There is now way of knowing that. Even if we get 20,000 visitors in a month, it doesn't mean more than a dozen would buy the book at best. There's no correlation between visitors and what they will or won't purchase. A lot of those visitors come to play the games, for instance.
I can give you some figures for my YouTube videos. Let's remember, they are free to watch, so there's no barrier in terms of money like with the book. So, how many people from AA watch my videos?
8 people watched The Lost Vikings. 11 watched Adventure. 9 watched Metroid.
Of course, this isn't taking into consideration folks who are subscribed to my channel and watch them that way, but still sobering. For some reason, it always feels like we're writing to a large audience, but it's actually a small group.
Armchair Arcade as a whole gets an average of 21,000 unique visitors per month. Many of our referrals are from Wikipedia and some a social bookmarking called "reddit." Our most popular content is our RSS feed, which generates most of our traffic (though it's questionable how many of those folks ever actually visit the site.)
It's hard to estimate how many folks from AA bought my book, but at least 5 of the people who watch my videos say they bought it. Assuming 500 people watch a video, that's about 1%. Extrapolating from that, if 1% of those 21,000 bought the book, that's 210 copies sold--which sounds about right to me. I'm pretty sure that most of our sales come from outside the community; people browsing on Amazon and the like.
For comparison's sake, Dungeons & Desktops sold 1300 copies in its first year, and that book received good publicity. In addition to Slashdot it got a full-page review in PC Gamer magazine, nominated for a prize at Gamasutra, and was even reviewed in an academic journal. Let's hope that VG will get similar coverage or that Woot! will have impact.
On the downside, 1300 copies is considered very, very niche. We will be strictly limited to small, specialty presses unless we can get that up to 5,000 at the very least (10,000 is the average).
There is now way of knowing that. Even if we get 20,000 visitors in a month, it doesn't mean more than a dozen would buy the book at best. There's no correlation between visitors and what they will or won't purchase. A lot of those visitors come to play the games, for instance.
I can give you some figures for my YouTube videos. Let's remember, they are free to watch, so there's no barrier in terms of money like with the book. So, how many people from AA watch my videos?
8 people watched The Lost Vikings. 11 watched Adventure. 9 watched Metroid.
Of course, this isn't taking into consideration folks who are subscribed to my channel and watch them that way, but still sobering. For some reason, it always feels like we're writing to a large audience, but it's actually a small group.
Armchair Arcade as a whole gets an average of 21,000 unique visitors per month. Many of our referrals are from Wikipedia and some a social bookmarking called "reddit." Our most popular content is our RSS feed, which generates most of our traffic (though it's questionable how many of those folks ever actually visit the site.)
It's hard to estimate how many folks from AA bought my book, but at least 5 of the people who watch my videos say they bought it. Assuming 500 people watch a video, that's about 1%. Extrapolating from that, if 1% of those 21,000 bought the book, that's 210 copies sold--which sounds about right to me. I'm pretty sure that most of our sales come from outside the community; people browsing on Amazon and the like.
For comparison's sake, Dungeons & Desktops sold 1300 copies in its first year, and that book received good publicity. In addition to Slashdot it got a full-page review in PC Gamer magazine, nominated for a prize at Gamasutra, and was even reviewed in an academic journal. Let's hope that VG will get similar coverage or that Woot! will have impact.
On the downside, 1300 copies is considered very, very niche. We will be strictly limited to small, specialty presses unless we can get that up to 5,000 at the very least (10,000 is the average).