It might just be bias, but I would expect certain types of readers/fan-bases to be more likely to review than others.
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I’m back here despite everything because I have numbers and is not worried about sharing them.
At this point (latest royalty statement for November 2023), these are the number of copies I have sold:
Fallen Hero: Rebirth - 55 899
Fallen Hero: Retribution - 23 532
So yeah, I know Sera has outsold me like hell, but some of the estimated numbers that have been thrown around in here are just guesstimates. Also, I would estimate that between 1/4 and 1/2 books are sold during sales, both the initial discount and later campaigns which means a smaller price that’s on the cover. Rebirth in particular was priced very low at the start to generate sales, it is more expensive now than it has been in the past.
If my royalties were doubled, I still would not have enough monthly income to write full-time (only income in the household). Neither would my advances towards my other work (comics), and neither would the sales there once the books come out in 2024 (very low royaties). Not sure how my other project will sell, there’s 50% royalties there, but we are two people writing, and the sales are much, much lower. In short, my Patreon is the one that allows me to write full-time right now and probably in the foreseeable future.
I would love higher royalties. Don’t get me wrong there. But I have no insight into CoG/HG budgets, overheads or their future plans. For me, what is more important is that choicescript gets the updates that have been hinted (checkpoint saves) and I’m very happy we now have people working on that. What’s even more important is company stability and growth, getting a higher profile, more sales and more books. The Vampire books is a big step in the right direction for visibility.
Of course, giving authors good deals is part of that, to balance the lure of self-publishing. Exactly how good those deals should be, I don’t know enough to say. Or speculate about. I can only speak of what I know from my own situation.
EDIT: Sales for GPSO was 4127 for Retribution, and for iOS it was 5083. Think those two are the omnibus stats for the two phone systems. If you wanna run your ratings numbers with real sales.
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Can’t speak for VilsBae, but I got two substantially different numbers for total Play Store reviews when I asked AppAnnie (880) and when I just opened the Google Play Store in Chrome (1,770).
Did you mean reviews? If so, I think the model projects sales in the ballpark of 131,500. Congrats! 
[Never mind–looks like you’re doing even better! 3580 Play Store reviews plus 8422 omnibus ratings predicts you’ve sold 171,457 of Rebirth; 479 and 6064 for Retribution imply total sales of 93,471]
But on a serious note here: it’s worth noting that while I still doubt we’re talking six-figure gaps between top performers, the #9 ranked HG is comfortably outselling the #5 ranked CoG. I don’t want to stir up shit [too late], but seems to me that probably does have implications for the business model.
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NO, those were the number of units SOLD. (I have no idea what omnibus ratings I have)
I do hope you are joking in order to show how off those “models” are, but I need to make sure because I am a bit too autistic to tell :). Those “estimates” are ridiculously inflated, the real numbers are in my post above.
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8 422 for Rebirth and 6 064 for Retribution, shows my iOS omnibus.
Interesting. I know a lot of fans from abroad are advised to buy the games on Steam and then get it unlocked in the omnibus because Steam does a better job of adapting the price to their local currency (steam sells by far the highest for me). That might explain why the number of ratings are higher than the number of sales.
I also see 1,772 GPS ratings for XoR, assuming that’s the game you’re talking about?
Using the same method, I see 6,387 for Wayhaven Book One, which is about 91k after you divide it by 0.07. That’s short of the 150k figure I’m assuming refers to GPS downloads in @ViIsBae’s post?
May be misunderstanding the model though.
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Yes, sorry, I was. I think it’s good evidence that the divide-by-7% model is spitting out results many times too high when we feed it omnibus data (but I think too low when we just feed it written reviews from the app stores – XoR’s Android and iOS data project sales of just 26k).
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Aren’t some of those Android reviews from people who didn’t buy the game though? There’s always someone complaining how it’s cheating to ask to pay.
(Are the omnibus numbers cross-platform?)
