Evil Hat Sales Numbers: Q2 2010

 All
Jul 212010
 

Hold on to your hats, folks. This one was super interesting.

Where We Started

Lifetime:

Penny: 471
DLYM: 860
DRYH: 2746
SOTC: 5219
SOTS: 605
S7S: 987

IPR For Q2 2010

Penny PDF: 2
Penny Print: 29 (20 retail)
DLYM PDF: 4
DLYM Print: 38 (35 retail)
DRYH PDF: 9
DRYH Print: 57 (48 retail)
DFRPG:OW PDF: 7
DFRPG:OW Print: 81 (50 retail)
DFRPG:YS PDF: 7
DFRPG:YS Print: 100 (64 retail)
SOTC PDF: 4
SOTC Print: 58 (49 retail)
SOTS PDF: 1
S7S PDF: 2
S7S Print: 19 (12 retail)

OBS For Q2 2010

Penny PDF: 10
DLYM PDF: 24
DRYH PDF: 39
DFRPG:OW PDF: 339
DFRPG:YS PDF: 354
Happy Birthday Robot PDF: 8
SOTC PDF: 104
SOTS PDF: 15
S7S PDF: 14

e23 for Q2 2010

DRYH PDF: 1
SOTC PDF: 1

Lulu for Q2 2010

DRYH Print: 4
SOTC PDF: 2
SOTC HC: 9

Distribution Orders, Retailer Orders, and Convention Sales in Q2 2010

This is a healthy mix, mostly Alliance and Esdevium, but later on ACD, Lion Rampant, Pegasus Spiele, and others. (We recently added PHD and one or two others to our distribution contacts as well.)

Penny Print: 130
DLYM Print: 98
DRYH Print: 136
DFRPG:OW Print: 2626
DFRPG:YS Print: 2741
SOTC Print: 251
S7S Print: 232

Evil Hat Webstore Totals for Q2 2010

Penny PDF: 9
Penny Print: 9
DLYM PDF: 10
DLYM Print: 15
DRYH PDF: 15
DRYH Print: 27
DFRPG:OW PDF: 120
DFRPG:OW Print: 1604
DFRPG:YS PDF: 112
DFRPG:YS Print: 1704
Happy Birthday Robot Print: 1
SOTC PDF: 9
SOTC Print: 31
SOTS PDF: 8
S7S PDF: 4
S7S Print: 9

Totals for Q2 (HOLY CRAP)

Penny PDF: 2 + 10 + 9 = 21
Penny Print: 29 + 9 + 130 = 168
DLYM PDF: 4 + 24 + 10 =  38
DLYM Print: 38 + 15 + 98 = 151
DRYH PDF: 9 + 39 + 1 + 15 = 64
DRYH Print: 57 + 4 + 27 + 136 = 224
DFRPG:OW PDF: 7 + 339 + 120 = 466
DFRPG:OW Print: 81 + 1604 + 2626 = 4311
DFRPG:YS PDF: 7 + 354 + 112 = 473
DFRPG:YS Print: 100 + 1704 + 2741 = 4545
Happy Birthday Robot PDF: 8 + 1 = 9
SOTC PDF: 4 + 104 + 1 + 2 + 9 = 120
SOTC Print: 58 + 31 + 251 = 340
SOTC HC: 9
SOTS PDF: 1 + 15 + 8 = 24
S7S PDF: 2 +  14 + 4 = 20
S7S Print: 19 + 9 +232 = 260

Lifetime:

Penny: 471 + 21 + 168 = 660
DLYM: 860 + 38 + 151 = 1049 (ding! 1k milestone)
DRYH: 2746 + 64 + 224 = 3034 (ding! 3k milestone)
DFRPG:OW: 466 + 4311 = 4777
DFRPG:YS 473 + 4545 = 5018
Happy Birthday Robot PDF: 9 * Note that this does not include the ones sold in Daniel’s kickstarter preorder!
SOTC: 5219 + 120 + 340 + 9 = 5688
SOTS: 605 + 24 = 629
S7S: 987 + 20 + 260 = 1267

Analysis will have to come another time, as I’ve got an evening ahead of me. But feel free to start in with your own observations in the comments!

