Off topic: 600th post - w00t!
Last Tuesday I posted about how unprepared I was for Essen next week, and how my travel plans had been through several iterations in an effort to avoid paying ridiculous shipping costs.
Things are finally sorting themselves out now. I've ordered the sweatshirts and seen the proofs, this morning I booked the pallets to Germany and I've got to get the banner art to the printers this afternoon/evening.
Even though the pallets to Essen are booked I've still got a bunch of stuff to do for that. I'm taking a full pallet of Sumeria (504 copies) plus a mixed half-pallet of It's Alive!, Carpe Astra and the Sumeria 2 Player Expansion. Tomorrow I'm going up to York to pick and package the mixed pallet, and also to bring a car-full of Sumeria back home (I'm down to 8 copies at home, from where I fulfil almost all my orders). It'll be a fairly early start as the shipping company want to collect the pallet that afternoon, so I've got to get up there (3 hour drive) and sort out the pallet before they arrive.
We're in York again on Friday, since The Wife has a meeting there. Having sorted out the pallets on Thursday, I now get to spent Friday afternoon hanging out with my friend Paul and doing some playtesting.
That leaves me the weekend and Monday to catch up with my books (I've got a VAT return to do by the end of the month and I'll have a lot to do the week after Essen if last year was anything to go by, so it's better to get it out of the way before I go. If last week was very stressful, this week is still busy, but a bit calmer.
When I get back, as well as sorting out all the paperwork from Essen there's a couple of prototypes I need to get made up and distributed to my playtesters. No peace for the wicked!
Posts
9 comments:
504 Sumeria, thats a lot, how manny of them are you calculation youre gonna sell during essen and how manny are you planing to sell to suplyers?
/Daniel
Hiya Daniel,
It's hard to tell, I don't have much experience.
Last year I only had one game (It's Alive!), I sold 140 to members of the public and almost all the rest to distributors.
I hope to sel more to the public this time (I've advertised more), but expect to sell less to distributors (most of them already have my games).
Cheers,
Jack
Hey, Jack. I have decided to abandon my plan to make copies of the game I designed last month and sell them at Essen. Releasing it prematurely may make a bad impression that it never recovers from. I will do this properly. I will check the place out while I'm there and get ideas for next year.
I advertised on alibaba.com to get manufacturing quotes, but none so far. I contacted several game manufacturers via the website but haven't yet heard back. They also have wholsalers and distributors on there, perhaps some you do not already use.
Essen is open for a total of 35 hours over the four days. With 504 copies of Sumeria, that gives you a target of 15 sales per hour, which is one copy of Sumeria sold every 4 minutes to members of the public. I don't think any game will sell this well. I think you should target distributors for bulk purchases. It would also be prudent to have contingency shipping home in place.
I wrote down a list of names and taglines for my game. I made them into Google Adword ads and rotated them evenly. My favourite title was the second-most clicked, but my alternative option trounced it. That will be the title I go with now. You could try the same for your next game.
Hiya Darren,
Sounds like a wise decision - like you say there's a lot of competition at Essen and bad impressions at the beginning will hurt you.
As for Sumeria I don't expect to sell them all to members of the public (though there are games there that will definitely sell that many - popular titles have people queuing for hours to buy a copy), I just hope to sell more Sumeria to the public than I did It's Alive! last year (plus I hope some Carpe Astra and It's Alive!).
I am of course in contact with distributors too.
Cheers,
Jack
Hi Jack!
Have you considerd making a game bundle? 2 games fore xxx or sumeria and xxx for yyy. Or maby go for the whol pakage, al 3 for xxx.
I haven´t seen that you plan to have a essen discount, maby i missed it, so this might be a nice option. Annyway i think you will sell more games this way without cutting into youre cut to mutch.
Or you can do a it with carpe and its alive, to boost there sails, a 5$ discount on the other game is probobly a eye catcher atleast.
Hiya Daniel,
All games will be discounted from their full EUR retail price. No0t sure about a bundle deal yet - maybe...
Cheers,
Jack
A bundle deal can never hurt according to my opinion.
It could convince people who are not sure yet if they would purchase one of the games you're selling.
Hiya Dirk,
True, but I'm already doing a deal on the price (and a couple of other deals with partners too) and bundle deals make the reporting and royalties much more complicated.
Cheers,
Jack
Post a Comment