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No offense intended to anyone, but from what we’ve seen so far I’m calling GIGO on the attempt to calculate sales from reviews with any degree of accuracy…
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Apologies for being slightly autistic on numbers. I don’t trust any phone numbers for ratings and reviews, they seem to be switching depending on location, and any place that claims to give an aggregate of them gives different numbers. But then, I don’t understand phones so…
However, Steam has hard numbers linked to actual sales.
Rebirth: 16 090 copies sold on Steam = 353 reviews.
Retribution: 8 957 copies sold on Steam = 303 reviews.
I only have two data points I can trust, but really hard to make a model from them…
Not sure actually, but I do know that the sales might be made elsewhere and then things gets unlocked in the omnibus. For example, Rebirth came out pre-omnibus and has very few direct omnibus sales, but has a lot of omnibus ratings. I assume this is because people got the omnibus entry unlocked later, by asking CoG about it.
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Yeah, the “restore purchases” in the omnibus can restore the purchase from installed separate app. (On iOS, at least. I don’t have a slightest idea on how it works on Android.)
Just to say, for the authors who’ve come in and been open, I appreciate seeing the numbers stuff does. It’s surprising both ways, like it doesn’t feel like much in comparison to other typical media, where like companies bitch about only selling two million $70 copies, but at the same time it’s a ton for a niche subgenre of book fronted by a small company. Seeing the actual numbers for things, like when youtubers sometimes talk about it, really puts shit into perspective that like jack shit makes worthwhile liveable money, and how significantly better a steady stream of donations à la patreon is than basically anything else.
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Because there are a lot of numbers flying around:
| Title | Omni Ratings | Combined Omni Sales | GPS Ratings | GPS Sales | Steam Ratings | Steam Sales | Total Sales | Sales Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZESH | 9,739 | ? | 4,556 | ? | 187 | ? | ? | #1 HG |
| ZE | 3,169 | ? | 7,301 | ? | 157 | ? | ? | #2 HG |
| WH 1 | 20,386 | ? | 6,387 | ? | 320 | ? | ? | #3 HG |
| WH 2 | 19,813 | ? | 2,834 | ? | 199 | ? | ? | #4 HG |
| WH 3 | 7,708 | ? | 612 | ? | 118 | ? | ? | - |
| FH 1 | 8,422 | ? | 3,577 | 20,966 | 353 | 16,090 | 55,899 | #9 HG |
| FH 2 | 6,064 | 9,210 | 479 | 4,377 | 303 | 8,957 | 23,532 | #12 HG |
| COR | 2,589 | ? | 2,613 | ? | 1,864 | ? | ? | #1 COG |
If we go by Steam ratings, we could project COR sold ~300k units total!, but I don’t think that’s particularly accurate. Extrapolating sales from reviews does appear to be folly, at least without a whole lot more data.
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I don’t see how actual units sold make a difference to the argument as I understand it. The argument (simplified but hopefully not straw-maned. ) is: CoG is making so much money off HG that they should lift the royalties because they can afford it. Which at it’s face sounds good.
But I want to run through a thought experiment on that. Lets say that it is true and they lift the royalties for HG authors. From my understanding the cost of CoG overhead would not allow a royalties lift for CoG authors. What happens to CoG when we only lift HG royalties? How long does it last if they keep that imbalance?
A step further. Lets say HG makes enough extra to afford to lift royalties for both. How long could you expect HG to continue to offset that difference? Like what happens if the major HG sellers stop hosting new games through here because of unforeseen/uncontrollable circumstances? Lowering them back down to 25% later to keep things afloat would be catastrophic.
I don’t see a lift being a long term worthwhile endeavor without CoG being able to lift their ratio without HG’s input. Anything else risks too much.
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GPS sales FH1: 20 966
GPS sales FH2: 4 377
Not sure if the omni sales are supposed to be the GPSO or the iOS numbers or combined.
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I was thinking combined. Updated the table to make it clearer.
It’s eye-opening once you look at average sales for non-text-based indie games on Steam, often even ones with critical acclaim. The numbers are really very small.
