What kind of Sales can you expect from PDF?

[Morrus]

Here's our list as it stands now:

2: 730 (TF&T)
4: 578 (Wild Spellcraft)
5: ~530 (Inns & Taverns)
6: 528 (LE1)
9: 450 (CG1)
10: 381 (4C2F)
13: 329 (Gar'Udok)
19: 232 (LE2)
26: 160 (Enchiridon)

Below #30:

160-170?: 101 Spellbooks
152: Moon Elves (+55 or so lost figures...grrr...)
149: Everyone Else
146: Drow (+6 Print On Demand not counted)
140: 101 Treasures
125: Enchantment
121: Death: GotG
99: Bodies & Souls

 

[rpghost]

I agree. What I have noticed is that price seems almost irrelwvant as long as you don't price yourself out. In fact, pricing yourself too low can actually hurt sales - it creates an illusion of a cheap, inferior product.

This is a point I've been trying to get across from day one. So many vendors would come to me wanting to sell their product for $2 or $3. What's the point when the processing charges eat up a large portion of the sale as well? People have to realize that there is a "perceived" quality besides the true quality. For example, a good book priced at $3 might sell a few more copies then if it was at $6.95 but, but the chances are you'd not make up for the lost margin at all. As a rule of thumb I don't like seen PDF's go for less then $5 if at all possible.

It seems to me that there is definitely a niche out there for more high-quality PDF publishers---those who run their operations like that of a print publisher (with marketing, advertising, convention budget, etc.).

I'd have to second that ... RPGNow grows steadily and with more and more Out-Of-Print works coming to us (WEG, Atlas, Mongoose, Pinnacle, etc) we expect to see more acceptance of this format for both new AND old product.

I would never say do PDF _instead_ of print, but myself, Monte Cook, Bastin Press, and RPG Objects firmly believe that doing PDF _and_ print runs. Just get the bugs worked out of your PDF first and then send it to the printers

As for our POD options - we're still finalizing them. But the concept of having our vendors pre-pay for 10 copy runs and then warehousing them at RPGShop.com has been well recieved from the Vendors (which was our major hurdle in the past for POD). The printer we're thinking of using isn't the one mentioned above, but POD services are getting very cheap and very high quality. Just ask Goodman Games.

Morrus, so you think a 3 week top list would be better?

James
http://www.RPGNow.com

 

[rpghost]

James can even generate the past data from his database. This would allow you to see how a book did in its first few weeks as it moves up and down the chart.

So now you want little graphical arrows for it's volocity on the list? Is that really something a customer cares about? The lists are there to help draw attention to "popular" products, not to say X is better or being bought faster then Y.

The Top 10 would basically list last weeks sales figures.

Actually, that's what it is right now - well sort of. It's sales for today - 7 days. They are generated nightly at like 2am or something.

I agree they should probably take a larger sampling so they don't change so quickly. But 2 or 3 weeks seems to be the wiser choice. Maybe it should just be the amount of time till someone would normally fall off the front page.

Tell you what, I'll go change it to 15 days and call it the HOT LIST and we'll see how that works for a bit.

OLD LIST:
1. DM Dungeon Designer (WIN)
2. Modern Day Maps
3. The Guard Tower
4. Death by Corium Light
5. Everyone Else
6. GM Mastery: NPC Essentials
7. 101 Arcane Spell Components
8. 101 Mundane Treasures
9. The Complete Guide to Drow
10. Call of Duty – A Paladin Sourcebook


NEW LIST:
1. The Guard Tower
2. Everyone Else
3. Modern Day Maps
4. The Book of Curses
5. The Complete Guide to Drow
6. GM Mastery: NPC Essentials
7. Call of Duty – A Paladin Sourcebook
8. DM Dungeon Designer (WIN)
9. Skreyn's Register: The Bonds of Magic, Vol. 2 -- The Faithful
10. 101 Mundane Treasures


Now is that any better representation of good product or just a new sorting?

James
http://www.RPGShop.com

 

[johnsemlak]

I'm not a publisher/writer and not close to being one, but I thought I offer my 2 kopeks worth.

