anyway.

For only the cons I attended personally, add 40 books in 8/2004, 17-or-so books in 1/2005 (I forget), and 88 books in 8/2005.

There goes the conventional wisdom that you get 50% of your total all-time sales in the first three months.

I suspect that the conventional wisdom is true for crappy conventional RPGs sold into distribution. I bet Serenity sells half its total in its first three months, for instance.

But I have no basis for that.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Ray Fawkes (creator of Mnemovore) recently about comics and RPGs. He's found that it is very much true that "big run" products hit shelves and live or die in the first three months. However, the smaller Indie work (especially the really high quality stuff) will keep selling for years.

He goes to cons with Indie stuff he did 5 years ago and sells it at about the same rate that it did when it first came out while much of the big run stuff is so much box filler at that point.

I've had similar experiences with Church and State. It sold very slowly at first, then when the reviews started coming in it hit huge and sold up fast and kept selling until 2nd Edition of M&M came out. (Which, I suppose, tells you something about hitching your wagon to someone else's caravan....)

Dude, you sell like a copy a day? Of a game about traveling preachers with guns?

Holy crap. I have to learn to market TSOY better.

Like TWO copies a day, these days. It's CRAZY.

Reaction: I am made very happy.

Question: Do you have cumulative figures for the total number of copies sold to date?

Castle-in-air construction: It'd be neat to have some sense of (a) how many copies are "duds," in the sense that they're read but never played, (b) how many copies are "live," e.g. result in Actual Play, and (c) how many people are exposed to Dogs actual play to date. But I can't think of any way even to make a passable estimate.

Addition has it at 634 copies online, 779 including cons I've attended personally. I'd add less than maybe 50 copies sold by my friends at cons I couldn't attend, plus in various kinds of retail, for a grand total over 800 copies.

Nice numbers, man! I cower in awe.

what's your cost per unit, Vincent?

This is such a lesson about the real extent of the market out there.

Hi folks,

All of these data corroborate my experiences with all Adept Press games.

The Sorcerer books, for instance, are still generating $1000's every *quarter* (not kidding), mainly through on-line sales as well as a small, steady presence in the stores.

You'll find the same information available from Paul Czege, from Ralph Mazza, and many others. The total levels of sales may differ from game to game, but the patterns are the same.

Every bit of conventional wisdom about RPG sales is mistaken when you bring the games to a true market, as opposed to the false market of the three-tier system.

My sales look a lot like Vincent's print sales, except with kind of a slightly downward slope.

That's funny, that anonymous person above talking about Adept Press was me.

Heya,

Vincent, what do you think was the cause of the large spike from June thru Speptember?  Did the Podcast that reviewed your game have much impact?

Peace,

-Troy

An actual play thread at the Forge - or any kind of thread at RPGnet - sells more copies than a review does. Waaaay more copies.

There were lots of both during those few months.