Doctor Esker's Notebook Project - by the numbers

I did a workup of the finances and sales I've had for the Doctor Esker's Notebook project. I figure this might be of interest to other indie game designers and publishers. The project started in May 2018, with the first printing (1080 copies) ordered in August 2018, arriving misprinted in October, and then fixed and ready to sell by February 2019. The sequel and the second printing of the original game (2160 copies each) were ordered in July 2019 and arrived in late September 2019.

Let me know if you have questions in the comments.

Bigger version of the image is here.

Esker in Hungary!

I noticed I had a review of Doctor Esker's Notebook in a Hungarian blog - very cool! Sounds like they liked it, if Google Translate can be trusted. It's neat that it ended up halfway around the world.

https://szabadulos.blog.hu/2018/11/26/otthon_jatszhato_2_resz_angol_nyelvu_szabadulos_jatekok

Some people suck

Guy buys original puzzle game, returns it three weeks later, presumably after playing and enjoying. Then he buys the sequel, returns it three weeks later.

Total cost to me, $6, plus potentially unsellable stock and bad reputation on Amazon.

Total cost to him: $0.

Don't think I'm not watching, or that you're not a terrible person.

Finances update

I haven't done a financial update in a while. Here's how it looks. Graph #1 is my total revenues stacked on top of my total expenses.

   

 Graph #2 is my net profitability, now about $4,900 in the red but rising fairly steadily.

 

Both graphs show my initial costs for 1080 games, the gradual rise to net profitability, and then the larger costs of my second print run (2160 each of original and sequel for 4320 total games), and my sales since then.

In terms of inventory, I've still got about 4575 games, which at the net revenue I typically make per game is about $39,000 in total potential revenue if I'm able to sell them all. Set against that revenue will be any future advertising, promotions, taxes, free copies, spoilage, and other such expenses.

So, I have a good shot at net profitability, but probably not until next year, and only then if my sales stay steady or increase.

Son of Doctor Esker's Notebook is now officially available

Son of Doctor Esker's Notebook is now officially available for purchase on my site! Yay. Here's the purchase page. I added a special discount (10%) if you're new to Esker and want to buy both games at once.