TMINT Finances

Okay, if you read two, read this one as well.

This was originally published as a Kickstarter update on 22 July 2022, following the successful fulfillment of the crowdfunding campaign for The Map is not The Territory.

I’ve reproduced it here in an attempt to start collecting all this stuff in one place.

Also, I just want to note that this was originally published under the title ‘The Wallet is not The Territory’ which I still like enough to reproduce here but would be kind of opaque for what this collection is supposed to be about.

As part of an attempt to increase transparency in the RPG industry, I’m going to repeat the financial post-mortems I did with Pigsmoke, Bleak Spirit, and Sunlands. If you’re interested in what I did with the cash, this is the post for you. Otherwise you can skip it and know you’ve missed nothing.

1. Pre-Kickstarter

This project was rather different to my previous ones, in that instead of being written, designed, and laid out by me, with artists and editors and other freelancers hired to do their parts, the only work I would be doing was project management and layout.

Finding Dyson Logos’ free maps was key to my decision to do the project at all. I chose the one we used because it had a decent number of rooms but not too many, and a mixture of ‘cavern’ and ‘dungeon’ shapes.

I used a Google Form to recruit potential authors ahead of time. I left it open for a month (I think? It’s been a while…) then when I pulled the results I deliberately grabbed the module descriptions without looking at any of the other details. I figured this way I’d pick the best pitches without having to worry about any biases I might attach to the perceived race, gender, etc. of the applicants.

I did a lot of budgeting and rebudgeting at this point, trying to work out how many adventures I could fit in while still keeping the price to a reasonable amount. The eternal struggle of the small-time creator is

Budget = N x P

where N is the number of copies you expect to move (I usually assume 100) and P is the maximum price you feel the market will bear and Budget is always far, far too small.

I can squeeze the margins a lot more when I’m working for myself, because I know I’ll get to take home all the money from long tail sales, but when you’re trying to pay 20-odd freelancers fairly there’s a lot less give in the numbers.

In the end I gave the writers a flat payment and an expected word count that would work out to around 10c/word, and added myself in with an equal share. It’s not as much as I would have liked to pay out, but that’s what increased pay stretch goals are for.

I went to Erika Hollice to get some cover art, because you can’t launch a crowdfunder without at least one piece of art.

I also ended up having to licence the music for the project video but that didn’t cost very much, and I bought a little paid advertising.

Running Total: -£370.77 (I’m converting dollar outlays into pounds via an approximate system.)

2. The Cash

The Kickstarter wasn’t exactly a ‘funded in sixteen seconds’ smash hit, but it funded and I got to take home £4130.29.

Running Total: £3759.52

3. Writing

I was a little worried going into the project management part of this that a bunch of people would flake or fail to deliver or otherwise make my life difficult. This did not happen. Even the three people who weren’t able to deliver were entirely professional about it and kept me informed, so that was a lot smoother than it could have been.

I paid everyone as soon as the KS cash cleared. We cleared enough stretch goals (was it just one?) to get everyone up to $150 for their contribution. Including the share I’d set aside for me that came to approximately £2806.50.

Running Total: £953.02

4. Layout

Including art direction and paying the artists.

This was the part that was entirely under my purview and I thought, hey, it’s only going to be 24 things, maybe 4 pages a thing, I can lay out 96 pages in like, an evening.

Just going to pause for some bitter laughter here. Ha. Ha.

It turns out the difficult part of layout isn’t doing the work, it’s getting the concept right and getting the art to go with it. I used a lot of stock art, suitably adjusted and combined and bent into the shape I wanted, and in the process learned a lot about image manipulation and layers and colour theory and a whole bunch of other stuff I will probably never need to know again.

I also paid some artists for original pieces where there were gaps in the text I couldn’t fill with layout, or where I had a very specific vision for how things should look.

Stock Art: £187.92

Commissioned Art: £882.02

Layout: About a billion hours of my time, good grief.

Running Total: -£117.92

5. Shipping

Shipping for the Artisanal Dungeoncraft tiers came to £55.89.

Running Total: -£173.81

6. Oops

Well, I didn’t budget to end up £175 in the hole, yet here we are. How did this happen?

Long story short, I spent way too much money on art. I underestimated how much it would cost to get the commissions that I wanted, but rather than shop around or go without I forged ahead and made the thing I wanted to make. Easy mistake to make, I guess. If I was going to hand out some advice it would be to make a budget and stick to it, although I’m unlikely to follow my own advice — even though I always budget my projects, income from other titles and post-KS sales covers a multitude of budgeting sins.

And that’s the end! I overspent, but not disastrously, and I’m pretty pleased with the result.

Now to make something completely different.