Q2 2012 Quarterly Report

Slowly but surely I am getting caught up to the current day.

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	April	May	June	Quarter Total	YTD	Last Year	Grand Total
Lulu/Print	-	-	-	-	1	7	69
Lulu/Digital	-	-	-	-	2	2	12
Lulu/Total	-	-	-	-	3	9	81
CreateSpace/Print	-	-	1	1	3	-	11
One Book Shelf/PDF	-	5	2	7	27	3	131
One Book Shelf/Print	-	-	-	-	-	1	2
One Book Shelf/Bundle	-	-	-	-	1	1	10
One Book Shelf/Total	-	5	2	7	28	5	143
Paizo/PDF	-	-	-	-	-	1	5
Amazon Kindle	1	1	1	3	8	-	8
Totals	1	6	4	11	42	15	249

 Adventures in Oz Characters Pack

Sales Channel/Product Type	April	May	June	Quarter Sales	Total Sales
OBS/PDF	1	2	-	3	34
OBS/Bundle	-	2	1	3	26
OBS/Total	1	4	1	6	60
Paizo/PDF	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	1	4	1	6	61

For those of you wondering why I'm not participating in this year's A to Z blogging challenge, I think you'll see the answer on this chart. The sales for April set a historical low. The only times I have sold less product were when I had no product to sell. I'm tempted to blame the blogging challenge, since this is the only April to perform this poorly and the months surrounding April were not similarly suppressed.

Also for the month of April, OneBookShelf put together a charity bundle to support the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. (It's Child Abuse Awareness Month again this year, too). I donated the Characters Pack this time, since I had already donated the corebook to a previous charity bundle.

It may have been a "perfect storm"  of the two events that caused sales to drop like this. But it's enough to make me rethink my marketing strategy.

Q1 2012 Quarterly Report

If I had kept up on my posting schedule, this would have been the first report to be displayed in the same year that its data was generated. But if all goes well (and I don't see why it shouldn't) that will wind up happening in a couple of months.

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	January	February	March	Quarter Total	YTD	Last Year	Grand Total
Lulu/Print	-	1	-	1	1	7	69
Lulu/Digital	1	-	1	2	2	-	12
Lulu/Total	1	1	1	3	3	7	81
CreateSpace/Print	1	-	1	2	2	-	10
One Book Shelf/PDF	7	6	7	20	20	21	124
One Book Shelf/Print	-	-	-	-	-	-	2
One Book Shelf/Bundle	-	-	1	1	1		10
One Book Shelf/Total	7	6	8	21	21	21	136
Paizo/PDF	-	-	-	-	-	1	5
Amazon Kindle	4	1	-	5	5	-	5
Totals	13	8	10	31	31	15	238

 Adventures in Oz Characters Pack

Sales Channel/Product Type	January	February	March	Quarter Sales	Total Sales
OBS/PDF	3	1	5	9	31
OBS/Bundle	4	5	1	10	23
OBS/Total	7	6	6	19	54
Paizo/PDF	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	7	6	6	19	55

A good strong quarter in terms of sales. Maybe not Christmas scale numbers, but certainly nothing to sneeze at, either. January got a nice little boost of publicity from the kind folks at the Atomic Array (and if you want me for your podcast, just let me know). February was, of course, my annual jaunt to DunDraCon (which I will be repeating this year as well) and during the month of March, the OneBookShelf sites held their week-long GM's Day Sale to honor the passing of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax. This was my first opportunity to participate in this sale and I look forward to doing so again this year.

You may have noticed that there's a small change to the upper table. I have removed the YGN listing and replaced it with numbers from my Kindle sales. Did I forget to mention that AiO is available on the Kindle? Well, it was kind of deliberate forgetfulness. You see, I don't own a Kindle myself, so I have no idea how it looks on the device. But people seem to be buying and keeping it (there is an option to return a Kindle book and I do have numbers on how often that happens).

