Atlas Games finds free download doesn't work...

[Mark]

As always, thanks for sharing the information, John.

But I was surprised that the release of the PDF correlated with a nosedive of sales of the printed rulebook...

I wonder how this might correlate to sales of a "early release" PDF and the impact on gross numbers seen by the sale of a subsequent (and identical) print product. Obviously there is no way to know with absolutely certainty since there is no way to set up an identical control group market but the annecadotal evidence from your experience might be telling.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Thanks again, John, for sharing this info.

Two good points were made that shine some light on the experiment, though. One from above, that I'll repeat; and one from the OGL lists, that I don't know if you caught.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on both:

1) The release of the PDF scared retailers away from buying your book.

As we know, the internet-savvy niche of customers is a very small slice. Is it possible that retailers heard about the PDF, and stopped ordering Ars Magica in print? Consequently, you may not even be aware of the greater number of customers who were suddenly cut-off from your products. Ignorant of the PDF offer, they simply had nowhere to go.

2) Folks know that Fifth Edition is coming up.

Customers and retailers alike may be loathe to order the current edition, knowing that a new edition is on the horizon. Something like that definitely impacts my buying decisions, as a gamer.

Wulf

 

[spacecrime.com]

Thanks again, John, for sharing this info.
As we know, the internet-savvy niche of customers is a very small slice.

Actually, I'm not sure we know that at all.

I've been researching sales figures at a number of publishers lately, and that 10,000 downloads figure fascinates me. Most game books don't sell 10,000 copies. In fact, I think it's fair to say that 90%+ of what's on game store shelves doesn't sell 10,000 copies, including many books that are regarded as successful.

10,000 copies says to me that there are at least 10,000 internet-savvy gamers out there who are into the hobby enough to go looking for an obscure game like Ars Magica. If they're a "very small slice" of the customer base, then there has to be a LOT more than 10,000 gamers out there -- and if that's the case, how is it that "successful" books are selling only 5 to 10 thousand copies?

There's a piece missing from this puzzle. Maybe the gap between players and purchasers is much bigger than we think. Maybe game publishers are doing a much worse job of selling their products than they think. Maybe the slice of internet-savvy gamers is much bigger than we think. There's something going on here, and I don't understand what it is.

And that bugs me.

 

[Razuur]

Thats interesting.

I was under the assumption that the experiement was to show people 4th ed hoping that they purchase 5th ed.

Not that they'd purchase 4th ed.

Razuur

 

[Bagpuss]

A 9% drop in sales isn't significant IMO, it could be due to the decreasing popularity of AM, reviews that weren't as positive as the previous releases, bad economy, etc.

According to the article it was a 56% drop in sales of the Ars Magica core rulebook compared with sales from the same period in 2002. The 9% drop was in the suppliments sort of illustrating it didn't bring in any new customers, but did loose a lot of customers that might have picked up the core rulebook out of interest.

 

[Bagpuss]

10,000 copies says to me that there are at least 10,000 internet-savvy gamers out there who are into the hobby enough to go looking for an obscure game like Ars Magica. If they're a "very small slice" of the customer base, then there has to be a LOT more than 10,000 gamers out there -- and if that's the case, how is it that "successful" books are selling only 5 to 10 thousand copies?

Speaking from my experience only 1 in 5 gamers ever needs to buy a product. Our gaming group gets by with one MM, one DMG and 2 PHB's.

For games where only one person GM's then only one person buys product so for example I GM Vampire, only I buy Vampire stuff. Another guy runs Flashing Blades, only he buys Flashing Blades stuff.

That's why successful books only sell 5 to 10,000 copies. Players rarely by books the GM's spend the money.

 

[Michelle Lyons]

I'm excessively sorry to hear that, John. I had hopes it would really pan out well for you.

Michelle

 

[Cergorach]

According to the article it was a 56% drop in sales of the Ars Magica core rulebook compared with sales from the same period in 2002. The 9% drop was in the suppliments sort of illustrating it didn't bring in any new customers, but did loose a lot of customers that might have picked up the core rulebook out of interest.

I think that the 56% drop in sales of the core book isn't that heavily related to the release of the rules in pdf. Just look at the sales figures of the D&D core books, the sales of the 3.0 core books also went down drastically with the immenent release of the 3.5 core books. Comparing the sales of two consecutive years isn't a good way to base results on, especially not with a product that's supposed to have it's biggest sales in the first six months of release, the restocks then trickle down, and down, to a very low number. Also comes to mind the health of the market, competing products, etc.

Although this experiment does provide useful information, it doesn't provide information to base hard results on. For that you need a more controlled experiment (two similar product lines, that don't compete with each other, but still use the same market to draw customers from), it would be interesting to set up something like that...

