PDF sellers - what sales volumes are you hitting?

[3rd Level Fighter]

Pretty much what the title says, really...how many units are you putting out? Also, if you're offering POD versions what kind of percentage split are you selling, PDF vs POD?

[mcrow]

I don't think you will get many people answering this question.

Just from a couple publishers that I'm friends with:

Most publishers don't sell over 100 PDF copies of a game in a year. I think the average for those who push their PDFs hard is closer to ~75 a year. There are some bigger publishers that sell quite a lot more than that, but most of the publishers @ rpgnow struggle to get to 100.

I have no idea about the POD question.

[Anunnaki]

Hiya,

We have an annual report which summarizes our progress over the "year that was" (and talks about the "year that will be"). Since we're newcomers, there's only one report so far. But you might find it useful as a guide:

http://www.earthdawn.com/cms/state_of_the_brick_2006.html

Note: The numbers shown have been rounded down to the nearest multiple of 50, so slightly under-represent sales.

You can extrapolate PDF:Print from this (we use Lulu exclusively for print-on-demand; OBS exclusively for PDF).

Hope this helps!

Kind regards,

JAMES FLOWERS
Director, RedBrick Limited
http://www.redbrick.co.nz
http://www.earthdawn.com
http://www.fading-suns.com

[thele]

Pretty much what the title says, really...how many units are you putting out? Also, if you're offering POD versions what kind of percentage split are you selling, PDF vs POD?

Well, since I have no shame, here you go:

Month - Sales
-----------------------------------------
Jan 2006 - 80
Feb 2006 - 212
Mar 2006 - 163
Apr 2006 - 116
May 2006 - 161
Jun 2006 - 194
Jul 2006 - 99
Aug 2006 - 163
Sep 2006 - 114
Oct 2006 - 119
Nov 2006 - 215
Dec 2006 - 91
---------------------------
2006 Total PDF sales: 1727
-Average per month: 143
-Average per week: 33

I have only 2 books in POD, and I have only sold may be 1 book through it in 2006. POD is pretty much dead for me.

`Le

[mcrow]

The Le is one of the exceptions, a lot of the PDF sellers don't sell an average of over 100 copies a month.

Good work, 'Le.

[LBrownIII]

Jan 2006 - 80
Feb 2006 - 212
Mar 2006 - 163
Apr 2006 - 116
May 2006 - 161
Jun 2006 - 194
Jul 2006 - 99
Aug 2006 - 163
Sep 2006 - 114
Oct 2006 - 119
Nov 2006 - 215
Dec 2006 - 91
---------------------------
2006 Total PDF sales: 1727
-Average per month: 143
-Average per week: 33


Is that across all titles, The? How many products does that represent?

[thele]

Is that across all titles, The? How many products does that represent?

That represents 45 products released prior to January 1st, 2007. This does not include free books or books released this year.

The breakdown is:
-----------------------------------------------
15 books released in 2006
30 books released in 2005 or earlier

This is very important because the longer you go without releasing a book, the weaker your sales become month-after-month.

And yes, Mcrow is correct -- most publishers don't come anywhere near 100 sales per month. And if you look closely, my month-to-month sales dipped below 99 three times in the course of the year.


`Le

[LBrownIII]

So in January of last year, with 30-31 products in your catalog, you sold a total of 80 copies.

That doesn't give a meaningful average of course, because book sales drop over time. That might be 30 copies each of the most recent two titles and 10 total of all the other 28. The next month, those 30-sellers normally drop to far less.

[thele]

So in January of last year, with 30-31 products in your catalog, you sold a total of 80 copies.

That doesn't give a meaningful average of course, because book sales drop over time. That might be 30 copies each of the most recent two titles and 10 total of all the other 28. The next month, those 30-sellers normally drop to far less.

That is correct. I would need to figure out which books were released in which month to get a more meaningful set of values.

However, it is safe to say that releasing a new book always increases my month's sales by 20% or more. So it is critical to release a book every month or so to stay in the loop.

So, if you folks out there want to reach my kind of numbers each month, you must release 12-15 books each year.

`Le

[thele]

So in January of last year, with 30-31 products in your catalog, you sold a total of 80 copies.

That doesn't give a meaningful average of course, because book sales drop over time. That might be 30 copies each of the most recent two titles and 10 total of all the other 28. The next month, those 30-sellers normally drop to far less.

Dec 2006 - 91
Jan 2007 - 89

And I sold 89 books in January of 2007, even though I had 45 products available!

Note that I did not release any new books in December or January, which supports my theory in my last post.

`Le

[3rd Level Fighter]

So, if you folks out there want to reach my kind of numbers each month, you must release 12-15 books each year.

`Le

Bloody hell, it's hard enough getting ONE out the door! :D

[Destriarch]

I think this discussion kinda hints that my own suspicions about PDF publishing are fairly right. That is, the amount of sales you get increases exponentially with the number of products you have, with the newer products carrying more weight than the older ones.

Ash

[DJorgensen]

PDF sales are indeed back catalog driven, to a point, anyway. Eventually, sales will drop off for everything to be insignificant.

With my Big Bang series, in the first month of release, they enjoy about 50 units sold, then six months at about 25-30 units sold per month, then a year of 10-15 units per month, then it drops off to less than 5 units sold per month. However, that 5 units a month seems to go on forever. I've got titles launched 4 years ago that are still selling every month.

[mcrow]

My understanding (as stated by 'Le & others) is that your sales generally go up across all of your product lines when you put out new product.

I have a suspect this is because many of the PDF vendor sites have the "new product" spot in a highly visable place. People click on them and follow through to the rest of your catalog. So having a new products fairly often will increase exposure.

[Patrick Tingler]

With the pricing of PDF's being fairly low and the sales volume being low, how do you guys afford the artwork in your products? Do you do the artwork yourself? Do you use public domain and other royalty free art?

