows:
MOST RECENT RELEASES
Show thumbnails of 9 covers here.
CURRENT "HOT" PRODUCTS
Show thumbnails of 9 covers here.
CURRENT "BEST" PRODUCTS
Show thumbnails of 9 covers here.
Keep the 20 and 40 down the side. What this will do is help those who rely on graphics. It will also make the product on the front page rotate more often which will help with repeat business.
Originally posted by jezter6 I, personally, would love a way to offer PDF's to my customers. For those of us with high speed data connections, it would be easy for us (a few hundred dollars in a decent printer) to run a Print-on-demand service to our users. I'd also love a way to get PDF's to my people, especially since my customers are going to be younger gamers without credit cards.
...
Maybe some kind of deal through RPGnow?
Well when they mentioned FLGS all that I could think of was how they all must hate me and want nothing to do with someone who cuts them out... but this is actually a really cool idea. If there was more revenue to share I'd even do an affiliate program - but there is no revenue to share - what there is the option of is that a store could print them off and resell them. But is that what the Publishers want? Would they care? I think its a good idea. Something that can be done on their own without our direct involvement even.
Selling this idea to FLGS though is probably going to be very hard.
Originally posted by Monte At Home I would hate to see the Top 30 on rpgnow go away or even be significantly changed. Personally, it would make the site a lot less useful to me as both a publisher and a consumer.
First, it shows overall a good hallmark of quality. It's unwise to think that everyone going there has been there before. To a newcomer, it gives them an idea of some of the older, established products as well as the brand new ones displayed on the front page. This clearly happens, or I still wouldn't be selling my backlist products as much as I am.
Second, it is still dynamic, just not as dynamic as it was. Bonds of Magic: Cabal just entered the list last week or so, and now it's up to #25. I certainly hope that with the release of Book of Eldritch Might III: The Nexus tomorrow, we'll get on the list with that one pretty soon as well.
I don't agree that pdf sales windows are short. In fact, I'd say that they are longer than for print products. We're still selling 3-4 copies of Book of Eldritch Might every day, for example (from both our venues). And that's after 18 months. Sure, we were selling a lot more than that when it first came out, but that 3-4 copies a day has been steady for the last 6-12 months.
As for sales being down, well, Book of Eldritch Might III will be a good test for Malhavoc Press. If it sells significantly less than BoEM II in it's first week, I'll agree. Otherwise, I'm not so sure.
(Actually, I'm sure that overall, pdf sales are way up. They might be down for individual publishers or individual products, but clearly more people in general are buying pdfs than a year ago. We measure sales on a first day, first week, first month, etc. basis. I can tell you that, for example, Requiem for a God sold as well as If Thoughts Could Kill in its first week, so I'm not sure that sales for us are actually down.)
I still think pdf is a great way to deliver a product to a consumer. The best thing about them, I think, is speed. You can be sitting at home, read about a product you like, and in 3-20 minutes (depending on your connection speed) you're reading it. That's cool. I'm also happy that it's a way for our products to reach people who live far from a game store.
I can't really take your performance as an indicator of the general trend, though Monte. You are an exception - EVERYONE who buys PDFs buys your products. No other publisher can claim that. I doubt that RPGNow's layout has much effect, if any, on your sales.
You will continue to do well, I have no doubt of that. I'm more concerned about the rest of us mortals.
Quote:
Actually, I'm sure that overall, pdf sales are way up. They might be down for individual publishers or individual products, but clearly more people in general are buying pdfs than a year ago.
Yep, agreed. Someone phrased it well above - the number of publishers/products is growing faster than the number of consumers. Overall, sales are up, but individually they are down (good for James but bad for us!) I'm selling under half what I would have done a year ago.
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Last edited by Morrus; 14th November 2002 at 03:23 AM..
Urgh.. James, frankly you're putting TOO much on the front page. Maybe tidy things up a bit, with the new products on a seperate page on their own. Add a random factor that throws up an older PDF product whenever someone goes to your front page, or even take out the new products on your front page and instead throw up five or ten older products. You have a 'customers who bought this also bought so and so' feature; use it on the front page like amazon does.
If the user wants to find out new products let them click on a link. This will increase the visibility of older products and ensure they don't sink to the bottom.
As for RPGnow comments, there are so many 5-star reviews it's hard to take them seriously.
Originally posted by Krug Urgh.. James, frankly you're putting TOO much on the front page.
It's always been a slow loading page but it gets slower with each week. The entire network of sites with the identical navigation bar across the top loads way too slow.