I’m fortunate enough to be able to live on my advances, royalties, and Patreon subscriptions. But that’s after years of hard work, luck, and maybe most importantly, enough stability to build an audience. As I mentioned on Reddit, and Havenstone kindly quoted upthread, the stability is a really important thing. Other publishers have sadly shuttered (StoryNexus many years ago now, Lovestruck, Sana Stories a while back, recently Storyloom), don’t seem to have gained an ongoing author stable (Tales), focus on other things like streaming or audio that not all writers will be interested in (Dorian, Richcast, EarReality), or run on a very quantity-based model (Whispers etc). None of the existing IF-adjacent companies (which usually = mobile game companies) that I know of have terms that are particularly competitive with HG, and most or all of them include F2P monetisation practices that no one likes.
It would of course be great if it was more lucrative for authors but CoG/HG/HC is a reliable place to find and retain an audience and I can see why a lot of people continue making games here. As others have said, commercial self-publishing IF is great if you already have a large audience, can hire marketers and artists (or have those skills yourself), can deal with a lot of admin, and can somehow have a work-life balance along the way. I have great respect for people who do it! and even as someone who has been lucky to gain an audience with my games, I really would not feel confident striking out and trying it on my own - it would just be too risky for me.
edit: perhaps this is why I am not sure I rate commercial self-publishing as a major competitor to HG as much as some do; it seems it’s more common for published ChoiceScript authors to move onto working in indie/AAA games, making mobile games with a company like one of the above ones I mentioned, or focus on other fields like academia, novels, etc, or to simply stop selling IF, than to commercially self-publish. I can only think of an example or two who have done that and one of them is also still making HGs (hello @CC_Hill, shoutout to When Life Gives You Lemons).
Certainly it seems when people go that route, it tends to require crowdfunding (such as The Night Market kickstarter, which also had a long time of development in which the author wasn’t getting paid, or substantial Patreon subscriptions which come with major commitments for authors).
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If raising the royalties for Hosted Game authors causes the Choice of Games label to be less attractive to established authors, then that indicates to me that the CoG contracts need to be re-examined. 25% royalties against $10,000 advance is doable for a living wage…in a world back when choicegames were Choice of the Dragon-sized. An author can’t afford to spend over a year and 400k words on that. That is an extreme amount of time, energy, financial risk, and opportunity cost.
I really don’t know much about what CoG offers their authors in terms of editing and support, so I’d rather focus on Hosted Games. For anyone who hasn’t read it recently, check out the link above for a refresher. Hosted Games doesn’t offer authors support. You’re not getting an editor, you’re not getting cover art, a trailer, any sort of promotion outside of the mailer, and you’re certainly not getting any cash advances. You do, however, get content checked by a reviewer and a copyeditor for any errors.
What does this sound like? It sounds like an app marketplace. That’s what Hosted Games is: a platform. And I think that’s fantastic. But no platform, be it Steam, the App Store, or Google Play, takes 75% of royalties. They couldn’t justify it–or get away with it. And so to get to my point, which is very simple: let the royalties reflect what Hosted Games actually is: a platform for choicegames.
I think a large part of the problem this change hasn’t happened yet, though I think we’ll ultimately get there, isn’t because Californians are secretly nefarious. It’s because there’s a lack of incentive to change. More and more authors, often very young with ample amounts of free time, are indulging in writing WIPs that are 300k+ words, and going at it as a hobby they do say during studyhall or in-between college courses.
From what I’ve gathered from HG’s public responses in the past, and this is ultimately just a ‘vibe-check’ from me, but I think the people at Hosted Games justify the royalty imbalance at least in part because it “isn’t intended” to offer an author a living wage, or that it “isn’t intended” to become an income stream for the author to rely on. I don’t think I need to elaborate why this sort of thinking is morally wrong and exploitative, so I won’t.
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I think you are underestimating the costs of copyediting (and it’s worth noting that mobile publishers I’ve encountered don’t really do it at all, while generally also having non-competitive pay rates) - although like I say I totally agree that it is good for authors to get more money. It would be great for a higher proportion of authors to make a livable wage solely through this avenue.
It’s probably worth you/Sam/others who feel the same having a conversation with HG about this? Staff aren’t typically on the forums regularly and it may be more fruitful to start a conversation about negotiating preferred terms with them directly if that’s the goal.
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