[mcrow]

With the pricing of PDF's being fairly low and the sales volume being low, how do you guys afford the artwork in your products? Do you do the artwork yourself? Do you use public domain and other royalty free art?


It depends on a lot of things. If it's a short PDF, there won't be a ton of art in it so the art budget will be small.

otherwise you might expect to pay $25 or more for quarter page of b/w art and have about 1 piece of art every 4-5 pages. You might be able use some clip art, but you try to stay away from it if you can. I have seem artist give big discounts if they do all of the art for a game.

Depending on the game/book you can get away with public domain pictures and mix of clipart. Historical games can be cheaper.

Some publishers are artistically inclined, very good with photoshop, and/or have friend who are artist.

[Grumpy]

Yeah, if there's an artist around, why not make them part of the deal.

We, at Inky Black Ed., are a writer and an artist. We work together all the way, that gives a lot of coherence to our stuff (in case you'd wonder, we're french, and very new to publishing in english, that's why you won't find anything from us. yet.)

[Vitriol]

To offer something of a counterpoint on the subject of ever-decreasing sales, we have one product (Broken Gears (http://www.r-hansen.com/broken/)), acquisitions of which have improved slowly month-on-month since it was released (since it's release about 10 months ago we've moved around 1750 copies, about 70% in direct downloads, 30% from RPGnow).

The fundamental difference is that it's a free product, available for download on RPGnow (and other places) and hence despite the fact it's a pretty niche genre (steampunk), it has been consistently popular, with the occasional spike in downloads when a forum starts a major thread about it or a relevant blog links it.

Obviously, selling a PDF and giving it away are very different things, but it might provide an interesting way to prolong the sales lifecycle (giving away the core book, and hopefully selling supplements/adventures to the regular influx of new players). Obviously that's not possible in all cases (say, D20), and it does mean that you'll no longer pull in any money from the core book. Still, if you've got an old, established line in which sales of the older books are mininal, you might consider making the core book free in the hope of boosting sales for the rest of the books in the line.

[thele]

With the pricing of PDF's being fairly low and the sales volume being low, how do you guys afford the artwork in your products? Do you do the artwork yourself? Do you use public domain and other royalty free art?

It really depends. Typically I use clipart from www.clipart.com for my internal images. For $200 a year, I have access to several millions of images. Of course they are not as fantasy themed as I would like, but they work if you know how to do it.

Second, I use a set of clipart that I bought off of rpgnow.com. These clipart books are focused on fantasy, and so they work very well.

Third, if I need things even more specific, I will indeed hire artists to do them, but that is more of a last resort. There are many fantasy themed clip art books out there, so typically I don't need it.

Check out the demo for Unorthodox Pirates (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=7436&src=XXX), which uses a mix of art from clipart.com, art from fantasy specific clipart books, and a couple custom art pieces I commissioned. So in that particular book, I needed artwork from all three sources.

On the other had, there is the problem of covers. Do I use clipart for covers, or do I hire an artist?

The problem with clipart is that 99% of it is in black + white, and B+W covers are typically a no-no. Sure you can pretty it up and all, and have a "NeverWinter Nights" style cover, but in the end a color image is the way to go. And honestly, clipart can look very cheesy as a cover.

The good news is that Clipart.com also has a photos sections, which works wonders. And for illustrations, that 1% color section can be very good to use indeed. So, here are some examples (the first link is the cover image, the second link is the product page):

http://www.thele.com/TheLeGames/images/tn/UnorthodoxModernGoths_tn200w.jpg
Unorthodox Modern Goths (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=21056&src=XXX)

In the above example, I used photos from clipart.com, and merges some pictures together. It looks goth, it feels goth, and so it works very well. Not to mention it is a d20 Modern book, so the image works. As a matter of fact, I used all clipart.com photos in that book (feel free to check out the demo to see what I mean).

http://www.thele.com/TheLeGames/images/tn/17MagicArmors_tn200w.jpg
17 Magic Armors (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=4698)

In the above example, I found a fabulous clipart.com illustration in color. This could have easily been used for "17 Magic Shields" or other books. This is the overall problem with covers -- you can really only use it once. So, if you spend alot of money on a cover, just remember it is a one shot deal. Still, I am very happy with how the cover looks (but I think I should fix the text/fonts a little)

http://www.thele.com/TheLeGames/images/tn/17Magicrings_tn260L.jpg
17 Magic Rings (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=507&src=TheLeGames&products_id=5538)

In the above, I use a photo for a fantasy product. This is easily one of my favorite covers, and it looks and feels very dynamic. However, since it is a photo, it looses some mysticism about it. It doesn't necessarily feel very "fantasy". But it's still one of my favorite covers.

http://www.thele.com/TheLeGames/images/tn/NeoClerics_theopuspriest_tn200w.jpg
Neo Clerics: The Opus Priest (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=507&src=TheLeGames&products_id=7305)

Here's an interesting cover. In this case, I took fantasy clipart (Sacrosanct Games' Adventurers Clipart, 18 images for $3.00 (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=5184&motds_id=351&from_home=0)) which I purchased from Rpgnow. The color images of adventureres was real nice, but there were no backgrounds. So, I took b+w backgrounds from clipart.com and I added purple shading. Then I added text and overlayed the original image, and voila! The perfect merging of two seperate cliparts!

http://www.thele.com/TheLeGames/images/tn/UnorthodoxPirates_tn200w.jpg
Unorthodox Pirates (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=507&src=TheLeGames&products_id=7436)

And finally we have Unorthodox Pirates, one of my prides and joys. I purchased this from the artist, Carrie Hall. Note that I did not commission her for this piece. In fact, she already had it done, and it was just sitting in her gallery. So, I offered some money and got a contract signed, which allows me to use this image for Unorthodox Pirates in PDF. There is also a clause in the contract which allows me to use the image to go to print (I'd have to pay her for the right though).