And I'm on a cable modem so I'm fairly certain it isn't my connection.
I am using Netscape which seems to be forgotten these days. Enworld's pages are impossible for me to read with Netscape.
Well, I can only comment from a buyer's view on this interesting topic.
I just had a look, how many PDF's I've bought so far from RPGnow, and that's 17 up to now.
Where did I hear of those products? That's almost exclusively EN World. I'm not browsing the online store on a regular basis, but only go there, when I read an anouncement, or even better, a review on this site.
Which products do I buy as pdf instead of print? Well, that's tricky. These are more or less three kinds of products:
1) Products I don't expect to see in print, never ever that is .
2) Products, where the topic doesn't interest me that much that I ever wanted to buy a print copy thereof.
3) Older products, where the print copies were more expensive than I ever wanted to pay for that topic.
Would I buy more pdf's under other circumstances? Well, actually yes. But I have to admit that this is a vision for the far future. I would like to see the devolopment of a new kind of print industry, something like "Print your PDF"-service stations. Then I can buy my pdf's, and if I really like them, I'll go there and let them be printed. Nowadays there is always a risk: Do I like it *that* much that I will spend even more money on the product by buying an additional print copy afterwards?
Do I register anywhere in order to get hold of a free copy of some "cool" pdf? Actually no. Who says it's really cool? I won't sit there and fill out boring forms in order to get my hold on something I actually don't know anything about.
Why are there much more downloads of free products than of products you have to pay for? Well, I've got DSL and a flatrate. That's one click. Any more questions ? I suspect that only 5% of those downloads get actually read. The rest waits for the next harddisk crash.
When on the RPGnow website, do you look at other products? Yes, I do. Most of the time, I browse the two columns on the right, best sellers and new products. Anything else? No. Except sometimes a link to "other products of this publisher", if I like the products, that is .
But there's this handy list of all fantasy products with pics and descriptions shown with a link in one of the prior posts. Yes? Oh, really! Looks great! Where did you hide this one ?
Do you look at the customer reviews on RPGnow? Well, yes, I do. I don't trust those 5 star reviews (unfortunately most reviews are 5 star, which invalidates them a bit in my eyes). I usually begin with the worst review and ask myself, whether those points the reviewer made may disturb me. Most negative reviews give a good insight into a product, but I take them as personal view, so they might actually convince me to buy a product . Usually I don't consider buying a product without a single review. Therefore, reviews help, definitely.
There was something else, but I'm afraid, I forgot it for now . Okay, next time .
Last edited by Turjan; 14th November 2002 at 03:32 AM..
Well when they mentioned FLGS all that I could think of was how they all must hate me and want nothing to do with someone who cuts them out... but this is actually a really cool idea. If there was more revenue to share I'd even do an affiliate program - but there is no revenue to share - what there is the option of is that a store could print them off and resell them. But is that what the Publishers want? Would they care? I think its a good idea. Something that can be done on their own without our direct involvement even.
Selling this idea to FLGS though is probably going to be very hard.
James
James:
The great part about this is, you're not really cutting the FLGS out of much. In all honesty, most of the PDF products out there aren't making it to print...which means they won't be on my shelf anyways.
I don't think POD for us would be out of the realm of possibility. And it would only be a few retailers who would be willing to do it. I'm still hoping a publisher will chime in with their opinions on this....
One scary thought for publishers I would assume is trusting the FLGS. It's much like Kazaa...you don't know that a FLGS wouldn't buy one copy and print like crazy and sell them. I know from a moral standpoint I couldn't do that to the publisher, but I'm sure there are those that might.
What about something like a 'blanket' license for vendors. A certain fee for X amount of PDF's. We'd pay for (let's assume 50) and would let us print out 50 of ANY pdf from that publisher's line or something like that. That would work for the big guys (Malhavoc, Nat-20, Bastion, MEG, et al, Grinning Goblin, Green Ronin) but not so much the indies...
What do you guys think?
Last edited by jezter6; 14th November 2002 at 03:48 AM..
We only have 2 PDFs available through RPGNow and RPG.net mall (though I have a few others to add and some upcoming projects). One is free and one is $5.00
We definitely sell MANY more PDFs through RPGNow than RPG.net by about 10 to one. Then again we sell most of our copies through our own store.
The following #s are for individual sales only of our non-free PDF and don't reflect the subscriptions we have in place for this line.
Traveller's Aide #1 ($5.00)
Personal Weapons of Charted Space
253 copies (55 at RPGNow, 6 at RPGnet Mall, 192 from our own store).
