Sales Report

[dchart]

Twenty First Month, 8/8 - 9/7

12 Perils: 0, 8 Million Gods: 8, An Edeinos in Core Earth: 1, Home Front Philadelphia: 2, LibreOffice Templates: 1, Road to Philadelphia: 2, Spirited Tools: 0

Most of this looks like the normal variation, although someone gave me another five-star review for the LibreOffice Templates this month, for which I am very grateful.

The obvious exception is 8 Million Gods, which had its second-best month ever for sales. This was, of course, due to the sale that I held at the beginning of the month. That sale was a complete success. All eight sale copies were purchased, within a couple of days, and those sales pushed the product over the line to Copper Bestseller status. Obviously, I cannot say what effect, if any, it has had on long term sales yet, but given the success of the sale itself, I will probably do something similar again in the future.

[Wakshani]

For what it's worth, this stuff is *fascinating* and super-useful, so please don't think that you're talking to a void and do keep it up.

I'm considering putting a few things together myself, so this is amazingly useful knowledge.

[Doc Gordon]

Agreed, fella's. The truth is as soon as I can figure out which direction my life is to take (regular work despite all the pain I'm in or medical retirement through the VA), I intend to put more together. I need to write the novel for Possibility Blackout, but I've not had the time to do so.

[dchart]

For what it's worth, this stuff is *fascinating* and super-useful, so please don't think that you're talking to a void and do keep it up.

I'm considering putting a few things together myself, so this is amazingly useful knowledge.

I'm glad people are finding it useful. This sort of concrete data can be very hard to find, and I have a bunch of it. Under the circumstances, I don't see any reason to keep the sales figures as a trade secret…

[dchart]

Twenty Second Month, 9/8 - 10/7

12 Perils: 7, 8 Million Gods: 8, An Edeinos in Core Earth: 10, Home Front Philadelphia: 9, LibreOffice Templates: 0, Road to Philadelphia: 7, Spirited Tools: 12

Well, the bundle certainly made a difference. Spirited Tools had its best month ever for sales, even beating its first month (by 33%). An Edeinos in Core Earth matched its strongest month, its first, and got a five star review (thank you!). Home Front: Philadelphia had its second strongest month, and even the products I launched with the IE had their strongest months in a year.

The conclusion is that the promotional tools work. It's a shame that there wasn't time to pull a broader one together (only one person responded, and that wasn't enough), but something like that might be possible in the future. We'd need to wait a bit, but if Ulisses isn't going to do anything to promote the Infiniverse Exchange (not even mention it on their blog), then we have to do it for ourselves.

One interesting thing about the numbers is that very few people who had bought 12 Perils and Road to Philadelphia bought the bundle, despite it being set up so that it was very cheap for people in that situation. Next time, I'll probably just do a flat 50% off everything.

Anyway, next month should be back to normal, so we shall see what sales figures fall to.

[dchart]

Twenty Third Month, 10/8 - 11/7

12 Perils: 1, 8 Million Gods: 1, An Edeinos in Core Earth: 0, Home Front Philadelphia: 0, LibreOffice Templates: 1, Road to Philadelphia: 0, Spirited Tools: 1

So, last month's sales sucked. It could well be a reaction in the aftermath of the bundle, so we'll have to see how things go next month, but those are not good numbers.

[Yoric]

I wonder of people might be saving for the Cyberpapacy?

[Yoric]

dchart, in your experience, does commissioned art pay for itself?

For the moment, my soon-to-be-published Reality Choir only has public domain-ish art because I have no idea whether it's going to sell sufficiently to pay for commisioned art. Some of the illustrations are great, but, well, not all of them

[Wakshani]

dchart, in your experience, does commissioned art pay for itself?

For the moment, my soon-to-be-published Reality Choir only has public domain-ish art because I have no idea whether it's going to sell sufficiently to pay for commisioned art. Some of the illustrations are great, but, well, not all of them

I can answer this one!

"Oh my no."

At least, not in the short term. If you drop, say, $50 each on a dozen bits of art, that's $600. If you sell the book at $10 (and keep $5 of each sale), you need to sell 120 to break even, just on the art budget.

You need a pretty impressive volume to keep art in the loop or find people willing to work for low money. If you can do your own art, you're good to go, but otherwise trying to find good art for, say, $20? Not easy. At all.

Having the Infiniverse art to pull from is *massive*. Art is what's holding me back from doing some books myself. Still probably going to do them after the new year anyway, but, yeah ... art is expensive.

[Yoric]

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of.

Well, I'll continue with my not-nearly-as-good-as-torg illustrations