Dragonmeet 2006 - Post Con Thoughts, Sales and Suchlike

[Malcolm Craig]

Dragonmeet, in London, is a very friendly and successful one day convention that runs on the first Saturday of December. With 600 - 800 (approx.) attendees, there's a goodly number of people there playing games and browsing the trade hall.

This was the first year that The Collective Endeavour had a presence there. Indeed, this was the first con that we would be at as a group to promote indie games in the UK. As well as demoing our own games, we were also on hand to talk about the full range of indie games that were being carried by the excellent Leisure Games, who had the stand right next to us. Brennan Taylor also kindly provided us with an Indie Press Revolution banner and postcards.

Our stand itself looked excellent, with the Collective Endeavour and IPR banner providing a backdrop and the tables dressed with appropriate red and black cloths, with handy clear racks for the books. Our conscious decision, taking note from The Forge booth at Gen Con, was to really engage with con attendees, standing in front of, rather than behind our stand, offering 15 minute demos and taking time to discuss games and gaming with people who came to the stand.

The result? An excellent first outing for The Collective Endeavour. Our sales were way beyond our expectations and the buzz around the stand was fantastic all day. Out of all the stands in the trade hall, ours definitely had the most enthusiasm and get up and go. People were enjoying demos, enjoying taking and buying games. There were also many opportunities to direct people to Leisure Games after they asked about (and this is just a small selection) My Life With Master, Burning Wheel, The Princes Kingdom and many others.

So how did the hard sales figures work out? Well, we took well over £900 (almost bang on $1800) during the eight hours the trade hall was open. Sales broke down as follows:

a|state: 3
a|state Villains supplement: 4
a|state PDF collection CD: 2
Best Friends: 23
Best Friends PDF CD: 7
Best Friends poker chips: 6
Cold City: 10
Contenders: 7
Covenant: 12
Dead of Night: 14
Mob Justice ashcan version: 1
Swansong: 9

The outstanding sales success of the day was undoubtedly Best Friends, but all the titles we had showed good sales (I was even surprised to shift 3 copies of a|state, given the number of copies that we had sold a previous Dragonmeets). Cold City could have sold more, but sadly we only had 10 copies available due to shipping mishaps.

In conclusion, Dragonmeet was a great success for all of us. On a personal note, I'd like to thank Gregor Hutton, Andrew Kenrick, Matt Machell, Iain McAllister, Joe Prince, Cat Tobin and John Wilson for their hard work and enthusiasm throughout the day and in the run up to the convention.

Cheers
Malcolm

[iago]

Wow, those Best Friends sales are nuts (and very exciting, given my love for the game).  Any thoughts as to what contributed to it leading the pack like that?

[Pelgrane]

I'm really pleased the IPR/CE stand did so well, and it was good to meet you all. I did hear hoots of laughter from all the Best Friends demo games, so I imagine that helped a lot. £900 is a very good take for two stands. The whole indie-lead idea of quick demo games is something Pelgrane stole whole-heartedly this year. The inimitable Steve Dempsey ran four half-hour demos with five people a piece, and the Mission: Ineffable guys ran three one hour demos. It's the first year we have so actively gone out and sold our products as opposed to sitting back and hoping. I have the Forge and IPR to thank for that.

[Matt Machell]

It was a wonderful success, and it was great to meet up with other Indie games fans afterwards too.

My favourite moment, I think, was a group of guys coming up and being slightly cynical about how we were talking up each-other's games. "Well of course you're going to say Dead of Night is good! It's another game from the Collective." To which we gave the response "Don't take our word for it, play a 15 minute demo and decide for yourself". 15 minutes later, the guy bought the game.

If I wanted to be uber critical, I'd say some of the "15 minute" demos went on too long. I think everybody has a natural tendency to want to continue past that mark if folks are having fun and to hit a resolution point. But that's actually a bad thing, as from a pure sales point of view you want to leave them wanting more.

-Matt

[Pelgrane]

Following on from this comment, I had five people all wanting to play an Esoterrorists demo, but with only two slots available in separate games, they didn't want to split up. I marched them up to  Gregor to request a "Best Friends" demo, and within seconds, the aforementioned hooting.

[Joe J Prince]

Wow, those Best Friends sales are nuts (and very exciting, given my love for the game).  Any thoughts as to what contributed to it leading the pack like that?