The largest number of referers according to RPGNow are 'Unknown' followed by ENWorld (you da man Morrus!)
I have been very happy with how the PDF series is going, particularly when you factor in the 6 and 12 issue subscriptions we have sold. If you add those numbers in, the sales totals somewhere around 500-600.
It's always been a slow loading page but it gets slower with each week. The entire network of sites with the identical navigation bar across the top loads way too slow.
And I'm on a cable modem so I'm fairly certain it isn't my connection.
I am using Netscape which seems to be forgotten these days. Enworld's pages are impossible for me to read with Netscape.
Frankly, first thing I'd move would be upcoming products. Put them on a seperate page.. Right now the emphasis is on the new products. Yes, they're important, but not to the point of shoving out older product.
The aim of the bestseller lists is to feature older product, but newcomers to the site would have missed out on all the other good stuff that have come and gone that are not in the lists. eg: Malladin's Gate Forgotten Heroes: Paladin, for example. Unless they stumble upon a review, they will NEVER have heard of the product. I think Joe's Book of Enchantment will get shoved out soon as well, which is a pity.
A suggestion that might be implemented on the Enworld side: A top 20 reviewed products available on RPGnow.com?
Don't know if anyone has mentioned him thus far, but Ron Edwards (Adept Press) started selling electronic copies of his game "Sorcerer" before that method of publishing became well-known. Along with Monte Cook and a few others, he's one of the trailblazers of PDF publishing.
I dug around a bit and found Ron's notes on sales: "During Sorcerer's tenure as a PDF product in 1999, I sold about 50 copies. During 2000, I sold about 70. During the first quarter of 2001, however, I sold 35-40 copies, and sales picked up steadily from there until the PDF was discontinued."
If we asssume on the low side that he sold an average of 50 a quarter in 2001, up to the PDF's discontinuation, that's 150 copies in the first three quarters of 2001. I expect that sales would have been better, but all this was just before the advent of PDF publishing became wide-spread or well-known.
To sum that up in terms of cash, he made about $500 in '99, $700 in '00, and $1500 in 3/4ths of '01 via sales of the "Sorcerer" PDF (as it sold for $10). This isn't too bad, as his sales actually increased from one year to the next, more than doubling between 2000 and 2001.
The Sorcerer PDF was discontinued before the last quarter of 2001, after publication of the hardcover book. Sales of the hardcover paid for itself and the publication of the first former PDF supplement (whose book sales then paid for publication-as-a-book of the second PDF supplement).
I don't have figures on the sales of the two former PDF supplements for "Sorcerer" or for the other PDF-only games Adept Press puts out, but anyone who wants such information can probably get the figures from Ron with a polite query via e-mail.
I myself have made nearly $200 in the last year with my PDF product, a mini-supplement for Sorcerer titled "Electric Ghosts." I've sold 33 copies, if I'm counting the reciepts correctly.
I'm still getting regular sales on it, despite no advertising done for it on my part and it being over a year old now. Most of my sales were post-GenCon 2001, when I did the majority of my advertising.
As of the end of this past July, for other PDF mini-supplements:
Dav Harnish had sold 75 copies of "Hellbound."
Jared Sorensen had sold 52 copies of "Schism."
Clinton R. Nixon had sold 35 copies of "Urge" (like me, he's done no advertising).
I don't have any sales info on the other mini-supplements.
I know this is all non-D20, but its more info for you PDF-publishing hounds out there to mull over.
Originally posted by Krug 3) More promotion in game stores sounds like a good idea, but would game stores benefit?
Has anyone tried this? Put up a flier at FLGS with the tear-off cut-outs with a web address? (Like bands advertise in music shops.) I wonder if it would work at all.
{QUOTE]The aim of the bestseller lists is to feature older product, but newcomers to the site would have missed out on all the other good stuff that have come and gone that are not in the lists. eg: Malladin's Gate Forgotten Heroes: Paladin, for example. Unless they stumble upon a review, they will NEVER have heard of the product. I think Joe's Book of Enchantment will get shoved out soon as well, which is a pity. [/quote]Actually this tread (I assume) is responsible for 3 sales today so I'm catching up of 101 Treasures. But, yeah, Eldritch 3 will knock me down a peg by Saturday or so.
I'm sure the possibility of the 'tear-off' sheet could exist, but as someone going into the industry, having 20 different tear-offs hanging on the wall just doesn't seem like a fun option, and honestly...I get nothing out of it.
Again, most of my consumers will be the younger crowd who probably don't have a credit card and can't use mommy and daddy's. It would be great for them to come in with $10 cash and get a PDF on CD and change for some gum or something.
