The End of the Kickstarter
Sep. 9th, 2014 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aThe Designers & Dragons Kickstarter is over. Now when I hit the KS page, I find that the totals are sadly unchanged. It's a weird change from the last five weeks.
The Kickstarter brought in $115,348 from 3,046 backers. Before the KS had started, I thought we'd raise somewhere between $25,000-$50,000, and once we got going, I thought we'd just hit $100,000. Suffice to say, the Kickstarter exceeded all of my expectations. Clearly, that's ultimately thanks to all the great fans and interested readers. I'd like to think that some of them came to the Kickstarter from the histories that I made available through RPGnet, where they always earned strong acclaim. However, ultimately I have to thank Evil Hat for most of the success.
I've long thought that the average author who decided to do self-publishing through Amazon or other means was shooting himself in the foot. The fact is, the average author isn't a people person, and so he's not going to be great at talking to people about his project or at marketing it. He's also probably not a logistics guy or a financial guy. Certainly, he might have two or three expertises under his belt (I'm a writer, computer programmer, and a researcher, for example, to count my top three proficiencies), but he's unlikely to be able to do everything well. And that's why we have publishers: to do everything well.
In that regard, Evil Hat created a great Kickstarter page and really thought through how to bring people into the project. They did a terrific job of getting the word out and keeping people enthusiastic — and by they, I mean some of the core people at Evil Hat like Fred Hicks, Chris Hanrahan, and Carrie Harris. Alongside that, they had the connections and experience to hire great folks like Adam Jury (layout), John Adamus (editing), Karen Twelves (proofreading), Rita Tatum (indexing), Daniel Solis (graphic design), and Andrew Bosley (cover art) — and to have project manager Sean Nittner keep everything moving.
I certainly could have published Designers & Dragons myself in this world of Kickstarter and the internet. It would have raised substantially less money, and the result wouldn't have been as good, because I wouldn't have had the same wherewithal or the guts to put out the money to make this a superb production. So that's why we have publishers. I've said it for years; I'm glad I stuck with those convictions when I had my own book to publish, even after a few tries with publishers that didn't produce what I'd hoped. And I'm glad that I was ultimately proven right in my beliefs that publishers are great. Or at least that Evil Hat is.
And Evil Hat was great throughout this entire process. They committed to printing the first two books if they raised $7,500 and all four if they raised $22,500. As Fred explained in the fifth update, that just covered the printing costs, not all of the costs of actually producing the book (which came in at about $9,000 per book for all that art, proofing, editing, and indexing). It's a pretty awe-inspiring feeling that Evil Hat was willing to put $36,000 out upfront for something that could have been a hard sell. I'm very appreciative of their trust and faith in Designers & Dragons, and I'm glad it paid off.
I'm also very glad that I entered into a partnership with Evil Hat for this project; instead of royalties on each sale, I only get paid out of profits after those costs. I was given both options, and the partnership route felt like the right one to me, because my first goal was to get the books out, and if anything my second goal was to make sure that Evil Hat's faith in my books didn't result in them losing money (or at least that I didn't get paid if they did). Now, because of that decision, I'm probably going to get more money back for my 10 years of work than a royalty deal would have allowed. So, cool, and another thanks to backers.
In retrospective, it's interesting to look at the final numbers for the Kickstarter. As I said, we earned $115,348 from 3,046 backers. Of those, 2,060 backers paid $28,828 for digital copies of the book. The scary thing about that number is that it's about $8,000 less than the the costs of the book (not even including my writing). Another $4,500 came from pure premiums (signatures and platinum dragon patronages), which means that $82,020 came from 986 backers buying physical copies. Though the 2:1 ratio of electronic:physical backers clearly shows the enjoyment of new digital media, without those physical backers we wouldn't have the money to produce books! Which is probably why companies like Hachette are fighting with Amazon over the cost of eBooks. Though cheap books are good, publishers having enough money to produce great books is better.
Though the Kickstarter is over, my work is not. I'm still managing corrections coming in from readers, and I still have one other large task prior to publication: the polishing of the '00s Index. That'll all keep me more busier than I'd like until the index is done, at which point the books will go off to print. After that I have a 20,000-25,000-word book(let) to put together, including four new (short) histories. I've started work on those already, with "The Aurania Gang" finished yesterday and "The Hero Auxiliary Corps" started tonight.
I'm happy to say that almost ten years after I started this project, I still love researching and writing new histories. As I said in one of my interviews, I attribute that love of history in part to my 11th grade history teacher, David Dal Porto. Ironically, I think D&D was the other major influence on my love of the puzzle pieces that make up the world of the past.
