Well the OneBBScon was a bust as far as Door authors were concerned.  Sales 
were non-existent.  None of the authors that I have contact with did well.  
In fact, most lost money.  I think I was mislead a bit as to the numbers of 
attendees that were concerned.  If I knew in advance and I should have checked 
it out more thoroughly, that only around 3000 people were going to attend I 
wouldn't have bothered.  As most of the 3000 were not buyers.  I believe that 
everyone including the vendors were counted as attendees.  I sold more copies 
of my games here on my home system during that week than I sold at the 
conference.

	I should have anticipated the scenario there, as I have been doing 
this for quite a few years now.  Buyers for door games are far and few in 
between.  There are a lot of reasons and I have been through some of them 
before.  I just feel the need to write about it as I have never seen so many 
down in the dumps authors as I saw after this show.  I correspond with Al 
Lawrence through E-mail every now and then and after I told him about the 
lack luster performance of door sales at the convention he shared with me 
that he had attended the previous years conference and knew that door sales 
were poor so he did not involve himself with trying to sell at the 
convention.  I just wish I written to him before the show!

	It's pretty funny talking with other door authors about their sales.  
Most won't even come close to mentioning how they are doing.  I'm going to 
break that trend with my article this month.  With Terra-Firma which is far 
and away my best selling door, and my other doors, I am quickly approaching 
the 1000 copies sold mark.  Remember that this is over a four year period.  
Sales last year and so far this year have been twice as good as the previous 
two years.  I consider this doing quite well.  Since no other door authors 
will reveal their sales, I have no way of measuring how well I doing against 
other doors.  I have heard outrageous stories about how well Tradewars has 
done as a door.  These stories may or may not be true as Tradewars is one of 
the first and one of the best on the market.  I can infer a great deal 
however from the trends I see.  First, a lot of door authors drop out of 
sight after a short time selling their doors.  This I would have to believe 
is due to poor sales and no other reason.  If sales were good and they were 
making money, they would still be at it.  Secondly, is the above paragraph.  
When a product or company sells well, you hear about it in all of the 
advertising.  "1,000,000 million copies sold World Wide!".  You never hear 
about this from door authors.  

	Recently, the doors Usurper and Lord seem to be doing quite well.  At 
least they are talked about in the echo's quite a bit.  You also hear a lot 
about BRE and SRE.  As new versions of these doors have been coming out quite 
regularly, one can infer that they are doing well.  But what exactly does 
doing well mean?  I have no idea!  Like I said I can only guess.  Let's see, 
with over 37,000 nodes in Fidonet alone, each one representing a BBS system, 
you would think that only selling 1000 copies of Terra-Firma would not be 
doing very well.  However there are a lot of things to add the formula.  
In my net which isn't very large compared to some of the larger city nets, 
we have about fifteen nodes.  I would say five out of the fifteen nodes are 
long standing established BBS's.  Out of those five, only  two are fun type 
game oriented BBS's, and of those two, one is extremely large and gets most 
of the business.  From this one lone BBS, I will get a registration for one 
of my doors.  It would be fun to find out just how many of the 37,000 nodes 
in Fidonet have sysops who are over the age of twenty one and actually make 
enough money from their BBS's or have the extra money to buy doors for it.

	I have nothing to complain about.  I have a very good REAL job that 
more than pays for the bills.  I use the extra money coming in from my door 
game sales to buy computer equipment and run my home office for sales.  Hey, 
I just thought of another reason while I was sitting here.  Possibly some of 
these door authors are hiding income from the IRS and so can not reveal how 
much they are making for fear of getting caught!  One never knows.  When you 
compare the man hours I have put into Terra-Firma and the sales, I guess you 
can see that programming doors is a matter of enjoyment for me and a 
hobbie of sorts.  I could never make a living from it.  One of my other doors, 
Quantum Jump also sells well  and I often wonder if I just had enough doors 
written that do as well as Terra-Firma and Quantum Jump possibly I could make 
a meager living just from selling doors.  Should I quit my real job and just 
program for a living?  Not on your life!  Although BBS's have been around for 
awhile I can't see them lasting the rest of my adult life and would never 
venture my future on them.  I just don't have the time to keep up with those 
two doors (bugs and updates) to get involved with new some new doors.  I 
also help RoAnn Vecchia with Door World magazine quite a bit.  The magazine 
is a time consuming effort but one I consider worth the time.

	As the Fall of the year has come and business is picking up, I always 
get a bit more excited then during the summer months when things really drop 
off in the BBS world except for the most die hard users.  This will be the 
first Fall sales year for Door World and I can get a truer picture of how 
well the magazine is doing.  The magazine is a great idea for door authors 
and sysops alike.  What with the cost of advertising in a magazine like 
Boardwatch, Door World magazine is a great value for ShareWare Door Authors 
(free)  and SysOps who want to advertise their boards.  And at $10.00 bucks 
for a years subscription how can a sysop loose!  The hint section alone for 
any BBS's game players is worth it's weight in gold.

	Well enough for me this month.  See you next............

Dave Wendling
1:332/107
wendling@terrafirma.win.net  
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