What kind of Sales can you expect from PDF?

[rpghost]

I believe they are "trend bullets". If that is the case, it just tells you whether the product is moving up or down the list.

But then again, that doesn't make sense, since Eldritch Might III is "going up" and Everyone Else is "going down" even though we just moved back up to the number 2 slot (we lost it to Complete Guide to Drow for a day or two).

Actually, due to the data I have to work with, it's just an indicator as to wether it sold more this month over last month. Not a true position change indicator. So Hal is right in his statement of what they are.

For a true position velocity change indicator you'll have to look to the new RPGNow monthly magazine we'll be putting out.

James

 

[jmucchiello]

The reason being as that it's in a generic category and I can't really tell that it's a d20 system game with the query I use to generate that data. I'd have to create a Super Hero d20 category to get it to move. But I'll think on it.

You will probably need a generic "Other d20" category soon as d20 modern books start being made.

 

[malladin]

I don't suppose that I'm adding much to this thread. Forgotten Heroes: Paladin has sold 125 at the point of writing this. I think we're at the same kind of level as Death: Guardian at the Gate and Joe's.

An interesting point, however, is that we recently dropped the price down to $3 for a limited period and it has picked up its sales a bit. We had one fantastic week of sales in which we made nearly half of our overall sales. Then it stayed steady at about 10 copies a week until it had been out for 2 months. After that, sales were very slow. We've had the sale going for about a week now and we've sold 8 this week, as opposed to just 1 the week before. Trouble is, I'm not sure how clever an idea this is as not only are we getting less money in per book, but it might also lead people to think about holding off from buying our next product until it goes down in price. So we're going to have to be careful how we play it, I suppose...

I concur that the PDF market is only going to get you pocket money. Even moreso in our case; we're a team and so all earnings get split three ways. However this will theoretically mean that we can get more books out at a steady rate. We're hoping that this will work out to our benefit.

For me there are a few reasons I do it: wanting to test out my ideas after rejections from bigger publishers, wanting to contribute something to the community whilst covering my costs, practicing writing style, editing and page layouts. However I suppose the biggest motivation is the (perhaps foolhardy) hope that the exposure may bring imprint offers from someone with the money to publish it. Which brings me to a question: Is there anyone else out there who has got an imprint and can shed any light onto how it occurred, and whether we (and probably others like us) are toiling under foolish presumptions and hopes...?

 

[HellHound]

The honest truth?

We were most likely imprinted because we hit the scene DAMN early in the PDF days. Our first release was product #96 at RPGnow. It's easy to stand out when you are one of 100 (and the other 100 aren't even mostly d20 releases yet). But our latest release is product #531. Standing in a field of 500 is a LOT harder than standing in a field of 100. Plus the bar has been raised significantly. The bigger PDF publishers are producing top-notch layout, well-illustrated products now, and a break-in publisher is effectively releasing a "no frills" product (as our own Librum Equitis volume 1 was called by RPGnow's front page a few months after release).

 

[Dextra]

gotta love those referrals

Here's another factor, with RPGNow's new "Customer Sources" option -- where do people hear about PDFs from? I'll show mine here -- as expected, the majority of my sales come from my own site. Is that fairly common (do most of your customers hear about your product from your own sites?) or from news sources like myself?

This will, at the very least, show new publishers where to send their new product info if they want to get it seen.

Just had to interject here, we look at those sources quite often, and really the majority of referrals are from ENWorld.
HOWEVER, the origins of some of our referrals are quite interesting. For example, "talking with a dwarf in the belly of a kraken late one evening", "XXX gay bestiality portal", "Hellhound, Master of Prestige", "Orc & Pie", and what really impresses us, one each from every possible misspelling of Malhavoc Press and Dread Gazebo.

 

[rpghost]

Re: gotta love those referrals

For example, "talking with a dwarf in the belly of a kraken late one evening", "XXX gay bestiality portal", "Hellhound, Master of Prestige", "Orc & Pie", and what really impresses us, one each from every possible misspelling of Malhavoc Press and Dread Gazebo.

Every once in a while we consolidate the funny spellings or obvious "heard from a friend" phrases into like spellings and short words. This make the counts work out a bit better. We don't get them all but it's good enough I guess.

On of the issues of most people being from ENWorld is because most vendors use EnWorld to promote/announce their products. So obviously the people from around here are the people who come to RPGNow and buy it. It is a burden on both us and the vendors out there NOT to be so dependent on ENWorld for all their promotion. If ENWorld crashed for a few weeks, where would you get your sales? Everyone should be making efforts to reach non-ENWorld customers as well as non-online customers for that matter! We are planning some more ads in DUNGEON magazine next year and have some imprints going on to some CD demos... so that should help - but we can't do it all.

James

 

[Twin Rose]

Re: Re: gotta love those referrals

It is a burden on both us and the vendors out there NOT to be so dependent on ENWorld for all their promotion. If ENWorld crashed for a few weeks, where would you get your sales? James

I've been thinking that perhaps an "Opt In" mailing system on RPGNow might be the way to go. Make it so that vendors can have a box on their sites where people can opt in on their sites as well. I've seen this work to good effect with Yahoo Groups, where there'd be a box people just popped their email address into. Then, perhaps, vendors could have a way of saying, "We have new product XXX or new expansion or new update" or whatever to a group of people wanting/willing to listen for new products. Is this viable?

 

[Twin Rose]

I've decided that an opt-in email system really is a good idea using YahooGroups, and I've decided to create one. Here's a link for anyone interested:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RPGAnnouncements

I've set it as moderated, so that I can approve the messages to ensure that only publishers and non-spam are sent. If this seems responsible enough, I'll go ahead and open it up to let people post thanks and questions.

This is really an experiment, so let's see how it goes!

 

[rpghost]

Re: Re: Re: gotta love those referrals

I've been thinking that perhaps an "Opt In" mailing system on RPGNow might be the way to go.... Then, perhaps, vendors could have a way of saying, "We have new product XXX or new expansion or new update" or whatever to a group of people wanting/willing to listen for new products. Is this viable?

Maybe you live in a hole... but the new vendor options include mailing list support for an opt in group. The main site home page has a link to allow opt in for RPGNow mailings.

http://www.rpgnow.com/mailing_list.php

It categorizes the people who join. So if you're a reviewer you can add yourself to the list as such and vendors can mail you when products are available to you. Or if you're a news site you can signup and get fast news releases. Etc.

Oh, I think i know why you may not know... it's for Gold Vendor use only. Customers can signup all the want but mailings can only come from Gold Vendors. Maybe I should change that... then again I don't like my mail servers getting overloaded all the time. So maybe a yahoo group run by the public is better.

At the very least though, if you're a regular RPGNow customer you should signup on that list.

James
P.S. RPGSHop.com has one too.

 

[Twin Rose]

Re: Re: Re: Re: gotta love those referrals

Maybe you live in a hole... but the new vendor options include mailing list support for an opt in group. The main site home page has a link to allow opt in for RPGNow mailings.

http://www.rpgnow.com/mailing_list.php

I had thought that those lists were specific to any one given product, such as CS customers or Ambient customers. That is good to hear. Of course, we're talking about spreading the word outside of current customers as well, and if a number of publishers have sign-up boxes on their sites, and new customers buy a book and then visit their site, they might find out about RPGNow or PDF publishers, and thus we're creating a new base.