Where Does The Money Go?
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 11:04AM As you’ve probably seen, I’m asking for a lot of money to get Mythic Hero written, printed, and published: $33,000, which I think would be a Kickstarter record for an RPG supplement (not an RPG — the record for that’s over $40,000 — but a supplement for an existing RPG). Since I’m asking for so much of your support, I figure it’s only fair to show you where the money’s going.
Salary: MH is going to take a lot of time and effort to write, layout, and shepherd through printing. I estimate 3-5 months, and it could easily take more. During that time I need to pay myself something for the work involved — a salary, if you will. Otherwise MH becomes nothing but a fun ride to bankruptcy.
To calculate what I should pay myself, I’ve assumed the project will take four months. That seems reasonable to me, and will encourage me to work hard to get the book done as quickly as possible. Given the work and skill required to write MH, I think a salary of $3,000 per month (before taxes, alas!) is fair. So, four months at three thousand dollars a month = $12,000.
Layout-related fees: Since I’m relatively new to doing layout, I want to budget for the possibility of having to hire someone to help me out with the hard parts, or things I haven’t done before. I’m also likely to want to buy some fonts and suchlike to make the book look better. For all that I’ve budgeted $500.
Art: MH is going to be a very art-heavy book because it has so many character sheets for gods, heroes, and monsters. Based on the four chapters already written, I’m estimating that it could easily require 250-300 individual quarter-page illustrations, plus of course a color cover. Based on the prices quoted to me by the artists I have lined up, I’ve budgeted $7,500 for art.
Printing: Since I don’t anticipate having to print large numbers of MH, it’s not likely I’ll be able to go the traditional printing route — I’ll probably have to use a print-on-demand (POD) service, which is significantly more costly per book (especially for a book as large as MH, which could run to 400 pages or more). Based on the various estimates I’ve obtained I think I can print 500 books and cover the additional associated costs for $6,000. (If it turns out I need more books, or that I can find a way to print traditionally, the savings will either go to cover other MH-associated expenses, or get salted away in support of my next Kickstarter.)
Shipping: Books don’t get shipped around the world for free; the Post Office wants me to pay for postage. And I have to pay my fulfillment service for the shipping materials and work involved. Based on the information provided to me, I’ve budgeted $2,550 to cover such expenses.
The Cut: Then of course there’s Kickstarter’s and Amazon’s cut, which typically comes to 10% of the total amount raised. I can’t calculate that for certain, but I know what everything else comes to and can use that to calculate the final figure.
So: $12,000 + $500 + $7,500 + $6,000 + $2,550 = $28,550. Given that, I set the Kickstarter goal at $33,000, since $33,000 - $3,300 = $29,700, giving me a bit of a cushion.
I realize $33,000 seems like a lot of money to produce a single RPG supplement, but as you can see from the numbers above I’m not expecting my backers to fund a trip to the Bahamas for me or anything. Pure and simple, that amount is what it’s going to cost to write, produce, and publish this book. RPG companies have historically often priced their books below the cost of production because consumer perception has forced them to — which is why so many of them go out of business. I can’t afford to make that mistake. If I’m going to produce MH, I have to have the money to cover the associated expenses.
And even at that I’m technically not covering all of them. For example, I’ve allotted nothing for research expenses. It’s cost me thousands of dollars over the years to build my mythology library, and a good chunk of that expense has been incurred in the past 6-8 months as I ramped up to write MH. All those costs essentially come out of my “salary.” Similarly, if someone chooses the $2,000 reward tier and I travel to his home to run a game, the travel expenses also come out of my “salary.” Those are expenses I’m willing to bear personally to help the MH project succeed... but I can’t carry the rest. I hope all of you out there reading this, who want to see Mythic Hero come to life, will help me do the carrying. ;)
Reader Comments (1)
Thank you for laying it all out like this, Steve!