What kind of Sales can you expect from PDF?

[Krug]

Re: Agree Completely

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?

 

[the GreyOrm]

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.

 

[jmucchiello]

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.

Joe

39: 128 (Enchantment)

 

[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.

 

[jmucchiello]

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.

Joe

 

[jmucchiello]

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%?

Joe

 

[jezter6]

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.

 

[rpghost]

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.

James

 

[jezter6]

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....

 

[jmucchiello]

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

Joe