Price targetting
Double King:
Could this / Should this be done at Cons? I don't know - and don't presume to. I wonder if it's prudent to mark down units at conventions because of the audience, competition and incentive to drive volume.
iago:
Quote from: Double King on July 21, 2008, 07:31:41 AM
Could this / Should this be done at Cons? I don't know - and don't presume to. I wonder if it's prudent to mark down units at conventions because of the audience, competition and incentive to drive volume.
Convention specials are de rigeur. You can certainly get away with doing that.
iago:
Quote from: GreatWolf on July 16, 2008, 07:33:35 AM
Evil Hat did something similar to this with its hard-cover and soft-cover editions of Spirit of the Century. I'd be interested to hear from Fred how this affected sales.
Could you ask something more specific about that? I'm having trouble figuring out where to start with an answer. :)
GreatWolf:
Quote from: iago on July 21, 2008, 12:46:19 PM
Could you ask something more specific about that? I'm having trouble figuring out where to start with an answer. :)
Sure!
Um, let's see....
As I recall, Evil Hat did a hard-cover and soft-cover release of Spirit of the Century. I'm curious about the following:
1) Did having two versions seem to drive up sales at all?
2) What was fan feedback about the two versions?
3) What other effects did having two versions have on the Spirit of the Century line?
4) Was this a successful experiment for you? How so?
5) Would you release other Evil Hat games in a similar way? Why or why not?
Just a couple of easy questions before GenCon. *grin*
iago:
Quote from: GreatWolf on July 21, 2008, 01:47:11 PM
As I recall, Evil Hat did a hard-cover and soft-cover release of Spirit of the Century. I'm curious about the following:
1) Did having two versions seem to drive up sales at all?
2) What was fan feedback about the two versions?
3) What other effects did having two versions have on the Spirit of the Century line?
4) Was this a successful experiment for you? How so?
5) Would you release other Evil Hat games in a similar way? Why or why not?
1) I don't know what the driving up of sales would be compared to. SOTC was the first product of its kind that we tried, and it blew our "we might sell a hundred" expectations out of the water. We ran a Hardcover and Softcover preorder simultaneously. What "drove up sales" if anything was the fact that we offered the PDF for free when folks preordered either, and they got it immediately, giving them instant content satisfaction as well as a reason to be patient about when the actual physical books shipped.
2) Folks liked having the choice. Those that knew it was POD were concerned about the hardcover's possible (lack of) quality, but I was able to reassure those very few who voiced it. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, though I don't know that I cataloged mentally how much of it was specifically about the hardcover/softcover split choice. Honestly I don't know how much that was a factor, though it did mean we got some pretty hefty cashflow, since the hardcover was priced a premium due to the heavy cost of hardcover POD.
3) It's just different formats, the way I look at it. The content didn't vary between them, so I don't feel like it had much impact on the line at all. There might be margin cases where the fact that there was a hardcover option helped make a sale to that rare customer who "won't ever buy anything that's softcover", but I doubt that's an appreciable percentage. I feel that the presence of PDF options has a bigger impact on things than offering a hardcover and a softcover.
4) Our preorder went for, hm, something like 300-400 units, as I recall, with a 2:1 softcover:hardcover split, or thereabouts. So, yeah, it was successful.
5) Not necessarily. Each product is pretty different, and most of them don't need a hardcover edition -- or should be ONLY hardcover. Much like many companies, I might consider doing a softcover release of DFRPG after we sold out of a hardcover printing, should that come about when we release that game. But at the end of the day, long-term, I don't think we got that many more sales due to the second format -- but it did mean I had to do two product setups, two separate printings, etc, doubling some certain kinds of work. Would it be worth it to eventually offer the hardcover? Sure, I guess. But necessary, no.
That said it's worth looking at what John Wick did with Houses of the blooded -- a 100 copies only ever, hardcover limited edition printing, alongside a "standard edition" softcover that would be his evergreen version. Those 100 copies sold out *fast* in preorder, despite being priced pretty high (in part because they include a CD chock full of really intriguing extras, I think). Creating scarcity can be an interesting strategy to goose sales.
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