This has several effects.
(1) Since the image already exists, I was able to pay substantially less money.
(2) Since I purchased only "publishing rights" for one book, I paid far less. This means that she owns the image and can resell it elsewhere, but my contract states that I still retain "publishing rights" regardless.
(3) An unknown artist is happy to get published, and get some money in her pocket for an image she has already done

Let's look at one last image

http://www.thelegames.com/images_covers/tn/PersonalArtifacts_tn400w.jpg

That is the cover for Personal Artifacts, a book I am re-releasing next month. I actually commissioned someone to do this, and the outcome is fantastic. It is based on a rune-sword, which is found in the book. This was a really expensive piece to get done, but the results are fabulous, and it was actually my first book I ever did. I no longer pay this much for custom artwork, but I am still very proud to have this cover for my first product some three years ago.

Now, take a look at each example I listed above, starting with the first. The early ones (clipart) are good enough for publishing, but you get what you pay for. The covers are good, but it cheapens the product, especially when you use photos. The "Neo Clerics: The Opus Priest" and "17 Magic Armors" is better since they are illustrations, but you still get what you pay for.

Then we move into paid artwork. In the case of Unorthodox Pirates, it was an existing artwork that costed more money, but the results are truly fantastic.

In this last example, we have a custom piece that is on par with Unorthodox Pirates, but is far more specific to the book and costs far more expensive since it is a commissioned piece.

My point? You get what you pay for.

`Le

[Destriarch]

Yeah, if there's an artist around, why not make them part of the deal.

We, at Inky Black Ed., are a writer and an artist. We work together all the way, that gives a lot of coherence to our stuff (in case you'd wonder, we're french, and very new to publishing in english, that's why you won't find anything from us. yet.)
That's a great idea and a good work ethic, but it's not easy finding artists who are both good enough to be worth it and willing to share that risk. most freelancers worth their salt don't want to be tied down to a company, and aren't keen on being paid in royalties either. Still, if you can find one who's as enthusiastic about the products as you are and willing to enter into a deal like this, great!

Ash

[hellsreach]

As has been indicated, judging regular revenues based on month numbers in not terribly useful since there is usually a spike at release and sells tend to drop thereafter, often to a trickle.

As for most product selling under 100 copies... that is an overstatement. If a product sells anywhere close to 100 copies, it should probably be considered a phenominal success.

The following is our product lifetime sales. Keep in mind, we are not a pdf publisher. As such, virtually all these products are available in print and that does canniblize PDF sales. We don't do any advertising, and promotion is limited to occasionally coming to RPGnet and say "hey, we got product x in pdf now." Also note, these numbers are only for RPGnow, although they are the lion's share of our pdf sales.

<b>I don't know why this page is formatting oddly. I could not fix it either.</b>

<table border=1 valign="top">
<tr><td><b>Product Number</b><td><b>Product Name</b><td><b>Quantity Sold</b><td><b>Gross Sales</b><td><b>Net Sales</b></tr>
<tr><td>weg20904a<td>A More Perfect Union<td>55<td>$411.75<td>$267.91</tr>
<tr><td>weg53000<td>D6 Bloodshadows<td>53<td>$364.20<td>$236.74</tr>
<tr><td>weg51011e<td>D6 Adventure<td>194<td>$2,193.08<td>$1,425.47</tr>
<tr><td>WEG51016e<td>D6 Adventure Locations<td>35<td>$262.10<td>$170.37</tr>
<tr><td>weg51013e<td>D6 Fantasy<td>93<td>$1,481.79<td>$963.09</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 51015e<td>D6 Fantasy Creatures<td>53<td>$431.00<td>$280.15</tr>
<tr><td>weg51020e<td>D6 Fantasy Locations<td>17<td>$202.80<td>$131.82</tr>
<tr><td>weg51012e<td>D6 Space<td>102<td>$1,615.20<td>$1,049.83</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 51010<td>D6 Space Opera<td>102<td>$724.00<td>$470.70</tr>
<tr><td>weg51017e<td>D6 Space Ships<td>82<td>$698.96<td>$454.28</tr>
<tr><td>weg53001e<td>Fires of Amatsumara<td>26<td>$331.50<td>$215.48</tr>
<tr><td>WEG20609<td>Interview With Evil<td>40<td>$120.00<td>$78.00</tr>
<tr><td>weg 20608<td>Mysterious Cairo<td>26<td>$78.00<td>$50.70</tr>
<tr><td>weg20607<td>Out of Nippon<td>22<td>$66.00<td>$42.90</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 21003<td>Shatterzone Universe Guide<td>58<td>$349.50<td>$227.18</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 25101<td>Shatterzone/D6 Space Opera: Cards and Rules<td>54<td>$268.00<td>$174.21</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 21008<td>Shatterzone: Fringers Guide<td>26<td>$130.00<td>$84.50</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 20601<td>Storm Knights: Book One of the Possibilities Wars<td>56<td>$179.40<td>$116.73</tr>
<tr><td>WEG20602<td>The Dark Realm: Book Two of the Possibility Wars<td>41<td>$123.00<td>$79.95</tr>
<tr><td>weg20503e<td>Torg Drama Deck<td>54<td>$269.00<td>$174.85</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 20903<td>Torg Introductory Pack<td>1603<td>$350.00<td>$227.50</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 20902e<td>Torg Revised & Expanded<td>284<td>$5,056.84<td>$3,286.07</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 20560<td>Torg/D6: Kanawa Personal Weapons<td>91<td>$578.50<td>$376.27</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 20507<td>Torg: Aysle Sourcebook<td>94<td>$630.00<td>$409.50</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 20508<td>Torg: Cyberpapacy Sourcebook<td>140<td>$1,044.00<td>$678.60</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 20605<td>Torg: Dragons Over England<td>42<td>$131.00<td>$85.20</tr>
<tr><td>WEG 20604<td>Torg: Strange Tales from the Nile Empire
<td>46<td>$142.00<td>$92.34</tr>
</table>

[hellsreach]

I still don't know why most publishers don't post their numbers. Like their sales represents a commercial advantage or something. The truth is, my publishers do this for vanity, and lie about how much they sell. If the truth were to be public, they wouldn't be able to pat themselves of the back and pretend to be important. If that were to happen, how could they come on B/P/M forum and pretend represent valid information.