It would be interesting to hear what Monte Cook's opinions are. (I assume he hasn't been posting under a handle I don't know.) Does anybody know why he went into primarily PDF publishing?

I think one advantage PDFs have from a seller's point of view is how easy they are for certain consumers to buy. Just point, click, and buy. OK, you can do this with Amazon, but you have to wait.... PDFs offer an instant, easy, and painless (assuming they're cheap, and they usually are) purchase.

 

[Morrus]

Tell you what, I'll go change it to 15 days and call it the HOT LIST and we'll see how that works for a bit.

I still think that's a little short and that it'll fluctuate too much. I'd go for 30 days, but 3 weeks seems reasonable.

How about this:

1) Drop the Top 30 list. As you say, it's stagnant. Replace it with Top 30 in the last 30 days (or 3 weeks if you prefer).

2) Then, have a Top 10 ever list, just for the gimmick of it, and something fun for the PDF publishers to compete to get onto. It means nothing, but we all watch the list for purile egotistical reasons, so you may as well pander to it. Just not the the extent you do now, where it takes up a lot of space and is essentially useless.

Basically, swap the lengths of the two lists around and increase the recent sales one to 3-4 weeks. I think you'll get the best result that way.

 

[tensen]

Given that a PDF's shelf life is realistically about 3-4 weeks, a period matching that shelf life would be ideal.

The PDF shelf life used to be a lot longer. The more items that have been added to RPG now have changed those figures rapidly. Originally it used to take several months before the sales took off. Now they either take off immediately or probably never do.

 

[Erik Mona]

RPGHost said:
>>>
But even in print books are lucky to sell more then 1000 copies so don't get the wrong idea.
>>>

No legitimate print publisher I'm aware of feels "lucky" to sell 1000 copies. In fact, I strongly doubt that a product that sells 1000 copies is even profitable.

I think it's safer to say that smaller publishers would feel "lucky" to sell 2000-3000 copies, and mid-tier d20 companies regularly sell 3000 or more copies, and would view 1000 copies sold a failure.

Perhaps print publishers can tell me I'm wrong (I only know what people tell me), but I think there's still a VERY wide circulation gap between PDF and print publishing.

--Erik Mona

 

[jmucchiello]

The PDF shelf life used to be a lot longer. The more items that have been added to RPG now have changed those figures rapidly. Originally it used to take several months before the sales took off. Now they either take off immediately or probably never do.

Sales plummet when you fall off the front page. It's that simple. Out of sight. No sales. Sales bump when you get a review on a popular board (and when you shamelessly hawk the book on ENWorld in the forums when the topic aligns with the book's topic). That's my experience anyway.

Joe Mucchiello
Author/Publisher of Joe's Book of Enchantment
http://www.throwingdice.com

 

[Morrus]

Perhaps print publishers can tell me I'm wrong (I only know what people tell me), but I think there's still a VERY wide circulation gap between PDF and print publishing.

Absolutely - yes, there is. A massive gap.

However, with the vastly lower costs of PDF, I think that a *successful* PDF publisher (one of the top-tier ones) can compete profit-wise with some low-tier print publishers if they handle it right. But it's not easy.

 

[MThibault]

I don't think that the Top 30 list is meaningless to consumers (and perhaps not to publishers, either).

It certainly isn't a direct indication of quality or current sales, but it does allow newcomers to get a quick list of works that might not currently be hot, but have been popular in the past. So if someone comes to RPG now, having just discovered Malhavoc Press, they will have a quick list at their fingertips that includes works from other publishers on other subjects that have been well received.

It could mean the difference between purchasing Dwarf Product A or Dwarf Product B, or cruising into a category that you hadn't intended to check out.

Those lists are as close to browsable shelf space outside of the catagories and current releases as exists on the site (as far as I can find). I can't help but think that removing the list (or shrinking it) will cut the sales of some products from a few per month to zero per month. It's not much difference, but you'd pull the product if you thought those few sales were beneath you.

But sales aside, it does add to the shopping experience for customers so I'm not sure that the decision to remove or contract the Best Sellers list should be taken lightly.

Cheers.