Following on from the previous post, this is how gross $ sales break down by outlet.
The net margin picture (which includes a lot of guess work) looks a little different:
PDF sales declined as a percentage of net margin, because of the mammoth Ashen Stars and Bookhounds pre-orders, but increased overall.
So, after all this, why would I carry on doing distribution sales? Well, in 2011, I sold nearly 5000 games through distribution. By mail order, including a whole bunch of additional PDF products I sold about 4000. One of the purposes of Pelgrane Press is to get as many of our games in to the hands of as many gamers as possible – and we can only do that through retail. Even if we were to make more money by selling direct only, I still wouldn’t do it. Retailers are also the recruitment ground for many new players, and they fulfil a valuable role maintaining and building the hobby. Finally, we sold 75% of our copies of Bookhounds through retail, and it’s only because of that we can justify the print quality that we want using offset printing.