If more publishers were honest about their numbers, then perhaps more people would realise that likelihood of making anything in RPG publishing is unlikely. Less publishers = less competition for limited dollars = more money in your coffers.

Do yourselves a favor, people. Unless you have something truly valuable to add to the market, don't jump in the water. Keep your hobby, your hobby and you really enjoy this much more. By the way... YOU are not the judge of whether your "product" is adding something to the market. Your opinion of your own product is the second most useless opinion in the entire world, second only to your mother's.

Remember folks... When you have a publisher tell you are the 50's to 100's or copies the consistently sell every month, try and look at the metal rating on RPGnow. You only have to sell like 50 copies to be Copper. 100 to be silver, 200 or 250 or something to be electrum. I trust my numbers are off, but probably not by much.

Bet of 50 total in the entire product life. If you sell more, great. If not, then hopefully you budgeted correctly and didn't lose money.

[DJorgensen]

I still don't know why most publishers don't post their numbers. Like their sales represents a commercial advantage or something. The truth is, my publishers do this for vanity, and lie about how much they sell. If the truth were to be public, they wouldn't be able to pat themselves of the back and pretend to be important. If that were to happen, how could they come on B/P/M forum and pretend represent valid information.

Because we aren't in the mood to put all the time and effort necessary into consolidating months or years of sales data from a dozen different online sales sources? And the numbers still won't be accurate, because sales from dead sites or nonreporting sites (like SVGames on both counts) will be missing.

If more publishers were honest about their numbers, then perhaps more people would realise that likelihood of making anything in RPG publishing is unlikely. Less publishers = less competition for limited dollars = more money in your coffers.

Which would be countered by all the publishers known to publish for the love of the hobby, rather than the revenue it will earn.

Do yourselves a favor, people. Unless you have something truly valuable to add to the market, don't jump in the water. Keep your hobby, your hobby and you really enjoy this much more. By the way... YOU are not the judge of whether your "product" is adding something to the market. Your opinion of your own product is the second most useless opinion in the entire world, second only to your mother's.

Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. You think some of the crap on the market is there because someone thought "this is crap! It'll sell thousands!"?

Remember folks... When you have a publisher tell you are the 50's to 100's or copies the consistently sell every month, try and look at the metal rating on RPGnow. You only have to sell like 50 copies to be Copper. 100 to be silver, 200 or 250 or something to be electrum. I trust my numbers are off, but probably not by much.

Bet of 50 total in the entire product life. If you sell more, great. If not, then hopefully you budgeted correctly and didn't lose money.

RPGNow is but one of over a dozen past and present sites offering gaming PDFs for sale. Passing judgment on that site alone is improper. After all you don't know if they do better with sales via their own site, or started someplace other than RPGNow, and thus have a more loyal following with another retailer.

[hellsreach]

Because we aren't in the mood to put all the time and effort necessary into consolidating months or years of sales data from a dozen different online sales sources? And the numbers still won't be accurate, because sales from dead sites or nonreporting sites (like SVGames on both counts) will be missing.

True and I use RPGnow because 1) RPGnow have great records 2)My only other current PDF supplier, DTRPG, represents and insignificant number for me. In general, sales from DTRPG represent on 1/4 to 1/3 of my RPGnow numbers.



Which would be countered by all the publishers known to publish for the love of the hobby, rather than the revenue it will earn.

That is my point. You should only publisher for the love of the hobby if you have something positive to contribute. Otherwise, you are making it worse. Very few of us are publishing for the revenue it will earn. Without thinking hard, I could make a list of 100+ investments that would have a better return than RPGs. We ALL do it for the love of the hobby. The fact is, if you are doing it to just put material out there, have a website with free downloads. If you are providing a product commercially, then you are running a business and the #1, top of the list purpose of a business is to make a profit. There is not a business school in the nation that would tell you different.



Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. You think some of the crap on the market is there because someone thought "this is crap! It'll sell thousands!"?

That is the point, the creator's eye is virtually useless in determining that value. If the creator is the only person used to determine value, than producing something commercially is pointless. Obviously the creator of a product has determined it valuable to the public at large, hence the reason they release it, but the creator of the product is not the customer. After all, the creator already has the information he is publishing. By publishing, he or she is releasing it to the public, not him or herself. If they are releasing it to the public, it is the public that must determine its value.

If one think should be known by all businesses, regardless or industy, it is, "you are not your own customer." That simple means, you must put out the product that other people want, not what you want to put out. If one fails to do so, theirs is a failure of a business.


RPGNow is but one of over a dozen past and present sites offering gaming PDFs for sale. Passing judgment on that site alone is improper. After all you don't know if they do better with sales via their own site, or started someplace other than RPGNow, and thus have a more loyal following with another retailer.

No, but given an equal availability between all sites, RPGnow still has king market share by far. Given the same equal availablity between all sites, a given publisher will sell more at RPGnow than any other site. So, if that publisher sells less than 100 copies of a pdf at rpg now, you can virtually guarentee that they'll they'll sell less at every other site (individually, not total).

[Tim Gray]

As for most product selling under 100 copies... that is an overstatement. If a product sells anywhere close to 100 copies, it should probably be considered a phenominal success.
Eh? Oh, you mean per month. Thought you meant total, which of course is not that rare.

Personally, if a product hits double figures that's a good month.

[thele]

Personally, if a product hits double figures that's a good month.

LOL. I would have to agree!

Which is why it is important to have a large quantity of books.

Getting 1-5 sales per book sucks if you only have three books on sale.

Getting 1-5 sales per book is awesome if you have fifty books on sale (which is how my business runs).

`Le

[hellsreach]

Eh? Oh, you mean per month. Thought you meant total, which of course is not that rare.

Personally, if a product hits double figures that's a good month.

Selling over a 100 copies of a pdf title is certainly not rare, but it should be considered a success. It is also not even remotely a sure thing for the rookie pdf publisher. If people consistenty throw around the 100 units number, people are going to start using that number when determining their budgets. If they do so, they are very likely to lose money. Brand new publisher right out the gate should be expecting something more like 40-50 units TOTAL of a product and set their (conservative) budgets accordingly. They may not even hit 50, but that is a much more likely number than 100.

It also depends on the price, obviously. Setting a 32 page RPG supplement at $1 is very likely to easily sell more than 100 copies, but to what end? You have revenues of $65-$75. Even at 1 cent a word, and all free art, $75 dollars wont pay for half of a 32 page book. If you pay 1/3 of a penny per word and use all free art, you can make money, but you'll get what you pay. The crap quality will damage your reputation and your chances of future sales. $1 for 32 pages is a great deal--- $1 for 32 pages of bantha fodder, is still $1 wasted.

[DJorgensen]

That is my point. You should only publisher for the love of the hobby if you have something positive to contribute. Otherwise, you are making it worse. Very few of us are publishing for the revenue it will earn. Without thinking hard, I could make a list of 100+ investments that would have a better return than RPGs. We ALL do it for the love of the hobby. The fact is, if you are doing it to just put material out there, have a website with free downloads. If you are providing a product commercially, then you are running a business and the #1, top of the list purpose of a business is to make a profit. There is not a business school in the nation that would tell you different.

That is the point, the creator's eye is virtually useless in determining that value. If the creator is the only person used to determine value, than producing something commercially is pointless. Obviously the creator of a product has determined it valuable to the public at large, hence the reason they release it, but the creator of the product is not the customer. After all, the creator already has the information he is publishing. By publishing, he or she is releasing it to the public, not him or herself. If they are releasing it to the public, it is the public that must determine its value.

If one think should be known by all businesses, regardless or industy, it is, "you are not your own customer." That simple means, you must put out the product that other people want, not what you want to put out. If one fails to do so, theirs is a failure of a business.

However, in the end, it really is the publisher's opinion of a work that decides whether it gets published or not. If your above statements were right, then none of the crap on rpgnow would be there. The publisher determines the value, otherwise the product wouldn't be published. The public simply confirms or rejects the publisher's sense of value.

No, but given an equal availability between all sites, RPGnow still has king market share by far. Given the same equal availablity between all sites, a given publisher will sell more at RPGnow than any other site. So, if that publisher sells less than 100 copies of a pdf at rpg now, you can virtually guarentee that they'll they'll sell less at every other site (individually, not total).

There are numerous publishers who have had better results on other sites or their own sites, for that matter. For me, I would break it down thusly:

RPGNow - 1
DTRPG - 0.3
Digital Book Booth - 0.1
My own site - 1.4
Arima - 0.01

Success at RPGNow is a thing relative to each publisher's business plans and decisions.

[hellsreach]

LOL. I would have to agree!

Which is why it is important to have a large quantity of books.

Getting 1-5 sales per book sucks if you only have three books on sale.

Getting 1-5 sales per book is awesome if you have fifty books on sale (which is how my business runs).

`Le

Exactly true. We have 26 pdf SKUs, I think. Last month these were our number between RPGnow and DTRPG both

Bloodshadows: A Worldbook for the D6 System 3
D6 Adventure 9
D6 Fantasy 10
D6 Fantasy Creatures 4
D6 Space 4
D6 Space Ships 6
Fires of Amatsumara 3
Mysterious Cairo 2
Torg Revised & Expanded 4
Torg/D6: Kanawa Personal Weapons 6
Torg: Cyberpapacy Sourcebook 2
Torg: Strange Tales from the Nile Empire 2

Clearly, the all suck (which is in part why last month was our worse month in a year), but we still managed to take in a bit less than $500. This is pittance money, to be sure, but as WEG is not a PDF pulisher, is it basically found money.

[hellsreach]

However, in the end, it really is the publisher's opinion of a work that decides whether it gets published or not. If your above statements were right, then none of the crap on rpgnow would be there. The publisher determines the value, otherwise the product wouldn't be published. The public simply confirms or rejects the publisher's sense of value.

You are supporting my arguement. The publisher decides whether to publish something. He doesn't decide value. He decides price. The public decides value.


There are numerous publishers who have had better results on other sites or their own sites, for that matter. For me, I would break it down thusly:

RPGNow - 1
DTRPG - 0.3
Digital Book Booth - 0.1
My own site - 1.4
Arima - 0.01

Success at RPGNow is a thing relative to each publisher's business plans and decisions.

It helps that you have an established product line. Your loyal customers may feel (and rightly so) that they are doing you a greater service by buying from your personal website where you can earn a far higher margin. For the new publiser, one just trying to break into the business, they will not have that traffic to their website. They must rely on established PDF service providers to sell their products and RPGnow will command the greatest numbers in that regard. Not to mention, not every beginning publisher has the talent or resources to put up a shopping cart, with pdf services for unique download links, etc. In that case, they have little choice but to use someone else.

[thele]

Exactly true. We have 26 pdf SKUs, I think. Last month these were our number between RPGnow and DTRPG both

Clearly, the all suck (which is in part why last month was our worse month in a year), but we still managed to take in a bit less than $500. This is pittance money, to be sure, but as WEG is not a PDF pulisher, is it basically found money.

Also keep in mind that my business model is different than Hellsreach, since I rarely hit $500 in net sales per month.

The difference is the products. While I get lots and lots of sales overall, many of my products are priced at $1.00 - $3.00.

So while Hellsreach may have more of high end boutique model (less overall sales, but high profit), I go for a Walmart approach (lots of sales, little profit per sale).

Both approaches are viable, and so it really depends on what you want to do with your business.

`Le

[Patrick Tingler]

After reading all your guys input, all I can say is I am not sure how someone who is an independent little guy could make a profit paying for illustrations. If you have a 32 page product and did the 1/4 page piece of art every 4 pages, you're spending $200 for the art and would have to sell 100 copies at $2 to break even. That's assuming you wrote it and didn't pay a writer and didn't pay for someone to illustrate the cover.

[hellsreach]

First, at $25 for a 1/4 page pdf, you are paying too much for art. If you have a 32page pdf at $2.00, they you should really be going far cheaper on creative services. Try utilizing clipart, or take advantage of artist selling non-exclusive licenses to there work for cheap amounts. Than could fill 4 or 6 of your 8 images right there, and may cost you only about $5 or so per image. You could do that for all your images without a guilty conscience, but less say you have a specific need requiring commissioned art. You can get an inexperienced artist hungry to prove themselves, or an experienced artist who either likes you project or has sympathy for you situation. In either situation, it is not unreasonable to think you can get 1/4 pagers for about $15 a piece.

4 at $5/ea. = $20
4 at $15/ea. = $60
-----------------
total art = $80

Cover... forget the cover, or get creative like Thele.

Lets not forget that your time in writing is worth something. Even if you are doing this for love of the hobby, there are opportunity costs to consider. lets say you value your writing time at $.005/word. 32 page as ~550 word/page = `18000 words = $90.

art+writing= $170

editing... first of all, you NEED an editor. I don't care how skilled a writer you are, get someone else to proof for you. Fortunately, you have you have you aunt Beatrice do it. She said she would do it for free, but you figure it is only right to by her a gallon of her favor jug wine = $10

Now you are at $180.

For a 32 page supplement of outstanding material--It is outstanding after all. If it's not, why do it?-- you can certainly charge more than $2. $5 would not be unreasonable, but you want to grab them in, so you set your price at $5, and run a sale and charge only $3 for the first month.

In month 1, you sell 25 copies== $75x.65= $48.75
Aftyer month 1, you drop the sale and you need to sell 40 more copies over the entire life of the product to make normal profits (in economics terminology, normal profits equals breaking even after all costs including opportunity costs. Since you have already given yourself a commission for writing, the only other opportunity cost is the interest earnable on the $80 you paid for art. There is pretty inconsequential, equaling perhaps $5 until you break even.)

So, is 65 copies of a 32 page, outstanding quality, pdf doable at $5 (25 of which were sold at $3)? Certainly! Will it take time? Absolutely! But, if you are a writing fool and are able to pump out one of these books every 2 weeks, after 6 months or so, you might actually be able to pull in enough money to pay a few bills (if you live is a depressed area and you think eating actual food is for wimps). Not to mention, after 6 months and 10-15 products, you will have started to make somewhat of a name for yourself. if you have been putting out good stuff, that name will be a good one and that can only mean more sales. After not so long, you may just manage to hit your break-even in the first month or two.

[daMoose_Neo]

After reading all your guys input, all I can say is I am not sure how someone who is an independent little guy could make a profit paying for illustrations. If you have a 32 page product and did the 1/4 page piece of art every 4 pages, you're spending $200 for the art and would have to sell 100 copies at $2 to break even. That's assuming you wrote it and didn't pay a writer and didn't pay for someone to illustrate the cover.

Interestingly, I have a 16 page (8.5x5.5 format) product up on RPGN thats selling for $3 per, and I've sold at least one a day here. It has three pieces of artwork from some cool clip art packages on RPGN and interior borders from UKG's cover series.
As a product, its awesome~ I've got about $50 in cash I'm getting on about maybe $2 'material' cost?

[mcrow]

Yeah, for a game that I'm working on i have aquired all the art, graphics, and a cover for less than $40.

Of course my cousin is quite a skilled artist and works for beer and leftovers.:D

[Patrick Tingler]

The $2 was based on thele's pricing of $1-$3 per product that he mentioned. The $25 was mentioned by another poster and seems in keeping with the prices mentioned in other threads I've seen here that put full page at $80-$100 as a standard price. And to be fair, I was not including clip art or free art as paying for illustrations. You guys mentioned some good ways to reduce costs and your experiences are appreciated.

[DJorgensen]

It helps that you have an established product line. Your loyal customers may feel (and rightly so) that they are doing you a greater service by buying from your personal website where you can earn a far higher margin. For the new publiser, one just trying to break into the business, they will not have that traffic to their website. They must rely on established PDF service providers to sell their products and RPGnow will command the greatest numbers in that regard. Not to mention, not every beginning publisher has the talent or resources to put up a shopping cart, with pdf services for unique download links, etc. In that case, they have little choice but to use someone else.

It also helps that my website is home to a couple exclusive product lines.

[hellsreach]

The $2 was based on thele's pricing of $1-$3 per product that he mentioned. The $25 was mentioned by another poster and seems in keeping with the prices mentioned in other threads I've seen here that put full page at $80-$100 as a standard price. And to be fair, I was not including clip art or free art as paying for illustrations. You guys mentioned some good ways to reduce costs and your experiences are appreciated.

ONly his smallest products are $1-$3. A 32 page book, without looking to verify his pricing scheme, would probably be closer to the $5 mark. He may run sales, but a $5 price is still not unreasonble for 32 pages. Also, Thele does use clipart--copiously-- and I think that is a smart move given his low product prices.

You are correct though. $80-$100 per full page is pretty common. But that is generally prices that print publishers will pay. PDF publishers don't have the luxury to do that. It is generally pretty bad business to even consider spending that much money on pdfs.

[hellsreach]

It also helps that my website is home to a couple exclusive product lines.

Hey, if it brings them to your website where your income is ~95% of cover, rather than 65%, then "game on."

[Tim Gray]

After reading all your guys input, all I can say is I am not sure how someone who is an independent little guy could make a profit paying for illustrations. If you have a 32 page product and did the 1/4 page piece of art every 4 pages, you're spending $200 for the art and would have to sell 100 copies at $2 to break even. That's assuming you wrote it and didn't pay a writer and didn't pay for someone to illustrate the cover.

You can't and shouldn't. But the nice thing about buying clipart packs is that once you've bought them you can use the pieces over and over at no extra cost, and possibly buy an extra piece or two per publication to fill in the gaps.

I still wonder whether I was wise to buy the rights for the Questers cover piece, at a standard market rate. Made a big difference to the profitability of the product, but I fell in love... ;)

[thele]

ONly his smallest products are $1-$3. A 32 page book, without looking to verify his pricing scheme, would probably be closer to the $5 mark. He may run sales, but a $5 price is still not unreasonble for 32 pages. Also, Thele does use clipart--copiously-- and I think that is a smart move given his low product prices.

You are correct though. $80-$100 per full page is pretty common. But that is generally prices that print publishers will pay. PDF publishers don't have the luxury to do that. It is generally pretty bad business to even consider spending that much money on pdfs.

Correct. I have several lines of books, and the final price is always based on the page count.

Which brings me to another point -- it helps to have a healthy mix of books, especially if you are like me and want to take the Walmart route. Releasing small $2.00 pdfs allows me to keep myself in the limelight and keep book sales going, but every couple months it helps to release a bigger $5+ book. Typically sales are going to be the same for me -- 20-40 copies sold in the first month, regardless of price.

So those large and more expensive books helps keep your final net income looking much better than it would if you only released smaller books.

It also helps when you are running sales. 30% off of a $2.00 book brings you $1.30 gross per sale. But 30% of a $7.00 book brings you $4.20 in gross per sale. Of course by that time the book will have sold enough to make break out even.

And to me that's what it's all about. To me, a successful book "breaks even".

Thankfully, I do much better than 'break even' on books, even ones where I only take in $.50 net per sale.

`Le

[philreed]

With work, PDFs can be profitable. Ronin Arts sold over 15,000 PDFs last year (not counting the PDFs we create for Green Ronin or free PDFs).

I used to share numbers but stopped when I realized that some people were using the information to create copycat products.

[hellsreach]

With work, PDFs can be profitable. Ronin Arts sold over 15,000 PDFs last year (not counting the PDFs we create for Green Ronin or free PDFs).

I used to share numbers but stopped when I realized that some people were using the information to create copycat products.

But Phil, you are the PDF master. All pdf products are copycats. :D

[HellHound]

But Phil, you are the PDF master. All pdf products are copycats. :D

I beg to differ.

Well, not about him being the PDF master, but about the copycat thing.

[hellsreach]

I beg to differ.

Well, not about him being the PDF master, but about the copycat thing.

Right, but I was joking, hence the smilie.

[Guildofblades]

Well, the Guild of Blades is a very small player in the PDF market presently and PDFs represent just barely under 1% of our revenues for 2006. But I am willing to share our total sales by product for PDF. This is life time, not per year or per month. These are sales figures across all sites, but might missing a few random sales from various sites we experimented with selling through but stopped after poor performance. Different sites offer different royalty rates so I'll just post MSRP.

206 Grunt 3rd Edition: Fantasy Miniature Battles - $3.99
100 Grunt 3rd Edition: Wizardry Sourcebook - $2.99
83 Grunt 3rd Edition: Monster Summoning Sourcebook - $2.49
72 Grunt 3rd Edition: Skills & Abilities - $2.99
66 Grunt 3rd Edition: Kingdoms - $2.99
14 Grunt 3rd Edition: Battle Cards Set #1 - $1.99
177 Button Wars: Tactical Spaceship Combat Game - $1.00
48 Button Wars: Quo-Ti Clans - $1.49
118 Overlords: Fantasy Battlescape Wargame. 2 Player PDF $1.00
85 Heroes Forever RPG: Introductory Edition - $1.00
9 Heroes Forever: Charlemagne's Knights - $1.49
101 Dice Armies - $1.99
37 Worlds of Heroes & Tyrants Introductory RPG - $1.09
38 Worlds of Heroes & Tyrants Fantasy Quest Game, Intro Ed. - $1.00
102 Dark Realms Role Playing Universe - $6.99
75 Dark Realms: Space Pirates Campaign Setting - $1.99
66 Dark Realms RPG: Technology Sourcebook - $1.99
51 Dark Realms: Barony of Chaos - $1.00
48 Dark Realms: Space Knights Campaign Setting - $1.99
12 Dark Realms: Nebula Adventures #1 - $1.00
72 Medieval Risk - $5.00
30 Risk: Over the Trenches - $2.50
95 Battle of Thermopylae Board Game - $3.00
105 The Vietnam War Boardgame - $3.00
83 Beyond Hadrian's Wall - $3.00
64 Barbary Coast War - $3.00
39 The Nitrate War - $3.00
116 The War To End All Wars, 2.5 Edition - $8.00
26 Pantheons: War of the Mythos Board Game - $7.00
25 Europe 1483 - $6.95
16 Africa 1483 - $6.95
15 Asia 1483 - $6.95
24 Battle for the Falklands Board Game - $5.95
17 Trojan War Board Game - $5.95
11 Spanish Civil War board game - $5.95

310 Crack Wh-r- : Solitaire Adventure Dice Game - $1.99
88 Porn Masters: The Board Game - $6.50
57 Prison B*tch: The Card Game (Jesus vs Bubba) - $3.50
33 Prison B*tch: The Card Game (Tyrone vs Chad) - $3.50
34 Gang War: LA - $3.00

Really, thats not much more than about $2,000 a year after royalties. Anyone trying to a run a company could not realistically dream of doing it on PDF only if they had just these sales volumes. You would need a different plan. We make OK profits on our PDFs so far mainly because almost all of the above was previously developed for various printed products and just released for PDF, hence no artwork expense, original writing, etc. Medieval Risk and Dice Armies are the only two never released in print and we very simply to make.

