Friday, February 17, 2023
3D Printing
I managed to get some nice prints done with my new printer so far. The first print I did was of the USS Cambridge, the CSS Raliegh (stand in model) and the CSS Harmony (stand in model). Everythign turned out really well. However, I was using regular resin. The smell was too strong and I switched after that to a water washable from Sunlu. It took a number of prints to get things tuned in. The water washable gave me a good print of the USS Minnesota and the CSS Jamestown. I only lack prints of USS Congress and the USS St Lawrence. Fortunately, these are the same class ship and I have the STL files for it.
I am also anxiously awaiting the release of What a Cowboy. To prep for it, I am looking at a Mexican gang to add to my existing unit of Peter Pig minitures. I checked out 3d Breed's models and purchased their set. I printed the foot minis and am happy with them so far. They look good. I should have added a base in Tinkercad first. I still need to see how well I scaled them to match with my existing Peter Pig.
Well, it is a start. I also have mounted versions of each of these. In addition, they come with two different horse variants each. Seems like their miniatures are really nice so far. I am happy with it. They need casualty figures though.
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
Wargame Vault Review
You may not know, but Wargame Vault using a rating system for products based on their sales numbers. Each level is assigned a "metal" as it rating. Starting at Copper, it progresses to Silver, Electrum, Gold, Platinum, Mithral, and lastly Adamantine.
As of this morning, I did some research and was pleasantly surprised. My books had done better than I had expected. Thank you very much.
These are only sales from Wargame Vault and do not include the hard copy sales from Amazon, direct sales (before I did a PayHip store), or sales from my PayHip site. Now, I had messed up when i did the East Front Bundle. Within the bundle are both Kharkov Supplements, Action at Ustilug and In the Name of Roma. If you do bundles correctly, bundle sales increaase sales of the products under them. All in all, I am very happy with how they have done. Of the 9 books, only four are on Amazon in print form. Two are available as kindle. Kindle is a terrible format to release the books on.
Now there are other items that are only on PayHip that are not on the other sites. I may have to change that as it seems peopel trust Wargame Vault more than they do PayHip.
The sales levels are as follows:
| Rating | Number of Sales |
|---|---|
| Copper | 51+ |
| Silver | 101 |
| Electrum | 251 |
| Gold | 501 |
| Platinum | 1001 |
| Mithral | 2501 |
| Adamantine | 5001 |
| BOOK | Type | Sales | Sales Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action at Ustilug | WWII Skirmish Scenarios | 81 | Copper |
| In The Name of Roma | WWII Skirmish Scenarios | 45 | - |
| Battle of Kharkov 1941 | WWII Skirmish Scenarios | 149 | Silver |
| Second Battle of Kharkov 1942 | WWII Skirmish Scenarios | 86 | Copper |
| East Front Bundle | WWII Skirmish Scenarios | 226 | Silver |
| Falcon and The Gladiator | WWII Air Campaigns and Scenarios | 42 | - |
| The Coming Thunder | ACW Skirmish Scenarios | 156 | Silver |
| To Covet Glory | Age of Sail Small ship Battles | 114 | Silver |
| The War of Jenkin's Ear | Black Powder and Age of Sail Skirmish Scenarios | 25 | - |
In the Name of Roma is the oldest of the series and sold 63 kindle copies and anther 14 print copies. The First Kharkov supplement sold 14 kindle copies and 41 print copies. The Second Kharkov book was only available in print and sold 55 copies! Thank you! Lastly, To Covet Glory was only released as a print copy and sold 48 copies!
I forgot to look at PayHip.
| Book | Sales |
|---|---|
| Action at Ustilug | 36 |
| In the Name of Roma | 11 |
| Battle of Kharkov 1941 | 26 |
| Second Battle of Kharkov | 26 |
| East Front Bundle | 31 |
| Falcon and the Gladiator | 14 |
| To Covet Glory | 16 |
| The War of Jenkin's Ear | 8 |
The copies I sold directly and from PayPal are lost to history. No idea of how I would ever figure that out. Anyway, it was a fun exersize to look through how sales have gone. Compared to many, this is a drop in the bucket. But for me, I am pretty proud as to how they have done. I would love to see the War of Jenkin's Ear book get to copper status. That it is half way there made me really happy. I didn't think I would sell 5 copies of that, honestly. It is a very niche subject.
Anyway, that is some motivation to push ahead.