August 2014 Sales Report



Every month, I share my print-on-demand sales numbers so you can keep track of my year long experiment releasing one new game each month of 2014.

The Bad News, Good News
This was an odd month because it's the first this year in which my freelance obligations forced me to miss a release deadline. I also incurred some steep expenses hiring an artist for a future release and ordering inventory for the upcoming local convention tiltEXPO.

However, these unfortunate setbacks were greatly mitigated by the joint promotional push by DriveThruCards at Gen Con and me from home on social media. On top of that, the Chinese edition of Koi Pond is far into production and the Brazilian edition of Light Rail is quickly gaining steam.

Let's look at the numbers!

Two MVPs Carry the Team
You recall last month how my skepticism about promotions was totally thwomped, right? Well, consider it double-thwomped because August performed very well. All credit to DriveThruCards' aggressive 25% discount code. In the numbers below, you'll have to disregard my own purchases, which do figure into the sales numbers but not into the earnings numbers.

The top sellers this month were easily Light Rail and Monsoon Market, both showed significant growth while the rest of the catalog dropped a bit. I suspect Light Rail's small price point and low card count helped it become an impulse buy. It may have been an add-on purchase for anyone who bought Monsoon Market or Koi Pond to save on shipping.

8-2014
6x Bird Bucks +1
34x Koi Pond: A Coy Card Game -4
15x Koi Pond: Four Walls (Promo Card 2) -12
16x Koi Pond: Four Winds (Promo Card 1) -16
24x Koi Pond: Moon Temple -8
65x Light Rail +42
39x Monsoon Market +19
4x Nine Lives Card Game -9
3x Penny Farthing Catapult -6
13x Regime -1
18x Suspense: the Card Game -9 
3x Ten Pen -5

228 Total Sold
$1,869.86 Gross Sales
$478.98 Earnings

Grand Totals for 2014 (to date)
1454 Products Sold
$7,781.81 Gross Sales
$2,283.29 Earnings

Next month will see the release of Solar Senate, closely followed by Kigi so I can get back on schedule. Hopefully the good times continue!

(Photo: Ashley Humphries)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has...
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results tha...
Read more

One Thing to Avoid in Game Design

Image
When game designer Paul Peterson was interviewed for the upcoming Titans Series of games from Calliope Games, there was one segment at 1:55 that really caught my attention (emphasis mine): "A couple years ago I was teaching people how to play Guillotine and I hadn't played in a while. The first thing I did was say, 'The first thing you gonna do when you open your game is you look through this deck and you take this card.' I pulled out the Callous Guards card and threw it over my shoulder. Everybody laughed. I said, ' That's the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life.'" Oof. Those are strong words. What's the big deal? For context, the game Guillotine is all about collecting the heads of French nobles during the revolution. There is only one guillotine, with a line of nobles waiting for their grim fate. On your turn, you play action cards to change the order of the line, then take the Noble card from the front of the ...
Read more