I honestly thought I had already posted this, but when I went to look for it, I found it in my drafts. Now that the legendary Jason Pitre has posted about the money involved in his Posthuman Pathways Kickstarter, I really need to get this out there.
First, the raw numbers. Budgeted was what I was expecting when the Kickstarter campaign started. Projected was what I expected to take in and pay out when the Kickstarter campaign ended. Paid is what I ended up actually receiving and paying.
Extras are the costs for the non-book rewards, such as dice and the Centurion’s helmet. Fixes were the costs to fix some of the international shipping problems. There were a couple of other outlays that I actually didn’t record because I am a terrible businessperson.
Sorry for the formating – I can’t get it to do what I want, but the information is all there.
Budgeted Projected Paid
$2,031.70 $5,254.96 $5,254.96
Layout 600.00 601.50 601.50
Art 450.00 450.00 508.50
Maps 250.00 250.00 251.50
Editing 400.00 400.00 401.50
Rules Edit 100.00 100.00 101.50
Extras 635.67 402.67 403.67
Printing 673.92 439.39 439.39
Shipping 561.60 591.07 591.07
Fixes – 99.34 99.34
Totals (1639.49) 1,920.99 1856.99
The cost increase from Projected to Paid in the Art was due to a mistake regarding sales tax. The artist forgot to include that in his quote. He was ready to swallow the difference, but the whole point of the Kickstarter was for me to be able to pay people a fair wage for their work, and since the Kickstarter did so well, I was happy to cover that.
The other very minor increases are due to costs of paying using email transfers, which were the fastest way to get the money to the people who needed it.
Now, it looks like this netted me a bunch of money. You’ll notice, however, that I didn’t get paid for my work. Centurion ended up being 55,747 words. If I paid myself 3 cents per word, that would end up being around $ 1675, which makes the take look not so pretty. If I paid myself 5 cents per word, which I feel is a fair wage, we would be more than $900 in the hole.
In the end, this was a huge success, because I am really, really proud of the book we produced. I also got a deal with Alliance for distribution, and the book is also available on Amazon. If I add in the profits from that and the sales through One Book Shelf (RPG Now and Drive Thru RPG), I could pay myself 5 cents per word and still be in the black.
That’s pretty awesome.
You can find Jason’s post here.
You can find more information on Centurion: Legionaries of Rome here
You can purchase Centurion at Amazon or Drive Thru RPG.