It could well be that you have reached the UK end of your initial market on here and Story Games. You've also reached the equivalent for Europe and the US, and they stick out more as you don't know the people as well as those here.

Forums like UKroleplayers.com and cons like UKGE and Dragonmeet are where you will raise awareness with the larger UK market.

Actually, Graham and his Play Unsafe sales might be a good, recent data point here? He's only just been found by RPGnet (and I suspect there will be aflurry of new folk there wanting to buy his book).

I sell through Lulu, so can't tell exactly where they sell to. From feedback, I think it's roughly 75% to the States, 25% to Europe and the UK.

They do definitely sell to the UK: I've had feedback from UK buyers. It's often to a friend-of-a-friend-of-mine or to people I've met at conventions.

Graham

Well I sold to a lot of friends and con people, but I'm more interested in people I've not directly marketed too myself. There are some people here who have bought copies as well, but outside that small group there has not been much British interest.

It's not a bad thing. If Poles, Germans and French people want to buy Solipsist more power to them, I'm just curious :)

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Roughly speaking, for Cold City, our sales are about 70% US & Canada and 30% rest of the world. Of that 30%, we have had sales to Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Guadaloupe, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden and a few others. Of our European sales, Scandanavia and France represent the two biggest sales areas outside of the UK.

A large chunk of our UK sales are convention based or represented by Leisure Games buying in quantity from IPR.

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

That's very interesting Malcolm, because I guess it is the same pattern I am seeing with Solipsist, but on a much smaller scale. I wonder what percentage of the potential UK Indie games market goes to the major conventions. I'd have thought it wasn't that great, but I could be wrong.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Cons, especially in the UK, are where we as publishers get a goodly amount of contact with potential customers. Cold City print sales up to the end of 2007 showed that 23% of total print sales were at cons. Now, that takes into account stuff like Gen Con as well. I can't give an exact breakdown, but it's my educated guess that for UK sales only, con sales actually represent the majority of purchases. Maybe not a huge majority, but a majority nonetheless.

What percentage of those who like small press games go to conventions is a matter for debate. But, those conventions represent our best chance to get in front of the consumer. many people who purchase at UK cons have been previously unaware of games such as ours. They just aren't that interested in finding out about games online. And who can blame them. There's a lot of stuff out there to wade through.

Cheers
Malcolm

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

But what about those people who are active online? I get the impression that they too go to cons, perhaps even more than average if you look at the *indie community* as an example. If so that would indicate that even those people who we have contact with online, might be more likely to buy at cons, which would be interesting in terms of where to put marketing effort

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

For a long time I have been a proponent of the idea that there is a 'Brand of Me' running through the indie games community (and therein, one of the major targets for sales). It actually runs through everywhere we interact as well, which I will get onto later.

Look at people like Jason Morningstar, Fred Hicks and even a certain Malcolm Craig Esq.

Decent people, helpful and polite online, fun when necessary, serious when needed, business-like but with the hobby at their heart.

Does this help or hinder their sales? It helps, obviously. Will the Dresden Files RPG fly off the shelves into the hands of the indie community? Yup. Is that because of the great cultural value held by the Dresden Files? Nope. Is it because it is a game by Fred and Rob (who is equally lovely online). Oh yes. And they have the success of SotC behind them as well. Their online presence is not the ONLY factor to drive this, but it is a contributing factor.

You can be a bit of a rascal and get the same result. Look at Graham and Play Unsafe? People on Storygames were literally queuing up to buy it upon release and I bet that has partly to do with his presence on the forums and the respect and interest that this draws.

It doesn't have to be just indie games forums. From my little alternate corner of the internet I have already had (counts on fingers) 14 pre-orders for Duty & Honour from people who roleplay (mostly trad) but who know me and want to see what I have been doing. Thats half my breakeven sales (I reckon, final figures pending)

The question is, are these true sales or are they expected networking dividends? Are they one and the same? In terms of your games success does selling a copy to a member of CE 'count' with the same sales weight as selling one through IPR to someone you have had little or no contact with?

Thats the problem with the 'Brand of Me' idea. It comes with a lot of emotional weight. You get into the concept of pity, duty and guilt sales. I have one person (the godmother of my youngest) who has said she will buy a copy of my book 'even though I have no interest in it - I just want to see your name on my bookshelf'. Thats a sale, but it has nothing to do with the success of my marketing and everything to do with being friends with ex's after uni!

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

Yes Neil, I feel exactly the same!

I look at the sales of Solipsist and I mentally divide them into *real* sales and *not-real* sales. That distinction is entirely in my head, but it's real.

Sales to my close friends, my former boss at work, people who "want to have a book with my name on it" and the like are *not-real* sales, they don't count. Sales to gamers I have never met or heard of are *real* sales, they count much more, they make me feel better.

Now where you draw the line is up to you of course. I'd totally count sales to CE members as *real* sales if any turned up, that would be fine, and Story Games or Forge members even more so. On the other hand I could see how you might think otherwise.

There *is* one bit of value to the distinction of course, which is projecting future sales. If I sell 20 copies of Solipsist to my close friends what does that tell me about my projected sales? The answer is nothing, unless I have 1000 more close friends waiting to buy. I can only base my projections on the *real* sales, because they are indicative of the larger market that exists out there.