The interesting thing about the Characters Pack sales is how many were purchased as part of the GM's Day Sale. As we've seen on this and previous tables, most people will purchase the bundle, getting the Characters Pack for free when they purchase AiO. In March, we see that trend reversed. Probably because the individual items were discounted, but the bundle was not. And also, 74 cents is a hard price to pass up for just about anything.

Q4 2011 Quarterly Report

You thought I had forgotten about this stuff, didn't you? Well, I didn't.

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	October	November	December	Quarter Total	YTD	Last Year	Grand Total
Lulu/Print	1	-	1	2	18	19	68
Lulu/PDF	-	-	-	-	2	4	6
Lulu/EPUB	-	-	1	1	4	-	4
Lulu/Total	1	-	2	3	24	23	78
CreateSpace/Print	-	3	4	7	8	-	8
One Book Shelf/PDF	3	22	3	28	54	21	104
One Book Shelf/Print	-	-	-	-	2	-	2
One Book Shelf/Bundle	-	4	-	4	9		9
One Book Shelf/Total	3	26	3	32	65	21	115
Paizo/PDF	-	-	-	-	2	3	5
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	4	29	9	42	99	47	207

 Adventures in Oz Characters Pack

Sales Channel/Product Type	October	November	December	Quarter Sales	YTD Sales
OBS/PDF	-	1	1	2	22
OBS/Bundle	3	6	-	9	13
OBS/Total	3	7	1	11	35
Paizo/PDF	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	3	7	1	11	36

The big thing to notice on this chart is that huge jump in sales over at OneBookShelf during November. This was due to their first Teach Your Kids to Game Week that was held that month. That jump in sales was nearly equivalent to the initial sales rush I experienced over at OBS in September '10. (I'm sure you can imagine how upset I was that AiO was not picked for inclusion in 2012.)

CreateSpace also started generating numbers this quarter. All those Christmas shoppers on Amazon, I'm sure (I saw a similar bump this year, too). Now I just need to work on a way to get onto more people's Christmas lists.

This also gives us our annual totals for this year. 99 total sales for the year, mostly from OBS. 36 copies of the Characters Pack were sold, but only 23 people paid for it specifically. Some of the bundle purchases may have been motivated by the Characters Pack, but I don't quite know how to tease that information out of my raw data.

Q3 2011 Quarterly Report

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	July	August	September	Quarter Total	YTD	Last Year	Grand Total
Lulu/Print	1	-	1	2	16	12	66
Lulu/PDF	-	-	-	-	2	-	6
Lulu/EPUB	2	1	-	3	3	-	3
Lulu/Total	3	1	1	5	21	12	75
CreateSpace/Print	1	-	-	1	1	-	1
One Book Shelf/PDF	4	6	6	16	26	29	76
One Book Shelf/Print	-	-	1	1	2	-	2
One Book Shelf/Bundle	-	2	2	4	5		5
One Book Shelf/Total	4	8	9	21	33	29	83
Paizo/PDF	-	-	-	-	2	-	5
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	-	-	-	1	1
Totals	8	9	10	27	57	42	165

 Adventures in Oz Characters Pack

Sales Channel/Product Type	July	August	September	Quarter Sales	YTD Sales
OBS/PDF	-	4	-	4	20
OBS/Bundle	-	1	3	4	4
OBS/Total	-	5	3	8	24
Paizo/PDF	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	-	5	3	8	25

In terms of big news for this quarter, I logged my first sale from CreateSpace. Since CreateSpace is an Amazon company, that meant a free listing on Amazon.com. Although I could never manage to get my original files accepted back in 2010, I thought the file surgery that made my participation in the OBS Now In Print! program possible might be what I needed at CreateSpace as well. I guessed right and very quickly got things set up over there.

 

Also, this quarter marks the transition from PDF to EPUB over at Lulu. Since they were discontinuing their multimedia category (which is where I had stuck my PDF), they offered me a free conversion to EPUB and also went ahead and made it available on the iBookstore and the Nook.

