raging_swan

So roughly a year ago, I uploaded my first product – Retribution – to the Paizo store and my journey toward eternal wealth and the ownership of my own private island began. While I haven’t quite yet achieved my goals in only 12 months I’ve expanded my offering to 26 products available at e23, Amazon, Amazon UK, Paizo, RPG Drivethru, RPG Now and Your Games Now!

Thoughts on 2010

It’s been a very busy year, but ultimately an exciting, satisfying year.

While I was planning Raging Swan Press, I realised that I would never be able to rival the vast amount of products other 3PPs put out as I am not doing this full-time. I instead opted to produce a smaller number of quality supplements. In this I think I have succeeded overall. The vast majority of reviews for Raging Swan’s products bestow four or five stars (in particular Retribution and The Lonely Coast as well as the TRIBES line have been particularly well received).

I’ve been greatly helped in my new endeavour this year by many people who have provided their skills and insights in many cases free of charge. I’d like to publically thanks (in no particular order) my own gaming group (Andy Lewis, Andy Hodges, Rob Wills, Neil Wright and Danny Dunning), Steve “Taz” Cansdale, Martin Tideswell (and his merry band of playtesters), Aaron T. Huss, Christian Alipounarian, Megen Robertson, Eric Menge, Brittany Michel, Philippa Broadhurst, Marc Radle, Matt Morrow, Simon Butler, Ryan Sumo, Dave Peterson, Andrew Hodges, J.P. Chapleau (and his merry band of playtesters), Steve Hood and all the kind people who have taken the time to review one or more of my products. Without their input every one of my products would not be as polished as it is.

A Year in Review

As part of my yearly review, I’ve taken a look at Raging Swan’s sales channels in relation to overall number of sales and total revenue. This isn’t a wildly scientific approach as I do not yet have a full year’s trading with all of my partners, but it was a useful exercise and I’m looking forward to reviewing next year’s results and seeing how they change. In particular, I’ll be interested to see the relationship between OBS and Paizo.

One statistic I found interesting was that although I only made 33% of my sales through the Paizo store this accounted for 50% of my revenue. OBS on the other hand (with whom I started working with in July) accounted for 63% of my sales but only 40% of my revenue.

Best performer on return on investment is e23, who I started working with in December. Sales at e23 accounted for 2% of my total, but 4% of revenue.

I also took a look at my month on month sales and although the first few months were not great, around June/July time, things began to take off. (I joined OBS in July and I’m wondering if the exposure I got there gave Raging Swan an awareness boost). As you can see from the graph, the overall trend is most definitely upwards.

I was, however, disappointed and surprised how few print sales I made – it seems that for me PDF is king! That said, the introduction of Raging Swan’s Free PDF offer certainly jump-started print sales – so much so that in February I decided to make this a permanent part of my offering. This has the knock-on effect of requiring more print products; at the moment I only have two which doesn’t give the offer much longevity. This is something I need to fix this year.

Here are some other observations of the year:

• You can never have too many people edit and review your product.
• Product lines are a good thing. Often when I release a new supplement within a line (say PLAYER’S RESOURCES or TRIBES) previous entries get a little bump in sales.
• It is better to release many smaller products than a few big products.
• I love doing what I’m doing!
• Raging Swan deals overwhelmingly in PDFs, which made up 98% of my sales.

The Upcoming Year

I think I’m starting to get a handle on this publishing lark. Looking at the year ahead, I have several goals:

• Maintain the high standards of product I achieved in my first year – I want to be proud of every single one of my products and I won’t release anything I wouldn’t use in my own campaign.
• Produce more print products to support Raging Swan’s Free PDF offer.
• Release product every two weeks. My plan is to release many 20-page products interspersed with a few larger supplements and adventures. (As an aside, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy writing adventures – that’s something I need to do more of this year).
• Raise awareness of Raging Swan Press. This is something I was pretty bad at last year. I love creating and I spent so much time writing that I didn’t spend as much time as I should have spreading the word.
• Keep the website updated and user-friendly.
• Work with more freelancers – particularly on the TRIBES line. If you are a freelancer who want to work on Pathfinder compatible materials, contact me with a decent suggestion and we’ll see what we can work out!
• Take more risks. Someone famous said “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” – that’s really simple, but wise advice.
• Buy a desert island.

Conclusion

While I still can’t quite afford my tropical island, I didn’t lose any money – which something that I assumed that I would do in my first year and I’ve had a tremendous amount of fun. I’ve also made some great new gaming chums and even got back in contact with friends I used to game and work with in the RPGA.

All in all, a great year! I’m really looking forward to next year.