I'm having that problem with estimating con sales as well. I sold 20 copies at Conpulsion, but to estimate how many I might sell at Games Expo etc. I have to try and discount *not-real* sales and base it from there.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

...you have more data than you think, but you also maybe need to re-assess what market saturation you'll get.

You ran a game at Conpulsion with three people you'd never met before and got two sales, and probably would have had a third if you'd had three books to sell. So, if people sign up for a game then I'd say the chances are... on a very good day they might all buy it and only on a very bad day will none buy it. The game idea self-selects those interested and at Conpulsion the ones who played thought enough of it (or your running of it) to buy it. You'll have worse days for sure.

The IPR and RPGnow sales are all "real" as far as I can tell, and the total number of copies sold is now over 60, right? So, even if you take all of Conpulsion's 20 out of it, it's still sellling well.

The next point is that while, yes, it is about sales in one sense, it's not absolutely about sales. (And this is a good general point for everyone, especially me, to reflect on.)

Selling a copy to everyone in the Indie scene or the online scene, or the UK scene, just isn't a realistic proposition. Spirit of the Century, Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Wheel all have sold in the thousands. Not everyone has them. So, mentally, you have to accept that fact.

Then you have to consider sales to play. Matt is probably the most extreme of the people on here about that, I feel. He'd really rather sell copies only to get play (and the fun that the play will bring to those players). Like I say, I think he's the most extreme of us on that end.

So, yes, you should not be shy about saying "here's my book, I think it's pretty good" but also understanding that a lot of people just won't be interested, or will look but decide not to get it, or some will surely disagree that it is even any good at all. Or while it's cute or whatever, it's not playable or fun.

Anyway, as long as you keep your profile up and don't hide your game under a rock (more common than you'd think) then people will find it and make their own mind up.

Could we take "Brand of Me" and "Unreal sales" to separate threads now? Keep this thread for "Where do your games sell"?

Graham

Makes sense, maybe we should split the thread from Brand of Me onwards? Can someone do that?

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

The point I was trying to make, based on the previous conversations, was that your actual geographic sales data would have to be tempered by the breadth of your internet presence, your personal network of friends and boosters etc. and the way that this impacts on your sales - IF - and thats a big IF - this hasn't already been factored in as part of your marketing plan.

So, for an extreme example, if you sell 25 of your 50 copies to people in the UK, but those 25 have gone to friends, family, your gaming group and very close online associates, then you have actually not sold ONE copy to the 'uk indie games community' and therefore whatever you are doing as promotion is failing, despite the rough figures saying you are not.

I believe that in a market with such small relative sales figures, the percentage of sales that can be taken up with such sales can skew these sort of figures massively and give us a false impression of the results of our marketing. When Malcolm highlights convention sales he's put his finger on one market where we can be assured who we have sold to and how our marketing (the demo, the game and whatever else we glean from the sale in terms of feedback) has worked.

Split away if you think there is mileage in that, but I was actually trying to address the issue at hand - possibly from a different angle.

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

Its a good point of course, the geographical distribution of a given game has to do with subject matter (Starblazer adventures will not do as well in the US, where no one has ever heard of the comic, as it does in Scotland), play style, and the author over and above everything else.

But I suspect that if we normalize for that (by getting data on lots of games) we might see some other trends emerging as well that could be useful to analyze.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I've sold a fair few copies in Germany. Though that's skewed by the thirty I sold at Spiel 06. Similarly I've sold some 12 copies to Finland,via Eero. Most all of that regional variation is traceable back to engagement with people from those areas.

UK scene will look after itself. You're active in it. Same for storygames. You need to get out and engage elsewhere if you want to sell elsewhere. Make the effort to be seen and be helpful, not pimp your wares, people can spot a shill.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I know just what you mean Matt, I hate posting on threads and saying *by the way my game does that* I'd much rather be answering solid play advice questions from someone who actually wants to hear the answers.

On a related topic, what are people's experiences with translations of their games? I've already had someone ask me about a German translation of Solipsist, which seems premature to me. Have other people had official (or unofficial, like the 3:16 one) translations of their games? If so was it worth the trouble?

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

I disagree with Matt, here.

For me, Story Games (and selling on the Internet generally) doesn't take care of itself. It's worth thinking, very seriously, about how you present yourself online and let people know about your game.

(I'd estimate I've sold 200 copies of Play Unsafe through Internet forums, compared with 30-ish to people I know at UK Conventions. Sales tend to come in bursts, whenever there's a thread active on a forum. So I definitely think that sales through forums are worth taking seriously.)

And then I agree with Matt again. Don't shill your game. Just talk nicely and enthusiastically about it: don't be shy of mentioning it, but don't push it down people's throats.

Graham

The issue I have right now is waiting for someone else to say something about Solipsist so that I can then respond, because it surely is pushing it down people's throats to post something when there is no real point to the thread.

I noticed with Play Unsafe that you've had a lot of threads started by other people to respond too, perhaps because people find the concept controversial?

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/