I'm not sure how many of the (currently) 3000 backers Ars 5DE has are nostalgia buyers and how many are potential readers for 3rd party material. In this thread I'd like people who publish third party material to say how they are going, because it helps first timers scope out their project budgets.
So, I'll go first:
One day in and 7 sales @ 5USD of Venice through Patreon. I'm waiting for Drivethru approval before trying social media posts and I've yet to try selling it on itch.io, which is a goal for this weekend. Venice arose out of #Dungeon/#City23 which was an itch challenge.
I know that doesn't seem like many but if you accept that the 20 paid Patreons have bought copies in advance, that's 135USD and my art costs were 201USD. I know it's not like making half a million dollars in presales, but it looks like if I set my time and work to "hobby" there's a decent chance it will pay itself off.
I'll try to pop into this thread every month or so to tell people how it has done, so others can gauge how much risk they can take with things like art and paid authors.
I published three issues of the Ars fanzine PERIPHERAL CODE. The last issue came out about 6 years ago, when I started to work at Paizo. Peripheral Code sells on DriveThruRPG for $5 an issue.
I certainly will (and have! As a patreon for Mythic Venice and David Chart's starter set, and a purchaser of Peripheral Code). I'm also planning on releasing some myself, but mostly with an eye to providing short, useful, "cheap and cheerful" resources. The one-shots I've run at my local gaming group will be first, as they are written up, just not yet in publishable format.
the surge in interest due to the Definitive Edition,
people discovering that Mythic Venice is now a free inclusion in the Definitive Edition,
It's Pay What You Want
Paid membership Patreons getting a copy.
Atlas is paying me to use Mythic Venice as a stretch goal, but that's not in these figures because it isn't replicable.
My numbers look like this. Numbers are after the platform percentage is taken out, but before currency conversion, tax and payout fees..
DriveThru:: $65. 151 downloads, 22 sales. (Sales on DriveThru include sales for $0. 22 were paid sales)
Itch: $71: 81 downloads. 12 sales.
Patreon: $57. 13 sales.
So, that's $188 pre-tax, or about $125 post tax. My art budget was $201. That being said, if you count my 27 pay-by-the-month members as additional Patreon sales, that's another $116 ($74 post tax).
Which is to say my post-tax income from the whole thing ($200) is $1 short of my art costs, setting my time as $0, if you don't count transaction fees or currency conversion (which are going to be a few dollars).
So, all the caveats aside: I spent about $200 and it was paid off in two weeks. It turns out itch is worth it as a platform. A lot fewer of them pay, but I think their anchor point for game pricing is higher because it is surrounded by computer games.
Outside these figures in terms of costs...I've spent about 40USD with Lulu because you need to buy a POD proof copy before you can sell there and as an Australian over $20 of that is shipping. I don't know if it's a good idea, but I'll report back.
To give a non-PWYW comparison: in October, I sold 14 copies of "Malady of Madness", which is more than one a day (it went live on the 19th). US$84 gross, US$58.80 after DriveThru has taken its cut. I do not expect that rate of sales to keep up (though it is so far), but its a good foundation.
I don't pay for art, so my goal for anything is to sell a couple of copies a month for game money, and to eventually "earn out" at US$0.10 a word over time (alternatively, NZ minimum wage and the CreativeNZ writers hourly benchmark, which work out to ~US$0.05 and ~US$0.07 respectively for this product). That works out to be 109 - 118 copies. 10% of the way there in the first month is pretty good.
(Its not on Itch yet because I'm still disentangling myself from DriveThru's anticompetitive exclusivity clause. But it will be eventually)
If the 3rd party product is good, I'll buy it. Doesn't matter if I think I'll ever get to use it at a table, if it has good ideas I'll give it a chance. (And I have the shelf of GURPS supplements to prove it. )
Discovering the product may be tricky if it isn't on drivethrurpg (which I fully understand, their cut from sales is very high), but if I'm made aware that something is good and can purchased in the US using a method I'm willing to trust, I'll at least look at it. My library in drivethru is uncomfortably close to 3000 products over the last 20+ years, but I've purchased indy and 3rd party stuff from itch.io, paizo, warehouse23, backerkit, humble bundle, bundle of holding, and from the publishers directly.
I might or might not. What 3P material are we talking about?
Fifteen poorly thought out characters?
A detailed village setting?
The decently researched and decently written ArM friendly history of southern France, 1000-1500 AD?
Kinda broke right now, but if it's decent quality will probably buy. I've bought a fair amount of Mage the Ascension and Exalted 3rd party products on drive through.
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