As noted previous, we are at peak Christmas sales season, so online sales have been outstanding.
Weekend sales were up a whopping 72% from the previous week! Fantastic!
Monday sales drooped a bit, down 10% from the previous week.
Tuesday sales shot back up and were 62% higher than the previous week.
Wednesday sales were up 58% from the previous week.
Thursday sales were up 66% from the previous week!
And there were a lot (about 40%) of purchases other than Christmas Surprise Packages or Surprise Packages that included additional purchases. That’s great, because we get full retail on non-Grab Bag orders and that means bigger profit. Awesome all the way around.
Time is running out! Keep the orders coming! Of course, the big motivator is time. Time to order is running out to guarantee delivery by Christmas.
You have till December 16 to order via UPS or Priority Mail to guarantee getting books for Christmas gifts without having to pay for a faster mode of delivery. So get those orders in this week and next! Note: See the last and new Friday Press Release for complete details on shipping timelines. The latter should post afternoon or early evening December 11, 2009.
Building Excitement
Wayne Smith put The Rifter® #49 together and I’ll be assigning out artwork for that issue over the weekend.
Brandon Aten is coordinating the creation of new, “official” source material for the landmark (12 years) issue of The Rifter® #50. There are like 8-10 of your favorite freelancers contributing to the issue and it is going to rock. We’ll be making it 128 pages (maybe bigger) and the book will have a higher retail price (probably $14.95), but subscribers will get it at no extra charge.
I had a nice talk with various freelancers including Apollo Okamura, Amy Ashbaugh, Nick Bradshaw, Jeffry Hansen, and Carmen Bellaire about upcoming projects. People are fired up about new books coming out next year.
Artist, Michael Wilson, sent us a stack of art for Grab Bags. Thank you so much, Mike. And we still have art by Kent Burles, Nick Bradshaw, Brian and Allen Manning, and me available for consideration upon request. The artists were very generous.
All of a sudden, people are starting to place orders and talk about for the 2010 Palladium Open House. There has a been a bunch of buzz from G.M.s and freelancers about it too. Cool.
With this tough economy, pre-registration is less than half of what it was this time last year. From what we can tell, a lot of people are waiting to assess their financial situation AFTER Christmas before they book tickets to attend the POH. That’s fine by us. Just know the 2010 Palladium Open House has some amazing gaming events lining up, will feature many of the usual Palladium creators and G.M.s, and we’ll be celebrating Rifts® turning 20 years old, the Rifter® hitting Number 50 and a whole lot more. We plan on making this POH even more special than usual! We already have 2-3 people coming from Germany, 1-2 from Spain, I think one from England, and of course gamers from across the USA and Canada coming to enjoy the fun. Which is coming up FAST! Only five months away.
I took about 70 books for my father, Henry Siembieda, to sign when I visited with him on Wednesday. He was in excellent spirits, we had a very nice visit, but he wanted to know why I brought so few books to sign. Next time, he said, bring at least three cases of books. What a guy.
The worst of the big snowstorm that clobbered the northern Midwest and upper Michigan missed the Metro-Detroit area. We got only a couple inches of snow, but there were strong winds and frigid cold with high temps in the 20s to freezing, and overnight lows in the teens. Winter is definitely here.
Perhaps needless to say, processing so many Surprise Packages has us all in the Christmas spirit. Exhausted, but in the holiday spirit.
That’s it for now. Get those Christmas orders in and I’ll keep filling them up! Game on!
Sincerely,
Kevin Siembieda
Publisher, Writer, Game Designer, and Surrogate Santa
Palladium Books®, Inc. – 28 years of RPG Publishing
© Copyright December 10, 2009 Palladium Books Inc. All rights reserved.
Rifts®, The Rifter®, RECON®, Splicers®, Palladium Books®, Phase World®, Palladium Books®, The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, Megaverse®, Nightbane®, The Mechanoids®, The Mechanoid Invasion®, Coalition Wars® and After the Bomb® are Registered Trademarks of Palladium Books Inc. Heroes Unlimited™, Beyond the Supernatural, Dead Reign, Warpath, Shemarrian Nation, Dimensional Outbreak, Fleets of the Three Galaxies, Mysteries of Magic, and other published book titles, names, slogans and likenesses are trademarks of Palladium Books Inc., and Kevin Siembieda.
Robotech® and Robotech® The Shadow Chronicles® are Registered Trademarks of Harmony Gold USA, Inc.