Vengeful Ghost

Transparency is important to Vengeful Ghost. Comics is hard business. It gets easier if we share information and our hard-fought lessons learned. In posts like this, Parker will lay out the Ghost’s quarterly numbers and try to provide some context.

We’re at the end of Vengeful Ghost’s first calendar year, which is pretty darn exciting! Q4 brought some interesting developments, some new strategies, and a ton of new data. Let’s get to the data:

Fourth Quarter 2016 (and Calendar Year 2016)

Pages published: 13 (CY16: 32)
Pageviews: 1725 [+372 over Q3] (CY16: 3768)
Average monthly visitors: 128 [+45 over Q3] (CY16: 106)
Patreon patrons (at the end of the quarter): 9 (+1 over Q3)

Revenue: $194.6 [-370 over Q3] (CY16: 764.6)
Expenses: -$1,236.23 (CY16: -$4,405.45)
% of expenses to Ghostfriends: 83.14% (CY16: 74.04%)
Net: -$1,041.63 (CY16: -$3,640.85)

Physical Distribution

Thursday Night

Sold/gifted/traded: 7 [-28 over Q3] (CY16: 42)

The Coriolis Effect

Sold/gifted/traded: 9 [-18 over Q3] (CY16: 36)

Pay to Win

Sold/gifted/trade: 5 (CY16: 5)

There were no digital sales that were not part of a bundle with a physical sale.

Convention Appearances

Bmore Into Comics Issue #11

VG Books sold: 12
Ghostfriends books sold: 2
Revenue/table fee ratio: 2.84

Project tracker (as of 31 December)

1. Launched since Q3
   1. Pay to Win (formerly Project Jakarta): Web and print published. Ashcan print run, unlimited, negligible costs. No revenue sharing goals reached.
   2. Mineborn (formerly Project Delhi): Web publishing. Limited print run and digital editions to come.
2. In development
   1. Project Tokyo: In final art production. No change as of 31DEC16…but there has been since then!
   2. Project New York City: In second-stage editing.
   3. Project Manila: In first-stage editing. No change, whomp whomp!
   4. Project Shanghai: In first-stage editing.
   5. Project Seoul: In outline.
3. Legacy
   1. Thursday Night: Web, digital, and print published. Limited print run of 50. Revenue/Printing=1.88 (+.79). No revenue sharing goals reached.
   2. Coriolis Effect: Web, digital, and print published. Limited print run of 75. Revenue/Printing=0.95 (+0.31). No revenue sharing goals reached.

Analysis

• It still feels like early days for Vengeful Ghost. More data means more better analysis, and my understanding is that the publishing world moves on annual cycles–I’ll start drawing harder conclusions in the next 6-9 months.
• On that note, December was a much less impressive showing at Bmore Into Comics than July. Maybe it was because the audience was largely the same and they’d already bought one of my books. Maybe it’s because it was December. Five shows have been announced for Bmore in 2017, so it’ll be interesting to see how they go this year.
• I need to work on in-person marketing. I was practically giving away “Pay to Win” at that Bmore show, but few people took me up on it. Best guess is that the jokey pitch I used for it fell flat, so I’ll try something more straightforward next time.
• Despite our best efforts getting derailed by the…surprising…election, November was still a solid month for Vengeful Ghost in terms of website traffic. We got some return on our investment for the promotions we executed (especially since the cost was pretty darn low!).
• Unique monthly users climbed month over month. It’s hard to tell how many are new month-to-month, but I’d like to imagine this represents a growing cadre of quiet readers.
• More cons = more money (though that’s not always the point). For 2017, I’m shooting for 3-4 major cons and at least 2 or 3 of the Bmore shows or other minis.
• As always, looking closely at these numbers points to just how costly this business can be to break into. Hopefully as the year progresses, I’ll be able to get some higher-margin items into the mix. Is there anything you’d like to buy?

Thanks for reading. Please comment with any questions. If you want to help make those numbers a little prettier, consider clicking over to our Patreon campaign, buying something from our online store, or throwing something in the tip jar.