Monday, December 13, 2010

821

The number of PDFs bought during my big sale. Yeah, better than expected. I thought I was going to pop 100 sales for the week.

But in pure numbers this sale sold more than the previous four months combined. Which, for such a discount, is to be expected I suppose if there's interest.

But for the total dollars to double the previous two combined months? For this one week of $1.34 PDFs to outrank every complete month of PDF sales I've ever had save one?

Insane.

Death Frost Doom is now an Electrum selling product, which puts it in the top 2.5% selling products over the history of RPGNow.

Insane!

Thank you!

Every time I do something lately the outcome seems to be better than expected, which makes me feel good about all the upcoming projects. But it's not just me - the release over the weekend of the new Swords & Wizardry editions blew out their servers and they badly underestimated demand. Labyrinth Lord is going into yet another printing soon.

Our "niche of a niche" experienced explosive growth this year. None of us are large businesses in this hobby, but we're all successful, all surprised at how successful we are, and we're still growing.

I'm happy that I'm part of it, and I'm happy that we've all been able to do it.

If there was any doubt at the beginning of 2010 whether a company focusing on OSR products can work, if there was any doubt whether the interest in "Old School" could sustain a number of games with the same inspiration financially, I think there's none now.

Upwards and onwards. May we find our success - in sales and product quality - and our player bases grow even more in 2011.

14 comments:

  1. Random drawing done and winner has been emailed.

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  2. Congratulations! It's good to see that this whole OSR thing wasn't just a fad, and is steamrolling along nicely.

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  3. Well, know I picked up a few. LOVE the Pembrooketonshire stuff.

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  4. Yeah, I was giving away one of Jim's PDFs each day tues-sat on my blog - at that price, how could I NOT reward my followers? ;)

    The PDF of the new S&W book looks really good btw... it's a great time to be a fan of the OSR.

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  5. Congrats. I personally think that lowered priced PDFs, and eventually e-books are going to be the way to go to encourage actual purchases as opposed to outright thieving and to encourage word of mouth of those who've bought and enjoyed the products.

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  6. Well done, man! You deserve the success!

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  7. Congrats, at a local convention in November I ended up stepping up to keep a Lamentations game in the lineup after the original GM had to bail, and I was intrigued by your rules. I still want to tweak them a little to fit my taste but this sale made it very easy for me to get a copy, at least until you put out a basic version (the boxed set was awesome but the entire time I had the borrowed copy I was so worried I would ruin it), hopefully ala the Rules Cyclopedia.

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  8. Evernevermore: I know it's not quite what you're asking for, but you can get the rules and magic book as free pdfs.

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  9. I grabbed Grinding Gears. Bargain!

    I have a print copy of Pembrooktonshire but can't use it at the moment due to its renaissance-style background (Pimpernells, printing presses, mass-market novels and [gasp] privately owned companies... Not medieval enough for me just yet).

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  10. >>Congrats. I personally think that lowered priced PDFs, and eventually e-books are going to be the way to go

    A look at my sales sees that the items that sold the most were the most discounted. Tower of the Stargazer got 1/3rd the sales of the full game, Death Frost Doom sold considerably less than Hammers, WNW, or Grinding Gear which are usually priced a bit more.

    In fact, I see this as being true over the life of the company. With the exception of Death Frost Doom, which has the most lifetime sales of anything I've released, the rule is the more expensive the item, in print or PDF, the better it sells.

    There are a million things to take into account when explaining that, but price does not move product all by itself.

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  11. That's the fun thing about having all the sales data. You get to check out the numbers, try different types of sales as more products come out,e tc...

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  12. I had been meaning to purchase some of your PDFs for a few months now. The sale prompted me to action!

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  13. Congrats! Your pricing for pdf may have a big impact on how I decide to do mine in the future. Very much congrats on your success!

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