Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I wish you all a happy, healthy and successful 2018!

2017 was a momentous year for me. Not only was my second daughter born during it, but I also started my second board game publishing company making hand-crafted board and card games. Question: What kind of idiot starts a company months after the birth of their child, when they already know how much work is involved in starting a company, hand-crafting games and raising a baby? Answer: My kind of idiot.

It's been hard work (as I knew it would be), but it's been rewarding on both fronts. Daughter the Second is now mostly sitting up, eating real food and still sleeping like a baby (i.e. badly). Eurydice Games is off to a great start: Zombology has got some great reviews on BGG, a decent average score and I've sold nearly a quarter of the print run and made a third. I've also got another game that's coming on really well too in FlickFleet.

Unlike last time round I've got a Business Plan, and according to that things aren't quite on track - I hit my 2017 sales target but I didn't get all the games I wanted to make in December made (it was a busy month with some work travel, work meetings and evening events, Christmas holidays and some particularly poor sleep from the baby, so I had few evenings available for crafting and I was often too knackered on those evenings to do it. I think I'll reduce my construction targets in 2018, I'm still aiming to make all the games within a year of the launch of Zombology in September 2017 though.

One of the things that has changed since I ran my first company is Kickstarter, and it has democratised the publication of board games, allowing every person and their dog to publish a game - so the marketplace is a lot more crowded. It's no longer possible to have a fairly basic website and shout at the internet via twitter and Google+ and expect your games to sell out. I need to do things differently.

There's a bunch of people out there who really like Zombology, and a bunch more who will love it if they come across it, but with all the Kickstarter noise that's pretty unlikely. The most successful route to sales that I've had so far has been actually playing it with people - I need to ensure that I'm introducing new people to Zombology every month and hopefully that'll allow me to keep hitting my targets. I'm also hoping to step up my media efforts (a forthcoming trip to the US is going to feature a podcast segment and a video interview). I need to get to conventions and games clubs and introduce people to it on a much wider scale - there's a goal for 2018!