Now that we have the opportunity to look back in time somewhat, it seems that nothing quite lives up to that first rush. Sales at Lulu and OBS dropped by about 50% over the same quarter last year. Once we get 2 years on, we'll see if that 50% reduction holds over time.

Down in the Characters Pack chart, I have added a new line labeled "Bundle." This is for copies that are distributed as part of the Corebook and Characters Pack Bundle. The price of the bundle is the same as the corebook by itself, so customers are basically getting the Characters Pack for free in these cases. Since they were effectively giveaways, it would be tempting to simply write them off. But looking at the bundle sales compared to the individual sales of either product can be illuminating. (The corebook part of the bundle is included in the OBS/PDF total of the main chart.)

Q2 2011 Quarterly Report

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	April	May	June	Quarter Total	YTD	Last Year	Grand Total
Lulu/Print	2	5	-	7	14	19	64
Lulu/PDF	-	2	-	2	2	-	6
Lulu/Total	2	7	-	9	16	19	70
One Book Shelf/PDF	1	-	2	3	10	-	60
One Book Shelf/Print	1	-	-	1	1	-	1
One Book Shelf/Bundle	1	-	-	1	1	-	1
One Book Shelf/Total	3	-	2	5	12	-	62
Paizo/PDF	-	1	-	1	2	-	5
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	5	8	2	15	30	19	138

 Adventures in Oz Characters Pack

Sales Channel/Product Type	April	May	June	Quarter Sales	YTD Sales
OBS/PDF	-	8	8	16	16
Paizo/PDF	-	1	-	1	1
Totals	-	9	8	17	17

This is where things start to get interesting. It's been my first full year as a publisher of an actual product. You can see that I've added an extra column to the chart so that I can look at how the quarterly totals compare to last year. And as we see, even though I was selling books in all three months of this quarter, I didn't sell as much as the month and a half that I had last year. But then again, last year did include that initial release rush.

Speaking of initial releases, this quarter also saw the release of the Adventures in Oz Characters Pack. Although it went to all of the places I sold PDFs, only 2 outlets got any kind of performance. I was actually surprised that one of them was Paizo.

The print edition of AiO actually became available at the OneBookShelf sites (DrivethruRPG and RPGNow) in the last week of March, but didn't get any nibbles until April. You may recall that I had some rather interesting trials in getting to an acceptable POD release from OBS.

Q1 2011 Quarterly Report

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	January	February	March	Quarter Total	Grand Total
Lulu/Print	3	3	1	7	57
Lulu/PDF	-	-	-	-	4
Lulu/Total	3	3	1	7	61
Paizo/PDF	1	-	-	1	4
One Book Shelf/PDF	2	1	4	7	57
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	6	4	5	15	123

If you just look at the two lines labeled Lulu/Print and One Book Shelf/PDF, they look like they're tied. But that's not the case, because there are now multiple formats available at Lulu. Combining the two formats for sale at Lulu brings total sales up to 61, giving them a lead in overall sales. Interestingly enough, they did manage exactly the same sales totals for this quarter. Lulu strongest in the early parts of the quarter, with OBS picking up the tail.

Note the bolded line highlighting Lulu's total sales. This chart is going to gain a couple of those lines as format options expand over the year.

The pivot point was in February, when I attended my annual gaming convention, DunDraCon. Exactly why this shift occurred, I don't know. A boost in after-con sales at OBS might be an increased awareness of the game from the con, since the OBS sites are places that a gamer is more likely to shop than an Oz fan. But I've got no guesses as to why Lulu would drop off at the same time. It might be part of the general shift away from Lulu, but we'll see how that happens over time.

Q4 2010 Quarterly Report

I should actually be working on my NaNoWriMo project right now, but I did promise numbers and maybe some other kind of information.