Originally posted by Morrus I'm more concerned about the rest of us mortals.
You have a certain demi-deity status yourself there, Morrus. More people know about RPGNow because of your website than any other source. More people come to my website from yours than from mortality.net, rpg.net, rpghosts(news|now|etc), gamewyrd, sjgames|d20weekly, and all the other RPG news sites combined.
You say your latest PDFs are not selling as well. I would guess that part of that is that your latest PDF have narrower appeal than your older ones. Also you use to plug your stuff more. I remember hearing about TF&T long before it came out. Death came out with little fanfare. Likewise, TF&T has no niche, it's a complete unknown if people will want it (apparently they do). Whereas Death is a definite niche product: a book about one deity portfolio. Narrow focus.
Re: Freebies
People download freebies because they're free. My Tuesday's Two-Pager which I announced only last Tuesday has been download over a 1000 times. So it's not hard to find people who will download PDFs. I think it's paying for them that's the problem. When threads about PDF sales show up in the general board here on ENWorld, a strong percentage of the "I don't buy PDFs" contingent say things like "If it's not good enough to print why should I buy it?" That is the core stigma that we need to eradicate.
Originally posted by jezter6 I'm sure the possibility of the 'tear-off' sheet could exist, but as someone going into the industry, having 20 different tear-offs hanging on the wall just doesn't seem like a fun option, and honestly...I get nothing out of it.
Again, most of my consumers will be the younger crowd who probably don't have a credit card and can't use mommy and daddy's. It would be great for them to come in with $10 cash and get a PDF on CD and change for some gum or something.
Well that would be ideal. As long as we knew we could trust every FLGS out there. I was merely addressing the "how do we get people who've never thought to look for PDFs on the web to start doing so?"
Yours is a whole other kettle of fish. The only right way to do it is to create a POS machine that does the burn without intervention. This is not cheap. And how do we convince FLGSs that they need to buy this $400 machine so people can buy PDFs on CD and you get only 10% instead of your usual 30-40%?
Yeah, that kind of machine is definately not something that FLGS guys are going to buy into, especially for the limited profit margin involved.
Even 20% isn't something we're too interested in.
Hopefully more responses will come from the bigger d20 guys (malhavoc, nat-20, etc)...
I'm definately not trying to hijack this thread to how to make me money, it's how to allow me to offer these products to my local customers who otherwise might not be able to buy from you guys. I'm more for getting you guys some exposure, because the more popular your stuff is, the more sales (in print) I'll make as well.
Originally posted by jezter6 Hopefully more responses will come from the bigger d20 guys (malhavoc, nat-20, etc)...
I'll give you their response right now. Since the bigger companys (Malhavoc, Nat-20, RPGObjects) go to print with their stuff anyway, you already have access to giving out their products. So there is no NEED for what you're asking and they won't be interested. It's the small vendors that might be interested in this grass roots support you offer- but they are also going to be the ones most concerned about you just burning a bunch of CDs.
One solution would be for a publisher to burn some "bundle" CD's for you to sell. On the CD can be lots of free demos (and OpenRPG and such) for the users. We did this at GENCON but it didn't go over that well. So maybe people don't understand. Anway, in this case we could pre-charge you for the CD's and let you do what you will. But then you risk having them sit on the shelf like any other physical product...
Well it's a creative angle/idea, but I still find it hard to think of any way to make it fly.
actually, i'd love to see some CD sets of some publishers' stuff. I know GG does that on their website. I haven't looked at any others yet...
I still think some of the big guys would have some interest, eg - Nat 20's TFT...It's a great book, I just don't know how much interest my people are going to have in a book to sit on the shelf if they're only looking for a few quick games for $5.
I still would like a way to introduce my customers to PDF's without having to send them home with a web link to do it on their own...as well as make a little money in the process. Not to put you down in any way james...but sending customers to another business to get their wares isn't making me squat.
It's a bummer it's not profitable enough for an affiliate system....
Last edited by jezter6; 14th November 2002 at 07:13 AM..
It's a bummer it's not profitable enough for an affiliate system....
james,
That reminds me. Something else you could do to help customers find the lost gems. Take those top 0.4% who buy the most and offer them a coupon (say $5) if they would create an amazon-like Listmania. But in this case they would be instructed to pick out PDFs that they feel should not be forgotten.
You'd want to limit the number of lists and dicourage duplicating stff on someone else's submistiom
.
? I suspect that only 5% of those downloads get actually read. The rest waits for the next harddisk crash.
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