What kind of Sales can you expect from PDF?

[Morrus]

With this small a difference between being on the list or off it....

any publishers willing to 'fess up that they bought a few of their own copies just to make it on the list?

Nah - we only just realised how close it is. If any of that sort of thing's going to happen, it'll start about now.

 

[jmucchiello]

Nah - we only just realised how close it is. If any of that sort of thing's going to happen, it'll start about now.

So keep reloading the page for those whom you suspect will be doing this. Watch as the price drops to a penny and see if you can get a copy at the publisher padding price.

Joe

 

[rpghost]

I'm not sure I agree with what Morrus said about shelf life of a PDF... I know for a fact that RPG Objects continues to sales month after month - all it requires is supporting releases of PDF or some news or whatever. For example, the sales of the GM Mastery book were actually more last month then the month before, with the first month actually the highest.

So for the most part, PDF has a good shelf life that even rivals that of print books which are cut in half each month for only 3 months. In other words, typical print books sell X on month one, sell X/2 on month 2, and sell X/4 on month 3 and just a pittens for the rest of a year. PDFs on the other hand, from what I can see, continue to draw sales regularly.

Of course that might have something to do with all our efforts of continually bringing new customers to RPGNow.com which then keeps sales flowing. So I don't think the "static" amount of people willing to buy PDFs has actually been reached.

James
http://www.RPGNow.com

 

[philreed]

Great Idea

So keep reloading the page for those whom you suspect will be doing this. Watch as the price drops to a penny and see if you can get a copy at the publisher padding price.

Joe

But won't it be noticable if someone jumps to #1 in a few seconds?

I mean, if you're going to fix things you may as well go all out and order 3000 copies at $0.01/each.

 

[MThibault]

Geez, it's getting difficult to keep up with this thread.

Those are some interesting numbers. At a glance, it looks like almost 10% of your sales start off as Malhavoc purchases or inquiries, and about the same amount find their way to your product from other publishers. I wouldn't be surprised if most small e-publishers have similar statistics -- with Enworld being the major referer and Malhovoc being next.

Those are the numbers that I think will be reduced if the cross-publisher link is weakened. Malhavoc and Natural20 will always be near the top of the best sellers list, whether it is a 30 day or one year time frame. The smaller and newer publishers will stand more to gain if they can end up with a link to their product in the sidebar of product listings from those two organizations. Shrinking the time frame, or the length, of the lists won't affect Malhavoc or Natural 20 much (their frontlist will push the backlist about as much as it can be pushed) but I think that it will reduce the impulse purchases of products from other organizations and their backlists will suffer.

I wonder how many transactions include multiple products. Do customers go to the site and buy two or three products at a time, or are the sales more focused? i.e. Find the one product you are looking for and leave.

If they do purchase multiple products, how many are from the same publisher, category, best-seller list, etc.? How do people move through the site from one product to another? I think that the answers to these questions will ultimately tell RPGNow how to organize the site so that people can get that second product as easily as possible and aim for closing the third sale in the transactions.

Cheers.

 

[Morrus]

I'm not sure I agree with what Morrus said about shelf life of a PDF... I know for a fact that RPG Objects continues to sales month after month - all it requires is supporting releases of PDF or some news or whatever. For example, the sales of the GM Mastery book were actually more last month then the month before, with the first month actually the highest.

So for the most part, PDF has a good shelf life that even rivals that of print books which are cut in half each month for only 3 months. In other words, typical print books sell X on month one, sell X/2 on month 2, and sell X/4 on month 3 and just a pittens for the rest of a year. PDFs on the other hand, from what I can see, continue to draw sales regularly.

Of course that might have something to do with all our efforts of continually bringing new customers to RPGNow.com which then keeps sales flowing. So I don't think the "static" amount of people willing to buy PDFs has actually been reached.

James
http://www.RPGNow.com

Well, I only have my own sales figures to go with, but it's certainly true for anything I've ever put out. And as far as publicity goes, mine ain't too shabby, y'know.

Posts from other people here seem to support that. If RPGObjects is doing differently, then it's an exception, not the rule.

 

[Cheiromancer]

You know, I've purchased 18 items of the top 30, and 8 more from the "under 30" list that Morrus posted.

Which makes me think that a small number of repeat buyers might be responsible for a high proportion of RPGNow's PDF sales.

Anyone else have that impression?

 

[Asathas]

Kudos, file sharing, and a customer profile

I'm not a PDF publisher but I'm definitely a major PDF consumer having purchased at least 30 or more PDF's and to be honest, many if not most of the PDF's from the publishers who've chimed in so far:

Libram Equitus I & II, all 3 of the 101 books from PJR, all but two of the Natural 20 Press releases, most of Monte's releases, Book of Broken Dreams, Requiem for a God, Bob's Book of Enchantment (looking forward to the next book from you), Enchiridion of Mystic Music (still waiting for the next Enchiridion book), Forgotten Heroes - Paladin (this one is excellent), Thee Compleat Librum ov Garudok's Necromantic Artes (please make the next one have an easier title , both Dollar Dungeons, Everyone Else, Book of Curses, Swords Into Plowshares, NPC Essentials, Portable Hole Full of Beer... ok that last one was free but you get the idea. And as is, I think I've still left quite a few of the ones I've bought off this list.

So first, kudos to you guys who write and publish this stuff because I've been loving the PDF's I buy and as DM for our group I can tell you that the players have been loving the material as well (in fact they're getting a few of the books from 101 Spellbooks and a couple items from 101 Mundane Treasures in this weekend's game). Last session was my first as GM and the one new thing I brought as DM that they enjoyed most was the maps made with Dollar Dungeons. The party paladin has dang near been living with Forgotten Heroes - Paladin and the bard is absorbed by the Enchiridion of Mystic Music. And in case I haven't listed one of your products in this paragraph, don't feel bad... I've only had one session so far with the next being this weekend but I know we'll be heading to town shortly and there's a necromancer waiting for them so I'll be pulling from quite a few other products soon.

And finally for file sharing... Having said all I have above and listed just some of the PDF's I've purchased, I'll also tell you that I download PDF's via Kazaa. Obviously it's not PDF's for sale at RPGNow because I've purchased about half the D20 PDF's they sell. No... what I download from Kazaa are PDF versions of hardcopy books I already own. Very handy being able to print off a couple pages from one of the books for reference during the game rather than having to go rifling through half a dozen books to find the rule/magic item/spell/critter I'm looking for. I'd make the PDF's myself but don't have a scanner and don't want to pirate a copy of Adobe Acrobat to make the PDF's even if I had a scanner.

Now, I'm not so foolish as to think that most of the folks who download D20 PDF's use them the way I do but when you see them up there (and no, I don't make them available for download from me once I've downloaded them), remember that there are folks like me who only download the PDF's of hardcopies they already own.

One last note... yeah, I buy the hardcopy books like I buy PDF's... I think my bookshelves are wishing death upon me the way they've been groaning from the weight of books on 'em.

 

[jmucchiello]

Re: Kudos, file sharing, and a customer profile

Bob's Book of Enchantment (looking forward to the next book from you)

You and me, both.

Joe Mucchiello
Off to fire the marketing dept.
Throwing Dice Games
http://www.throwingdice.com

 

[Xeriar]

One last note... yeah, I buy the hardcopy books like I buy PDF's... I think my bookshelves are wishing death upon me the way they've been groaning from the weight of books on 'em.

Something that often worries me is that I sleep right under two bookshelves, which hold about a thousand books all told, some of them seven feet above my napping head.