Where The Money Went
almost 4 years ago
– Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 11:27:50 PM
Bleak Spirit: The Finances
Exactly as I did with Pigsmoke, I promised this then vanished for months. Oops?
Anyway:
As part of an attempt to increase transparency in the RPG industry, I'm going to repeat the financial post-mortem I did with Pigsmoke for Bleak Spirit. If you want to know where all that money went, this is the post for you. Likewise, if you want to get a feel for what Kickstarter expenses can look like, here we are.
1. PRE-KS EXPENSES
Any given Kickstarter tends to have a pile of pre-launch expense. At minimum, you need some nice art to go on your project page. I bought a bunch of stock art for £104.40 -- none of which ended up in the final product and at least some of which has gone on to be used in other things -- and hired Galen Pejeau to do the cover/KS header art for £159.56.
A side note here: Galen's price for the cover included a rush fee, because the artist I'd previously been depending on to provide a cover flaked on me. As had the one before him. And the one before her. I've never had an artist flake on me before, so to get three in a row was a surprise I wasn't prepared for.
Luckily Galen came through in spades, so I was good to go on the launch date I'd arbitrarily selected then told everyone about.
Also before launch, I reached out to James Mendez Hodes for cultural consultation on the nearly-finished manuscript. For that, plus some additional writing, I paid £237.81.
And finally, I paid Alastor, Takuma, and Kienna for their contributions. That worked out to £78.76 each, or £236.28.
Running Total: -£738.05
2. MARKETING
I spent £263.77 on Facebook adverts as well, mainly targeting people who said they liked Dark Souls. These generated £358 in pledges, so technically it was worth doing but I'm not sure having to reactivate my Facebook account was worth it. If I was better at marketing I imagine I could have turned that investment into a much better return but I am wildy out of my depth when it comes to this sort of thing.
I also paid Encounter Roleplay £150 to demo Bleak Spirit on their stream. I have no idea how much revenue that generated.
That amounts to £413.77 spent on marketing.
Running Total: -£1151.82
3. WAIT A DAMN MINUTE
"What the hell?" I hear you cry. "You spent A GRAND before you'd even launched?"
Yeah. As with many things in my life, it worked for me but I'd hesitate to recommend it to other people.
At the time of launch I'd been running Certain Death Publishing for 4-and-a-bit years, so I had cash to use. (There's a lesson here on how capitalism funnels additional wealth to those who have wealth to start with, but that's not what this is about. Not today.) But even so, I looked at the amount I was essentially gambling on Bleak Spirit hitting its funding goal and got a bit stressed.
The thing in business is that you should be prepared for every project to make zero pounds. The question isn't just "Is this going to fly?" but "If this *doesn't* fly, do I have enough money left over to try something else?"
Dropping a grand on Bleak Spirit before launch pushed my little business right up to the edge of 'no' on that second question. Not quite, but it was nerve-wracking.
So, a lesson for you lot: Maybe don't drop that much money pre-launch. You need a cover/header art for sure. You need to pay your contributors. Budget for a diversity consult, but get it done *after* you get paid. Critically assess what sort of marketing you need and if it's worth what you're paying for it.
Anyway.
Running Total: -£1151.82
4. INCOME
Thanks to you lovely people, after Kickstarter took their cut I walked away with £9946.87.
Running Total: £8795.05
5. BACKERKIT
I'd not used Backerkit before, so I had to pay an initial setup fee (£78.71) plus choose a plan where they take a % of the final Kickstarter sum (£350.83). For future projects I won't need to pay that setup fee again.
However, Backerkit also generates money through add-ons and pre-orders. In total I made £990.31 that way, which was nice, and meant my net Backerkit total was +£560.77.
Overall, if you've got the money for the setup fee and enough extra add-ons (either from the project, or in your back catalogue) it's well worth signing up for Backerkit.
Running Total: £9355.82
6. EDITING
Rebecca Curran (editor of Pigsmoke) reprised her role for Bleak Spirit. I think I took less of her advice on this one than I did on Pigsmoke, so if anything sounds wonky that's going to be on me. The final bill for that was £655.92 and I consider it money well-spent.
Running Total: £8699.90
7. ART
I was so pleased with Galen's art for the cover I hired him to do the interior art too, which basically amounted to me saying "I want to spend this much money. What'll that get me in greyscale goodness?"
That cost me £989.55.
Running Total: £7710.35
8. PRINTING
I printed enough decks of cards and copies of the book to have some left over to sell at conventions. That cost me £754.80 for the cards and £1040.18 for the books: a grand total of £1794.98.
Running Total: £5915.37
9. FULFILLMENT
And then once everything was printed, it was shipped off to Kixto who as far as I can tell have done a fine job getting everyone their gubbins. That has so far cost me £1644.83 although I'm expecting a little more on top of that for the last half-dozen orders and wotnot.
Running Total: £4270.54
10. AND THE REST IS ALL FOR ME!
£4270.54 would buy just shy of 240 hours at the hourly rate of my day job. Now, I happen to know that I worked on Bleak Spirit for about 8 months -- from October 2018 when I started to June 2019 when I launched the KS. Assuming 30 days a month that's about 240 days, so I got a decent payout if and only if I was working on Bleak Spirit for an hour or less every day.
And... honestly that sounds about right. I spent a significant chunk of time in that window doing freelance work and another significant chunk suffering from crippling depression, so it does probably shake out to about an hour a day.
So I'm pretty happy with £4k, yeah. I spent a slice of it on a new laptop, and the rest of it is going to supplement my income for the next few months while I'm on sabbatical from work.
Anyway, that's where all the cash went.
Thanks again for funding this project, and remember to sign up to my mailing list if you're interested to see what I do next.
Bye!
Chris