Share
 Posted by Fred Hicks at 8:26 pm  6 Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,

Some Lessons From Kinda Screwing Up

 All
Jul 062010
 

So, we kinda goofed up with our preorders when it came to planning our shipping strategy. This has been partly a case of inexperience on my part with things on this scale (IIRC the 1600+ preorders we got on Dresden Files was easily 4 or 5 times what we saw when Spirit of the Century launched), partly a case of asking more of the warehouse than they could handle (at least in the timeframe I had assumed was possible), and partly a case of life complications (medical and staffing issues) that layered on top of the other things at a time when there just wasn’t a schedule buffer to handle those sorts of issues.

I’ve talked about this pretty extensively over on The Dresden Files RPG website and on RPG.net, but over here at Deadly Fredly the goal with publishing posts is to pass along things that other folks can learn from. With that in mind I want to talk less about the things that went wrong so much as the anatomy of a preorder ship-out and the lessons available from the mistakes.

Let’s get down to it.

Continue reading »

Share
 Posted by Fred Hicks at 12:51 pm  33 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,

The Happy Birthday Robot Quote

 All
Jul 052010
 

So it’s a common notion with “microbrew” publishers that some things are out of reach unles you’re willing to lay down a really fat amount of cash. One such thing is the idea of doing a full-color hardcover book, even a small one.

Certainly there are some issues with such a book, so this notion is not without merit. Color art can cost you, on average, double what black and white does. And if you’re oriented on print-on-demand technology, especially with one-copy-at-a-time outfits like Lulu, the unit costs can be really prohibitive.

But the thing to realize — the thing I hadn’t entirely realized yet either — is that print on demand is nevertheless putting a squeeze on the traditional printers out there. The printer I used for the Dresden Files RPG, Taylor Specialty Books operating out of Dallas, does very good work, but I had no expectation that they were able to do print runs that numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands.

Turns out I was wrong.

When I started talking to Daniel Solis about taking on the printing and distribution duties for Happy Birthday Robot — a full color interior, hardcover, 40-page, square (8.5×8.5) kid-friendly story-building game formatted like a children’s book — I thought I’d have to do a lot of poking around to see what print on demand places would charge me only an arm rather than an arm and a leg for doing the work on a print run of maybe 500 or so. But I figured I’d ask Taylor anyway to see what they could offer.

Their answer? They can do print runs as small as 300 copies.

This was surprising, and I asked for a quote. Reality is, the cost per unit on a print run that small is not great (though still pretty good if you consider the quality of an offset printing job), and started to get more workable as things moved into the 500-or-so copy range. That’s the range I was looking for (I ultimately settled on 750 copies instead), and I had a good established relationship with Taylor, so I went for it. The resulting book is damn pretty.

I figure some of y’all are eager to see real numbers on this thing, so here’s what I can show you:

Continue reading »

Share
 Posted by Fred Hicks at 10:21 am  4 Responses »  Tagged with:

One Quarter Worth of Dresden Files Sales

 All
Jul 022010
 

So we’re done with the second quarter of 2010. Somewhere past the middle of this month I’ll cough up some real numbers on our sales overall for you data-hounds to chew on. But first, a preamble.

Back at the beginning of the Dresden Files RPG preorder in April, I decided to track daily sales data — at least as expressed through our web-store. It’s been an interesting ride, one that’s now over as I don’t intend to keep tracking day to days from here on out. I’ll share the data and some pretty graphs down below after the cut.

What’s perhaps more exciting, though, is that once we add in the distributor and direct-to-retail orders we’ve processed, DFRPG sales on each volume are in the mid-4000′s — around 75% of what we printed in the first print run. That’s major news because of another statistic I’ve been tracking across the years — Spirit of the Century’s sales numbers. With PDF and print sales combined, SOTC was just a bit past 5,000 units sold (before this quarter’s numbers get added in).  It took SOTC since the latter part of 2006 to get to that figure, about 3 and a half years. Dresden Files, meanwhile, has gotten within striking distance of that figure in three months — and with an aggregate price-point between the two volumes that’s three times what SOTC’s cover price is. Huge, huge, huge.

Granted, I have a fat check to write Jim Butcher for his royalties, a $60,000 loan to repay, and probably a $40,000-or-so reprint run (for about 3000 copies of each volume) on the nearish horizon, but I’m at ease because (once the preorder shipments wrap up and I can demonstrate their shipment to PayPal) the money we’ve been drawing in through the Evil Hat webstore pretty much covers all that. The checks that’ll roll in from the distributors in about a month will get to go right into the profit coffer.  Rob’s and my taxes will be real interesting this year, I have a feeling.

Anyway, the pretties:

Continue reading »

Share
 Posted by Fred Hicks at 1:20 pm  19 Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,
© 2011 Deadly Fredly Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha