Transparency Report: Some Numbers and Business Model Talky Talk

The last two months have been, far and away, the best two months of RPG sales I have had in a decade, and have generated more enthusiasm than I have ever had for anything I've done in comics or RPGs. You can see the sales at the bottom (because I just cut and pasted the reports right out of DriveThru for your reference).

Why am I sharing this?

I suppose because this is the reality of being a self-publisher. I talk to a LOT of friends, family, and students about this, and their shared belief is that you go through a three-step process: A) Create something that's pretty good, B) Put it up for sale, C) Buy a yacht and set sail around the world, because you can do that now. You're a 'published author' = 'you must be rich' (or, you'd be rich if you were working for one of the big companies rather than doing this stupid independent thing you are so fixated on, but that's a whole other discussion - I have no numbers but do have a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests I am probably better off where I am right now).

This begs the question - why don't I just come out with another game like Stalwart? Except do that every two weeks? Forever? Wouldn't I then increase these sales all the time? Like... duh. The only problem is that ... A) Stalwart somehow finds one of the remaining sweet spots in the industry where the supply has not quite caught up to the demand (supers systems of low/medium crunch), and B) Stalwrt took me forty years to finally get right. I've been trying to write this game since I was eleven. I don't think I can do that again next week. If I start now and live to 90, I might squeeze out another one of these. Everyone has their go-to fantasy game, and most people don't need another one. For some reason, many people are still looking for that holy grail of supers games.

Okay, Let's Crunch Some Numbers

1. First of all, I also launched the itch.io page, and have 27 core rules downloads (I put it up PWYW there because I had no idea how the model worked there really) and have had 10-20 downloads of the other books, and zero total sales. I'm not loving itch. It's got a different set of people (that's good) but they don't seem to really be as invested or care as much (that's bad). I'm competing with a wider and not-necessarily-compatible set of products for space. I'm meh about it so far. I'll keep it up (because why not) but I don't see much value in it right now. Maybe that will change.

2. I am a pretty active blogger, and I talk about my game a LOT (I think). Even when I don't have new releases, I'm trying to continually keep people aware that I'm working on the game, and I produce a lot of tertiary stuff that ties into or adds to the game in some way. I have been blogging for 14 years and this is post 1,290 ... and an average of about 25 people read any post I put up (posts with images end up in the 30s, posts with no images end up in the teens). I have NO idea how people make any money blogging (maybe they're a little more broad than 'niche game I produce in the darkest corner of the internet'), but still. You'd think I'd be able to get more traffic after 14 years and 1200 posts :) I added an image to this post just because I hope it gets some traffic (and full disclosure - this post is part of my business model, too. People might not know or care much about my game, but people are interested in reading about publishing if they want to do it, and more eyeballs is more eyeballs).

3. I ran a banner for Stalwart, thinking this would be a home run, and it was BY FAR the weakest banner I have ever run (20,000 impressions with 8 clicks - so .04% - that is very, very bad). I don't know why, but I suspect part of it was the high number of people who visited the Stalwart RPG page to begin with. They didn't click the banner because they had already seen the game's main page. That's the best I can figure.

4. My core 'business model' - a few foundational books in my back catalog along with frequent smaller releases as PWYW to keep new eyeballs on my stuff, is the winning formula. Over these two months, my sales break down into these three categories (broken down by sales, not by my earnings, which are 2/3 of this, so out of 400.62 on the two months my earnings are 260.40):

• Stalwart Core Rules (the thing I am trying to sell): 119.00 (29.7%)
• The PWYW releases for Stalwart (the things that support the thing I am trying to sell): 102.15 (25.5%)
• The back catalog (just other stuff I've done that I'm not actively promoting at all): 179.47 (44.8%) 

In the broadest strokes, it's the three-headed monster with roughly a quarter the core book, a quarter the PWYW supplements, and almost half the back catalog (the back catalog is the strongest overall performer)... Here's why this model works (I think):

First, I have produced some good content (that's kind of the most important thing). The back catalog accounted for a significant chunk of my sales (44.8%). If people like my new game they got for $1, they are far more likely to throw another ten or fifteen my way to get the other stuff I've done. That's HUGE.

Second, I set very modest price points. I think my games give good value for the money I ask. I could double my prices across the board and nobody would be too angry at me for trying to gouge people, but how far down would sales go? I understand that raw economics says as long as I sold 51% or more, I'd be ahead. However, two things work against this: 

A) Getting more eyeballs on my games is always better. The more people who get it, the more people might like it, and the more they might talk about it. Another reason to keep the itch.io page up - maybe the 'right' youtuber or blogger gets it there, says nice things about it, and suddenly I'm looking up yachts for sale on Google.

B) You guys are pretty awesome. For real. The reality is that each of you sets a value in your mind of what the game is worth to you, and you make sure to pay accordingly. Some of you felt that the World of Stalwart was worth $3 (and some of you more than that), but then decided that the Guide to Meridian was going to be the 'free one' you had already helped pay for. You felt like you'd made a pretty good investment in the game, and this supplement was a 'bonus' you should get for your support. I have no issues with that at all. I trust that at some point, I'll release something else you feel strongly about paying for, and you will. The model trusts you to set the value, and you collectively respond appropriately. Some people (who I very much doubt would happen upon this blog) have decided to fill several external hard drives with every free RPG they can ever get. I don't think those peeps are ever going to be a dedicated base, and that's fine. I am not going to change what I do so that someone doesn't have file 3752 on Drive F in a drawer someplace. It's why I like Patreon as a model (people pay you what they decide things are worth), but it's sort of a closed space (a lot behind the wall), so I think it ends up limiting itself. Setting up a Patreon at this point would be double-dipping on people - if you want to support me more, there are lots of ways to do it already.

Anyway, here are the sales charts:

Edit: By the way, here are the sales reports for March and April, so you can see what 'typical' months look like. I figure that context matters, and without the context of my regular sales, it's hard to see what I see in the numbers above...