The Kickstarter brought in $115,348 from 3,046 backers. Before the KS had started, I thought we'd raise somewhere between $25,000-$50,000, and once we got going, I thought we'd just hit $100,000. Suffice to say, the Kickstarter exceeded all of my expectations. Clearly, that's ultimately thanks to all the great fans and interested readers. I'd like to think that some of them came to the Kickstarter from the histories that I made available through RPGnet, where they always earned strong acclaim. However, ultimately I have to thank Evil Hat for most of the success.
I've long thought that the average author who decided to do self-publishing through Amazon or other means was shooting himself in the foot. The fact is, the average author isn't a people person, and so he's not going to be great at talking to people about his project or at marketing it. He's also probably not a logistics guy or a financial guy. Certainly, he might have two or three expertises under his belt (I'm a writer, computer programmer, and a researcher, for example, to count my top three proficiencies), but he's unlikely to be able to do everything well. And that's why we have publishers: to do everything well.
In that regard, Evil Hat created a great Kickstarter page and really thought through how to bring people into the project. They did a terrific job of getting the word out and keeping people enthusiastic — and by they, I mean some of the core people at Evil Hat like Fred Hicks, Chris Hanrahan, and Carrie Harris. Alongside that, they had the connections and experience to hire great folks like Adam Jury (layout), John Adamus (editing), Karen Twelves (proofreading), Rita Tatum (indexing), Daniel Solis (graphic design), and Andrew Bosley (cover art) — and to have project manager Sean Nittner keep everything moving.
I certainly could have published Designers & Dragons myself in this world of Kickstarter and the internet. It would have raised substantially less money, and the result wouldn't have been as good, because I wouldn't have had the same wherewithal or the guts to put out the money to make this a superb production. So that's why we have publishers. I've said it for years; I'm glad I stuck with those convictions when I had my own book to publish, even after a few tries with publishers that didn't produce what I'd hoped. And I'm glad that I was ultimately proven right in my beliefs that publishers are great. Or at least that Evil Hat is.
And Evil Hat was great throughout this entire process. They committed to printing the first two books if they raised $7,500 and all four if they raised $22,500. As Fred explained in the fifth update, that just covered the printing costs, not all of the costs of actually producing the book (which came in at about $9,000 per book for all that art, proofing, editing, and indexing). It's a pretty awe-inspiring feeling that Evil Hat was willing to put $36,000 out upfront for something that could have been a hard sell. I'm very appreciative of their trust and faith in Designers & Dragons, and I'm glad it paid off.
I'm also very glad that I entered into a partnership with Evil Hat for this project; instead of royalties on each sale, I only get paid out of profits after those costs. I was given both options, and the partnership route felt like the right one to me, because my first goal was to get the books out, and if anything my second goal was to make sure that Evil Hat's faith in my books didn't result in them losing money (or at least that I didn't get paid if they did). Now, because of that decision, I'm probably going to get more money back for my 10 years of work than a royalty deal would have allowed. So, cool, and another thanks to backers.
In retrospective, it's interesting to look at the final numbers for the Kickstarter. As I said, we earned $115,348 from 3,046 backers. Of those, 2,060 backers paid $28,828 for digital copies of the book. The scary thing about that number is that it's about $8,000 less than the the costs of the book (not even including my writing). Another $4,500 came from pure premiums (signatures and platinum dragon patronages), which means that $82,020 came from 986 backers buying physical copies. Though the 2:1 ratio of electronic:physical backers clearly shows the enjoyment of new digital media, without those physical backers we wouldn't have the money to produce books! Which is probably why companies like Hachette are fighting with Amazon over the cost of eBooks. Though cheap books are good, publishers having enough money to produce great books is better.
Though the Kickstarter is over, my work is not. I'm still managing corrections coming in from readers, and I still have one other large task prior to publication: the polishing of the '00s Index. That'll all keep me more busier than I'd like until the index is done, at which point the books will go off to print. After that I have a 20,000-25,000-word book(let) to put together, including four new (short) histories. I've started work on those already, with "The Aurania Gang" finished yesterday and "The Hero Auxiliary Corps" started tonight.
I'm happy to say that almost ten years after I started this project, I still love researching and writing new histories. As I said in one of my interviews, I attribute that love of history in part to my 11th grade history teacher, David Dal Porto. Ironically, I think D&D was the other major influence on my love of the puzzle pieces that make up the world of the past.
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Date: 2014-09-10 07:12 am (UTC)