ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED - Platinum Best Seller

I posted a while back that I was on the cusp of reaching the Platinum Best Seller status but, well, it turns out that things are never quite that simple.

Wargame Vault (or rather, their parent company OneBookShelf or, rather, Roll20 who recently merged with OBS and became the dominant entity or, rather, Orr Group LLC that is the holding company for Roll20*) actually has a pretty rigorous standard for deciding whether a sale counts towards metals.

Sales to the author don't count. I understand why, but it's a little frustrating because I buy books in order to sell them, not just to boost my figures. But it makes sense to prevent authors from artificially inflating their profile by filling their garage with boxes of unsold product.

Sales made as part of a bundle with other products don't count, because the bundle is considered to be the product, not its contents. So anyone who bought the ZD/Operation Nemesis digital bundle didn't contribute to the figures.

And, of course, review copies don't count (but I didn't send out a load of those).

The big one, of course, was the first one because I've probably bought a couple of hundred copies myself, one way or another, over the three years the game has been on the market (is it only three years??), but as I have fewer than a dozen still in-hand (mainly for events and suchlike), I'm pretty comfortable with these numbers.

So this means that the Platinum badge is earned. To be in the top 1.3% of sellers on the site is a pretty big deal. The deal gets bigger when you see who's up there with me, because most of the big sellers at this level aren't games, but game products: cardstock buildings, supplements, magazines etc. The games at that level are things like Five Parsecs from Home, Planet28 (whose writer I briefly met at Chillcon and with whom I really need to grab a coffee, some time), Starmada and similar. And it's really interesting to compare and contrast with those products.

FPFH is, of course, the work of Ivan Sorensen of Nordic Weasel, but this edition is the Modiphius one, so it has not only Ivan's excellent track record of design and his well tested FiveCore system, but also the weight of Modiphius's marketing behind it. Of course, WGV isn't the only place you can buy FPFH, which dilutes its total sales figures somewhat, and I think it must be only a smidgen short of reaching the Mithral seller status at 2501 independent sales. FPFH dropped some time after Zero Dark, but leapt ahead of it in sales very quickly. I can dream that, maybe, I'm catching up...

Planet28 released almost at the same time as Zero Dark but, with simpler production values and a lower price of entry (£10 rather than £20, but also with a PWYW option for the PDF) it should be no surprise that it outsells me. But otherwise it's an extremely similar product, albeit pitched more towards pulp and grimdark scifi than ultramodern and near future.

Starmada, meanwhile, has been kicking around for a while, now. It has found its place in the Platinum list through persistence and frequent supporting content - a lesson I need to commit more time into emulating (I have plans!).

The next step for Zero Dark in terms of sales figures is Mithral at 2500. But whether I can get there in the next two years, before planning for a second edition begins in earnest, I doubt. But maybe additional supplements and supporting products - and the release of Midnight Dark later this year will serve to keep sales buoyant.

*Seriously, it was hilarious seeing where my royalty payments were coming from over the months immediately after the "merger" (for which, read "takeover") and you could almost see the panic behind the scenes as various finance people tried desperately to make sure that everyone still got paid - and managed it seamlessly, by the way, although it was funny to see a payment from from Orr one month, then Roll20 the next, then back to OneBookShelf after that.