I think that paints half the picture that I was painting Graham

Networking, as part of a marketing plan, is an obvious way to progress your sales. You position yourself and your game in a visible arena. You make it's presence obvious and you build a little hype. Hell, you even pinpoint some good old alpha adopters who you know will be able to spread the word further than others. It's all good.

However there is networking that has nothing to do with your marketing plan (unless you are the coldest of mercenaries!!). Those copies that are bought (as opposed to sold to) by friends and family to support your venture. People who know you for some other reason and buy the game 'because it's you' rather than any interest in the game itself.

As you develop as a publisher you gain another sort of sale - the legacy sale. Take 'Blossoms Are Falling' for example? I wonder how many people, sight unseen, would have slapped down their $20 for a game about pre-feudal Japan on pre-sale for anyone else but Luke Crane? I wonder how many people will buy Mouse Guard when it comes out without having read the comic based on it being a 'Luke Crane' game?

This happens in a lot of other arenas. Look at comics? There are people who have pull lists of 'Anything by Bendis. Anything by Ellis. Anything by Millar - both of them'. The actual product itself is irrelevant - they go from their legacy exposure to the writer and order blind.

I'm not suggesting that these sales aren't 'real' - they put money in the bank as much as a kid from Idaho plucking your game off IPR. However they have a palpable impact on your ability to successfully evaluate your marketing plan if you haven't made a concession for them already.

Assuming you have a marketing plan....!

Neil

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

[Edit: Crossposted with Neil. Nice.]

Neil’s also just said…

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.

So here, Neil, I’d disagree with a couple of things.

Firstly, I think the sales did go to the “UK indie games community”. Who are the indie games community if they’re not your gaming group and people that know you online?

Similarly, those sales didn’t skew the figures. They’re part of the figures.

I’d also argue that these sales happened because of the marketing. Perhaps the marketing wasn’t what we’d usually think of as marketing: it’s posting on forums rather than advertising. But it’s still getting word out about the game.

Oh, and you understand I'm saying this in a nice way, not an argumentative way? Right. Good.

Graham

To readdress the cross-post (slow down dammit!)

The UKIGC is NOT your family
The UKIGC is NOT your ex-girlfriend
The UKIGC is NOT your CCG friends who buy it for ... some reason unknown to man nor beast, but they do, cos it's you.

All three hopefully WILL become part of the UKIGC after reading your game, talking to you about it and playing a couple of sessions and seeing what a wonderful thing roleplaying is and how small press games can offer them something unique and special.

However that isn't the segmentation that you would use prior to the sale of the books.

I guess, what I am trying to say is:

1. You need a marketing plan
2. You need accurate data about the source of sales
3. You need tight segmentation of your markets

Then you can make accurate interpretations on whether your marketing was successful. Whilst high sales will make your bank happy it doesn't necessarily follow that the steps that you took to secure them were successful. Strange things happen and we need to account for them as well.

Neil

ps. Of course you're not being argumentative. We can speak frankly for we have gobbled from the same tangy pie!

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

I totally agree! .... with someone

I think Neil is right. I sold a copy of Solipsist to each member of my regular gaming group. They bought it because they felt obligated (not that I bullied them) as a part of our friendship. They don't intend to run it, they are not going to post reviews of it, they didn't get it for another gaming group, they are not the same as a random person from Germany that bought the game because they saw a post about it online.

If I sell a copy of a game to someone who is interested in playing it then they may try it, they may get other people in their group to buy it, they may post about it online and encourage others to buy it. That is a totally different thing to the copy given to my Dad, which will sit on a shelf in my parent's house and never generate sales, play or anything else.

Now of course Graham is also right, there is overlap. If one of those people from my gaming group suddenly decides to run my game they have converted themselves from a *not-real* to a *real* sale in an instant, and any sale has that potential. Even my Dad's copy could be shown to a friend of the family who is into gaming, unlikely as that is, or who would also want to buy it because it was written by their friend's son. But that is still very different from the expectation I may have of the sale made to the German gamer.

