On Tuesday, Patrick Dugan posted a review of My Life with Master to Greg Costikyan's Play This Thing blog. The review was picked up by Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing blog (within an hour if I'm guessing the time zones correctly). Boing Boing was at one time the world's most popular blog, according to Technorati, which rates such things. (It's currently ranked no. 5.) The title of the Boing Boing post was "My Life With Master: 'As seminal to RPGs as Frankenstein was for literature,'" a quote from Patrick's review.

And then people started buying it. A lot. Mostly the pdf at first, and then increasingly the book. It's only now, 72 hours or so later that things are pretty calm.

So, I can guess your question. How much is "a lot"?

Check out this year-over-year chart of My Life with Master sales I posted to halfmeme.com about this time last year:



Note how sales have tapered off year-over-year since I first started selling the game in 2003. 237 units from July to the end of 2003. 364 units in 2004. 295 units in 2005. 223 units in 2006. And I haven't done my 2007 Half Meme Press taxes yet, but I roughly estimate 2007 sales of My Life with Master at around 183 units (maybe 46 of which were the pdf version).

In the 72 hours since My Life with Master appeared on Boing Boing I've sold 71 units (39 of which are the pdf), plus two copies of the Acts of Evil ashcan, and one copy of Bacchanal.

Pretty damn cool, to be sure, but actually not the coolest part.

Huh? Well, back in 2003 when I first put the print version of the game up for sale the best rate for shipping it internationally via the U.S. Postal Service was "Air Letter Post". But there was significant cost variation across the various destination "zones," which I didn't understand well, and I wasn't particularly wise in the ways of PayPal buttons anyway, so my order page asked international buyers to email for a shipping and handling quote (which, knowing the weight of a packed copy of the game from past experience I could easily calculate via the USPS website, no knowledge of zones required). More recently the most economical rate is First Class International, and it has less cost variation across destinations. But having come to enjoy emailing with prospective international buyers about shipping and handling and how they heard about the game, I haven't bothered implementing a button for international orders. So when My Life with Master appeared on Boing Boing on Tuesday I started inquiring of international buyers requesting shipping/handling quotes whether they were "active (or lapsed) RPGers," or just curious from hearing about the game online.

And yeah, I only had the conversation with five or six buyers, but they were board gamers, and graphic designers, and WoW players, and only one was an active RPGer. Think again about that year-over-year tapering off in the chart; getting attention beyond the self-identifying RPG community...now that's cool.