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.)

Teach Your Kids To Game Week Strikes Back!

Just like the Empire!

That's right folks! DriveThruRPG is once again having a Teach Your Kids to Game Week. If you've been looking for the right game to introduce your kids (or maybe even someone else's) to the joys of gaming, they've cooked up a nice little list of options.

But wait! Where's AiO? Not to worry. It's got a nice stable home over here on their Family Gaming page! Apparently the list of games for TYKTGW was so long that they had to do some prioritizing.

Mischief managed.

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.

Happy Thanksgiving!

While I could bore you with another quarterly report right now, I don't think I will. You're probably reading this on your way to or from some family gathering, or while the turkey is in the oven. So I'll just wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.

I do want to take a moment to thank every one of you for reading and commenting on the blog over the past year. You are not only creating the future of this blog, but AiO as well.

And before you gird your loins to face down the Black Friday crowds, consider doing at least some of your shopping online. To help you with that, you can now buy the print edition of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road for 20% off at RPGNow and DriveTruRPG. From now until Cyber Monday, November 26, it's just $11.99 when you buy from those retailers. (Note that the links to RPGNow and DriveThruRPG above are a little different than the ones over on the right. That's because the links above contain the discount code for the special price.)

Also, Lulu has a coupon code valid starting tomorrow and running through Cyber Monday. DELIRITAS is good for 30% all of your purchases on that site (like Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road) or 51% off calendars (like this Ozzy calendar right here).

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.