As I said in the other thread different sales also have different predictive value. If I sell a game to a friend who I think is buying the game to flatter me, then I doubt that will translate into further sales, and I cannot make a solid prediction that next month I will also sell a game in such a way.

On the other hand if I sell a game to an interested gamer who is not a friend then there is a chance that it will translate into further sales (to a group), and I can also use that datum to make some prediction about next months sales to similar people.

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

Yeah, I was worried that Grahm might not run Lacuna if I didn't buy is game. It was probably worth it.

Everyone you sell to is the friend and family of someone else who might buy your book.

I like Graham's strategy with Play Unsafe, any time anyone complains the price is too high he drops it for a few days. That's responsive marketing. Does it work?

I'd be interested in the answer too Graham, I get the impression that it works, does it?

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

I think there's a difference between expecting and requiring friends and family to buy a copy, and them wanting to do so for their own reasons. The second you start to expect ten of your friends to buy a copy to boost sales or break even, well you might as well save yourself the time of writing the damned thing and just get them to give you a tenner each.

Every sale is a valid, real sale, whether it's to members of your own gaming group, your girlfriend, your friends on a forum, so long as there's no expectation or need on your part that they buy it. It's their money, they can spend it how they want, and we shouldn't demean them or lessen them in any way as customers by doing so. Some of your biggest advocates might well be friends and family - the "alpha adopters" as Neil describes them - if they're a part of the hobby too.

Oh of course, I don't mean I *actually* bullied them into buying in a "Buy my game or you are no longer my friend" sort of way, but I did offer it to them, and they may have chosen to buy because they were my friend rather than because they wanted to play the game.

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

You offered it to them. They bought it because they liked you and trusted you'd written a good game. So, in my mind, you networked and marketed and made a sale.

To answer your question about Play Unsafe, here's what often happens. Someone starts a thread about Play Unsafe. When they do, I'll offer the game at a reduced price for a couple of days (because I like doing sales and it's convenient to do them while people are actually talking about the game).

This does mean, however, that I don't really know whether the reduced price entices people to buy the game. All I see is that I sell copies when there's a thread about Play Unsafe active.

Graham

I find it hard to believe that lowering the price doesn't help though, surely it must. It is all about creating interest and enticement. You've just hit on a method of reinforcing the interest from a thread about the book with a burst of enticement to persuade them to do it *NOW*

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

Actually we've found that bundling stuff together is more successful than just reducing the price. Last month we sold over 60 copies of a|state alone which was mostly due to it being bundled with other stuff. Obviously its pretty hard to bundle stuff if you're on your first release, but its worth thinking about for the future. Especially if you are planning to do supplements

Great point Paul and fantastic sales figures for a|state. Congratulations, that's a lot of moolah. And a "long tail" of sales for sure.

I'd also say from my POV that with my small sales numbers I can have runs of hot days and then it can go cold for a while. This is OK, and I don't try to extrapolate one day from the next, really.

Generally, an observed trend is that sales peak, dip then rise again with secondary effects of people playing/discussing games away from the influence of the designer.

I found a really big peak by changing my cover for the fourth printing.

Gregor, do you think that the cover change drove sales because it was nicer, or because you had an effective re-launch?

Paul, great sales figures! Glad to see the bundle sales at Conpulsion were not an abberation.

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

Just to clarify Paul's point about a|state sales, that was 60+ sales over Q1 2008, rather than over a single month. However, that still represents a huge increase in sales compared to previous quarters. At least a 400% increase, I think. As Paul pointed out, the release of the PDF and the bundling were huge factors in this.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

Cheers Malc! Do you have any idea which was the most important factor, PDF or Bundle?

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

Im such and arse, 60 in a month would be quite outragous! As for what is generating the most sales, its really hard to say to be honest. The PDF release of a|state obviously really helped sales and our PDF sales have been up a hell of a lot recently, but bundling a|state together with A&A and Lostfinders has really made a difference. Even though its only £4 off the combined price, I think people feel like they are getting a bargain. The bundles are a killer on postage costs though!