[Eclipse Phase] Posthuman Studios' 2010 Year End Review

JongWK · February 16, 2011, 11:02:55 AM

Full story here. I like how they are very open about their operations.

Some choice bits:

Eclipse Phase core book sales
Total core book sales: 5376 in 14 months. That's the entire first print run (3k) and most of the second one (3k), which they estimate will sell out by April. Third printing coming soon.
PDF sales of the core book
1400 PDFs sold after 15 months, at a price point of $15. There's a fun story in the article about Catalyst being afraid of the lower price point (why am I not surprised by this?).
On Free, legal PDF downloads
"Demonoid alone tells us that the EP core book was downloaded as a torrent at least 14,000 times (2k stand-alone and 12k as part of larger RPG bundle downloads), and that’s just a single tracker."
GM Screen pack (GM screen + adventure)
Released in August 2010. Total sales by year's end: 1258 out of a 2k print run. About 400 PDF sales of these.
Sunward
Print run of 3k. Available in stores since September, sold 1889 copies by year's end. Also released as a PDF in July, selling 682 digital copies in total.
PDF exclusive projects
Roughly 10% of total income in 2010. With a price point of $5, word count of 5k and 1 or 2 pieces of art, these products break even in less than 2 months of sale. They've also done some experiments with the iPad and Kindle.

So, how does this compare to other companies? What does it tell us about the market?

Phantom Black · February 16, 2011, 12:59:35 PM

Props to Posthuman Studios for adhering to their mission standard.

Benoist · February 16, 2011, 01:02:53 PM

As far as I can tell, it's not stellar in the sense of the way the leaders in the RPG industry sell, but it's good. Anybody not selling "D&D" could be more than happy with this kind of results. Considering the special blend and thus, relatively "niche" flavor the game represents, I think they can feel very encouraged by such a trend.

RPGPundit · February 16, 2011, 06:43:16 PM

I'm no particular fan of the game, but they are definitely to be commended for their openness about their business.

RPGPundit

danbuter · February 16, 2011, 08:45:48 PM

Those numbers tell me I don't want to publish rpg's for a living.

Benoist · February 16, 2011, 09:44:10 PM

Quote from: danbuter;440771Those numbers tell me I don't want to publish rpg's for a living.

Publish RPGs for a living is not a viable option in 99.99% of cases.

Olive · February 17, 2011, 04:08:24 AM

Quote from: danbuterThose numbers tell me I don't want to publish rpg's for a living.

Just as some perspective, I work in professional (as in finance, accounting etc) publishing. We'd be pretty happy if a book with a retail price of US$50 sold about 5k in it's first year. Very pleased actually. For anything that isn't mainstream I'd say those numbers are pretty respectable.

The difference is that, as a company over all, we publish 2-300 books a month. I need to publish 20+ books a year. The only way to make money out of publishing is by doing a huge amount of it.

Brasidas · February 17, 2011, 10:47:40 AM

Quote from: Olive;440829The difference is that, as a company over all, we publish 2-300 books a month. I need to publish 20+ books a year. The only way to make money out of publishing is by doing a huge amount of it.

If your company consisted of 3 guys who don't have office space they need to rent, would you consider that 1 book enough?

Spinachcat · February 17, 2011, 02:59:45 PM

Sounds good! Especially if you remember that we are in a recession and transhuman sci-fi is deeply niche.

Kudos to Posthuman Studios!

Pseudoephedrine · February 17, 2011, 03:43:20 PM

Love the setting, hate the system.

I wish them luck, and kudos to them for posting this info publicly.

crkrueger · February 17, 2011, 11:57:10 PM

Hell, I'm going to buy a pdf just to support them being open with their statistics.

RPGPundit · February 18, 2011, 12:51:22 AM

I think that these days, if you sell a few hundred copies you can say that your book has done well. If you sell a few thousand, its a serious success. If you've sold over 10k, then you're a new superstar of the industry.

RPGPundit

Olive · February 19, 2011, 10:35:45 AM

Quote from: Brasidas;440863If your company consisted of 3 guys who don't have office space they need to rent, would you consider that 1 book enough?

No. Because they would be lucky to be making 100k revenue (after reseller/distributor discounts) etc from all of their books and that's before costs. So that's enough to maybe pay rents and stuff for one or two guys but I have a family to feed.

Spike · February 20, 2011, 02:17:58 PM

That last point is interesting. 10% of total income comes from 5 dollar PDF only files that break even after 2 months?

I haven't seen these particular PDF's, but based on the description they must be dead simple to produce. 1-2k words and a piece of art? I could knock something out like that two or three a day (and I have!)... though I doubt they are pushing that hard.

I'd be interested in seeing their costs per print run, but I can guess.

Pseudoephedrine · February 20, 2011, 04:32:27 PM

Quote from: Spike;441356That last point is interesting. 10% of total income comes from 5 dollar PDF only files that break even after 2 months?

I haven't seen these particular PDF's, but based on the description they must be dead simple to produce. 1-2k words and a piece of art? I could knock something out like that two or three a day (and I have!)... though I doubt they are pushing that hard.

I'd be interested in seeing their costs per print run, but I can guess.

http://eclipsephase.com/releases is the list of stuff they have out.

Basically, the $5.00 pdfs are two short adventures and an NPC pack. The pdf "Hack Packs" are really good value too, and are pretty cleverly put together (they give you the Illustrator files for the maps and some Creative Commons artwork as well as the book's pdf).