I think several factors:
Number one is Gregor Hutton, more fun than a crab with a sombrero.
BF has a very unique look, how many pink RPGs are there?! It draws people in very easily. Strangely just as appealing to guy gamers as girl gamers. Also very non-threatening for non RPGers.
It's really easy to pitch (A RPG of girlfriends and their petty hatreds, you don't choose your stats, you choose who you hate), I must have sold at least half a dozen copies. Gregor runs truly great demos where you run through character creation and play the actual game. He runs them fanatically to a quartet-hour never overspilling by a precious second.
BF has also had good exposure since Indy GenCon, probably the best example is the Sons of Kryos' demo podcast. It's known to hip indie kids.   
Best Friends was the cheapest game on offer at the CE booth, the only one under a tenner I think.  The clever thing was that there were two products available with BF to up-sell: the pink poker chips and the CDs with original Gregor Hutton artwork no less.

But the main factor in non-Ronny winner BF being top seller was that Malc didn't have enough copies of Cold City! ;-P

+++
JoE

[Gregor Hutton]

Thanks Joe, I'll have to see how my grim, masculine, "serious" Ronny-winner sells next year. ;-)

Cold City and Dead of Night were fearsome in that first couple of hours, they quickly hopped up to 8 sales where we were at 2 or 3. The final copy of Cold City hung around for a while though (I wonder if people were off gaming or at some event?). In any case the more casual browser seemed less aware of the books on the stand than the people who descended just after the doors opened.

I had put £50 in change in the till as a float. John Wilson gave it back to me within half an hour of  the doors opening, saying "the money is flying in". Over £900 is really good going.

Also worth noting that you basically couldn't get hold of Best Friends or Dead of Night in the UK until very recently, whereas Cold City has been available for some time in shops (and sold well). Don't know about Contenders or Covenant's previous availability. Joe, Matt?

[Matt Machell]

Leisure Games have had Covenant[url] for a while (in fact they had a few on their stall), but otherwise it's been interweb only. So yes, that might be a part of it.

I suspect that having all the games in one place is a definite boost. Lots of people have said that they sought out the stall as it was the first time, so it'll be interesting to see how things change next year...

I'll be intrigued to see how Conpulsion or Conception go by comparisson too.

-Matt

[Malcolm Craig]

But the main factor in non-Ronny winner BF being top seller was that Malc didn't have enough copies of Cold City! ;-P

I think that once Gregor started demoing and people became aware of the stand, then the less well known games started really moving. I think Best Friends was top seller for the following reasons:

1) It's a quirky, attractive little book that really catches the eye. Not many games books are pink and white with stick figure drawings on the front.
2) It has an excellent price point that puts it within the realm of an easy, fun purchase (£7.50). Plus Gregor had made sure to have added value additions for the game.
3) Gregor is an excellent and enthusiastic demoer who really manages to transmit his energy to the assembled participants. There were always gales of laughter coming from his demo table whenever a Best Friends game was on the go.
4) Gregor is always friendly, approachable and knowledgable on the stand.
5) The core concept and the bits that make the game really cool and quick and easy to get across to the customer.

I think these five factors really combined to push sales of Best Friends. I think we could all learn from some of these aspects. certainly, for the next con I'll be making sure to have a Cold City PDF CD to sell as a low cost, but worthwhile (for the purchaser), extra. From anecdotal evidence, I might have been able to sell 5 or 6 more copies of Cold City (had I had them), but I doubt it would have outsold Best Friends.

There's a lot that we can learn from Dragonmeet, but as Gregor says, it will be interesting to see how things go at our next couple of Conventions.

Cheers
Malcolm

[Gregor Hutton]

Ozzy has a pic of a demo (with the booth in the background), and one where the booth can be seen from a different angle. (Thanks to Steve Bassett for the heads up on the pics, and Ozzy for taking them.)

[andrew_kenrick]

Just to come to this thread late, but it's worth commenting that although Dead of Night sold exceedingly well, we only demoed it twice, and I'm fairly sure we only sold one copy through one of those demos (the aforementioned conversion of the exceptionally sceptical guy).

I had an absolute blast at Dragonmeet. It was my first attempt at running 15 minute demos of my game, not to mention my first proper presence as a publisher at a con. It was cool meeting everybody, from my fellow UK publishers to the adoring fans :-)

I have two highlights that I hope no one will mind me sharing. They're kinda heartwarming!

The first was the sceptical guy who was really anti-Dead of Night ("why don't i just buy Blood instead - it's bigger and better!) so I threw down the gauntlet and invited him and his mates to a demo. It was wonderful watching the penny drop over and over again as each of the rules came up in the game, and in fact he handed me his money before the game finished! Very satisfying to so thoroughly win someone over.

The second was a friend of a friend who was introduced to me because I'd written DoN, which she already owned. She came up to thank me and shook my hand, telling me that DoN was the only game she'd ever felt confident enough to GM herself. She said a lot of this was because she was dispraxic and couldn't do complicated maths, so the simplicity of DoN really helped. It was really sweet, and even more so when her players all came up afterwards to shake my hand and thank me for getting Dee to GM for them!

I can't wait until next year!