 

[JohnNephew]

A 9% drop in sales isn't significant IMO, it could be due to the decreasing popularity of AM, reviews that weren't as positive as the previous releases, bad economy, etc.

The supplements dropped 9% (which I take to be the baseline) -- the core rulebook, the actual item available for download, saw its numbers drop **56%**.

But i do think that releasing your entire rulebook as a pdf was a gutsy move, my respect for that! I would think that if you would consider any future actions in this theatre, you might want to consider releasing a 'light' version of the rules set as a pdf. That way you still have people who can have a taste of AM before they purchase...

Thanks, and I agree. I expect that is what we'll do when the new edition comes out. Certainly, doing the big excerpt of Unknown Armies (available free on our website) -- but not the whole book -- seems to have helped the game's sales. It gives you a good idea of what the book is like, but if it hooks you, you'll still want to go buy the whole thing.

If pirates on the net want to help people "try before they buy," maybe they should limit their file sharing to just a few sample chapters, rather than entire books.

 

[JohnNephew]

various replies

I'm going to try and stick a lot of replies and comments in one post.

The 9% drop was in the suppliments sort of illustrating it didn't bring in any new customers, but did loose a lot of customers that might have picked up the core rulebook out of interest.

To be honest, I'm reluctant to conclude that the experiment didn't bring in new customers. I know I've heard from people who bought supplements after downloading the core book. Overall, we've had a very challenging market environment in the last year, though, so looking at supplement sales should give us an idea of what sales of the core book might have been without the freebie. Perhaps without the freebie, supplements would have been down 20% (and the core book down 20% as well). Maybe both would have dropped more than 50% if the rules weren't online for free. (Certainly new d20 products of ours sell less than 50% of what they did a year ago, I'm sorry to say.) We wind up pretty deep in the hypotheticals pretty quickly. The thing I'm most comfortable in saying is that the free download does not seem to have helped paper sales of the same book.

10,000 copies says to me that there are at least 10,000 internet-savvy gamers out there who are into the hobby enough to go looking for an obscure game like Ars Magica.

My up-to-the-minute count is 12,146 downloads. Here's another interesting fact: only 5,080 of those downloads are reported as being in the USA, about 42%. In fact, the number of non-US downloads has been increasing (the last time I checked a few months ago, 45% were USA). I agree, the numbers are very intriguing.

I'd be curious to know what other freebies (the Deadlands book, the Witchcraft book) got in downloads. I know in the case of Witchcraft, the book was planned to be discontinued (so the free download may have encouraged people who wanted printed copies to run out and buy them); in the case of Deadlands, I seem to recall seeing that it's now a pay download.

I was under the assumption that the experiement was to show people 4th ed hoping that they purchase 5th ed.

We mentioned this in the press release, but the page on RPGNow emphasizes that the print edition is available right now to go and buy. I wanted it in the press release in part to calm retailers, and try and discourage them from abandoning the line in reaction against the experiment. My back-up marketing plan is exactly that, I hope, this should increase the base of active Ars players, leading to more sales of 5th edition. (If I had done this with a game that didn't have a new edition expected in the next couple of years, I'd be a very unhappy camper. Even now, I have to expect that the recent reprint which I expected to last until 5th ed is likely to be a much longer supply at the new and lower rate of sales.)

I think that the 56% drop in sales of the core book isn't that heavily related to the release of the rules in pdf. Just look at the sales figures of the D&D core books, the sales of the 3.0 core books also went down drastically with the immenent release of the 3.5 core books. Comparing the sales of two consecutive years isn't a good way to base results on, especially not with a product that's supposed to have it's biggest sales in the first six months of release, the restocks then trickle down, and down, to a very low number.. Also comes to mind the health of the market, competing products, etc

A book like the Ars Magica core rules does NOT have its biggest sales in the first six months. Books like this continue to sell -- they're "evergreen" products. The 4th edition first appeared in late 1996, and we are currently on the 5th printing. Reprintings have come about 2 years apart, so the sales comparisons were both for a mature product well into its lifecycle, not comparing to the hot-off-the-presses numbers of a brand new release.

I agree that there may be many other factors. I just find it hard to ascribe the 56% vs. 9% comparison to those other factors. Based on previous experience with continuing to sell old editions (e.g., Ars Magica 3rd Edition when everyone knew we were working on 4th), I don't think that alone accounts for the comparative drop, either.

Although this experiment does provide useful information, it doesn't provide information to base hard results on. For that you need a more controlled experiment (two similar product lines, that don't compete with each other, but still use the same market to draw customers from), it would be interesting to set up something like that....

I agree. Even then, you'd have inconclusive results. No two games are identical. And you have the problem of cost -- you might be killing the game that you put online as PDF, and depriving its owners of a lot of revenue, only to have results that would still be subject to questions and uncertainties like the present situation.