This quarter included my first Christmas as an actual publisher with an actual product. One the one hand, it was exciting. On the other hand I did not want to be one of those callous merchants of artificial and manufactured merriment that seem to dominate the holiday shopping season (which gets longer every year).

Another big thing that happened this quarter was the release of Oz: Dark & Terrible, an "adult" RPG from a company called Emerald City Expeditions. It also served as the springboard to get me to record my first Adventures in Oz Podcast, an audio review of the game.


 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	October	November	December	Quarter Total	YTD Total
Lulu/Print	6	7	6	19	50
Lulu/PDF	1	3	-	4	4
Paizo/PDF	2	1	-	3	3
One Book Shelf/PDF	9	7	5	21	50
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	-	-	1
Totals	18	18	11	47	108

One thing to notice this quarter is that digital sales trailed off closer to December. Probably because those customers view their PDF purchases as personal purchases, since digital items are less easily giftable. This big sales month for any format or vendor was November. The sales might have been boosted by interest in Oz: Dark & Terrible (a Halloween release) or as a pre-Christmas rush.

Or it might have been the Doctors Without Borders Pakistan fundraiser in late October of that year. Which is just an example of the power of giving something away for free. Enough people were impressed with AiO even though they got it free with their contribution that they sought out my other work. At this relatively early date, all that was available was the print version over at Lulu. The fundraiser also got me my first review. Not only was it a 5-star review, it was by someone who's books were on my shelf. That's one of the strongest compliments I can imagine and it happened!

This was also the quarter that I broke 100 sales.  As we all know, anyone can sell 100 of anything. The challenge is coming up with more of that. So I close out the year with 108 sales over the space of 7 months. 2011 is going to be the challenge. We see how next time.

Q3 2010 Quarterly Report

This quarter marked the release of AiO in PDF. 5 sites were chosen for this release: DrivethruRPG, Lulu, Paizo, RPGNow, and YourGamesNow. As you can see, they did not all perform equally. Print was the preferred format over at Lulu for some time. And this is the only sale I ever logged over at YourGamesNow. The only reason I haven't stopped selling there is that it's more effort to remove it than to keep it up.

Lulu Print showed a bump in August due to my first "Ozma's Birthday Sale" and the kind folks over at the RPG Circus podcast announcing it. 5 copies were sold during that time at the discounted rate.

The big news this quarter in terms of sales is One Book Shelf. Although it was only an active vendor for one month of this quarter, it very quickly moved in to the #2 position in terms of all time sales. It would eventually surpass Lulu, but that's a story for another time.

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	July	August	September	Quarter Total	YTD Total
Lulu/Print	4	7	1	12	31
One Book Shelf/PDF	-	-	29	29	29
Your Games Now/PDF	-	-	1	1	1
Totals	4	7	31	42	61

One Book Shelf is the company that operates RPGNow and DrivethruRPG. Both sites use the same back end, so my sales data from them is not separated by site.

Q2 2010 Quarterly Report

This has clearly been a long time in coming. Over two years, in fact.

I've been more than a little nervous about sharing this information. Not because it's supposed to be a big secret or anything. It's because I'm afraid that the numbers are so small. Which basically makes me the kid who doesn't want to shower in gym class because he knows he won't compare well to the other boys. But we all have to grow up sometime. So even though I'm no Fred Hicks (who made a habit of sharing Evil Hat's sales figures on his own blog and now on the Evil Hat website), I'm going to flaunt my numbers to the best of my ability.

Since I am so far behind, I'll be posting one quarter per week until I get caught up. After that, I hope to keep this updated on a quarterly basis.

The first quarter I started selling AiO was Q2 (April-June) of 2010. Actually, I only started selling halfway through that quarter. Almost exactly halfway, as my release date was May 15.

 Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Sales Channel/Product Type	April	May	June	Quarter Sales	YTD Sales
Lulu/Print	-	14	5	19	19

As we see, only one format and one sales channel. Not a big start, but not a bad one, either. And next quarter is going to be an eye-opener.