I do think PDF has the potential to become a much more significant portion of our income in the future. Right now its a bit over 1% of our gross, or around there anyway. Worth having, but nothing significant. In the future, we could see PDF growing to be 10-40% of our total income from non computer games. Of course, I don't see that possible in just putting out PDF versions of our board games. Rather I see a more integrated strategy between PDF and print.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

[Eldoria]

Ryan,

Another thing worth noting about your strategy is how your pdfs promote your print. I purchased Button Wars on RPGNow for a dollar to see if I would like it. I then got the 'hardcopy' version from your website. So your strategy of selling pdfs inexpensively to promote your print products worked (at least in my case).

William

[Guildofblades]

Hi William,

Yes, that strategy has worked "some", but in truth, not to the degree we are happy with. The reality is that our marketing reach via the web for our print brands are much stronger than our reach into the PDF market so the only customers where that particular strategy can work are the few "regulars" of the various shops we sell PDFs through that happen upon the games there. That's just not a large enough pool of people to make much of an impact on our print sales.

I think when it comes time to revise the Button Wars marketing strategy we're going to be going with a much more integrated web, print and PDF strategy. For instance, ALL of the game rules, setting history and faction information, etc, will be available online in HTML format for free. All content will be built into a website template that also shows advertising so money is being made as this content is viewed online. We're then going to divide up the ships into smaller one sheet PDFs with just one or two ships per sheet and make them freely downloadable online. This will support more total page viewing and thus drive online advertising. We'll be raising the price on the starter set PDFs to like $3 to $3.50 so people who want to buy the rules and accessories (mines, planets, astroids, ship and fighter sheets, etc, plus some new damage markers and shield down markers) in an easy to print format can (as opposed to being available in HTML online for free), or they will still be able to buy the fairly inexpensive print version. Ships will be available online for free in small PDFs, or still for print sale for around $6.00 a pack. Things like the more expensive Campaign Board Game or the upgraded faction fleet packs will be promoted online and we'll likely put the entire rules online, but their full contents will only be available for sale in print.

Though when Button Wars 3rd Edition comes around its most probably we'll be doing away with the buttons themselves and going with full color, die cut ship board type disks. They will look better and will be cheaper to produce so we can give more ships for the value. Buttons are also a real pain to produce so this will make packaging them a lot easier too.

We are also looking into integration options for a couple board game lines and one or both of our active RPG lines where the internet, PDFs and print products will all come together to be a part of the total offering, revenue generation, and marketing systems for the game. We're more and more coming to the realization that 1) Most retailers only want to stock and sell core products anyway, 2) Once a player has our core product its better to draw them directly into our own supported online player communities for the game in order to keep them interested, 3) Money can be made in advertising as an extra revenue stream and 4) Some products are great to help support the player base but just not really worth it to print and warehouse and are thus supportable as PDF for sale content of HTML for free content.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

[ParadigmCFO]

PDFs represent a nice little boost in revenue for PCI. It is a tiny fraction of total sales, but it is enough money to pay for much of our marketing efforts. Also, except for a small amount laid out for Shadows of a Forsaken Past, it is all found money. Another benefit is a marketing impact, where some folks get the print title because they have the PDF.

As far as how much money we are talking about... We've had PDFs available for 14 months, on as many as five sales sites, and in another year or so we may have scored the same revenue as Thursday August 19, 2004 between noon and 6 pm.

[Tim Gray]

As far as how much money we are talking about... We've had PDFs available for 14 months, on as many as five sales sites, and in another year or so we may have scored the same revenue as Thursday August 19, 2004 between noon and 6 pm.

OK, now I'm curious about what happened that day. A launch at GenCon or something?

I'd have thought your True20 stuff would have gone well online... Are you capitalising on it enough? The True20 mainbook is one of the top sellers in the history of RPGNow. You might try shifting Caliphate Nights into the True20 product category for better access to that community, rather than leaving it deluged in Fantasy Assorted. It's not under Licensed Sysstem => True20 at DriveThru either.

[ParadigmCFO]

OK, now I'm curious about what happened that day. A launch at GenCon or something?

I'd have thought your True20 stuff would have gone well online... Are you capitalising on it enough? The True20 mainbook is one of the top sellers in the history of RPGNow. You might try shifting Caliphate Nights into the True20 product category for better access to that community, rather than leaving it deluged in Fantasy Assorted. It's not under Licensed Sysstem => True20 at DriveThru either.

It was a GenCon launch of the Player's Guide to Arcanis. I mostly use that to indicate that PDFs, while significant, are a very small market by comparrison to print.

Tales of the Caliphate Nights is a very strong PDF seller. When we put it up, that catagory wasn't available, I am certainly going to switch that now, thanks!

[Napftor]

As someone who's about to launch his own pdf company into open waters soon, I'd just like to thank everyone for the information in this thread. Very informative.

[HellHound]

As I'm not currently actively involved in the market, I'm not sure what the current numbers are like.

Back when I launched, we expected 100 sales in the first month for a product priced around $5 - $7 at 36-96 pages. Sales in the next month would be about half as much, and then would settle down after a few months with total sales of 250 for a weak product and up to 500 to 1,000 for stronger products.

The market grew progressively softer over the next few years, to the point that working with a break-even point of 150 sales started being a bad idea for some weaker products.

[Tim Gray]

Back when I launched, we expected 100 sales in the first month for a product priced around $5 - $7 at 36-96 pages. Sales in the next month would be about half as much, and then would settle down after a few months with total sales of 250 for a weak product and up to 500 to 1,000 for stronger products.

The market grew progressively softer over the next few years, to the point that working with a break-even point of 150 sales started being a bad idea for some weaker products.

At the moment you'd need a pretty exceptional product to hit those targets (you can look at RPGNow's metals sales markers page for your 500-1000s), and 150 total sales is not actively bad.