Budget Transparency

Our budget, post Kickstarter!

Book Printing Budget

ItemNumber NeededTotal PriceSource/Notes
Front Cover Artn/a$250Liz Lee Illustration (Tumblr | Instagram)
Back Cover Artn/a$250 Liz Lee Illustration (Tumblr | Instagram)
Full-Color Insert Artn/a$250Joshua Beeking (Instagram)
Glossy Prints (5″ x 8″) of Insert Art750$69PrintKeg
Manuscript Formattingn/a$100Hermit9
Payments to Authorsn/a$7,838AMtT is approx. 98,000 words long; each author is being paid 8 cents US perword, to a maximum of $400 per author.
Book Printing (Digest Size Trade Paperback, 5.5″ x 8.5″)550$2,565Mixam; this price includes shipping to us
ISBNs4n/aThese were paid for as part of a prior project
Total to Produce Books$11,322
Price per Book$14.65We sold 773 copies of AMtT

Merchandise

Type of MerchandiseNumber MadeTotal PriceSource
Prints of the Cover Art (8″ x 10″)750$357PrintKeg
Postcards (4 x 6, set of five different images)2,500$420PrintKeg
4 Die Cut Stickers (3″ x 3″)2,050$992StickerMule
Bookmark (2″ by 7.25″) with a Tassel500$176UPrinting (tassel from Etsy)
Key Chain (2″ x 2″, approximately)250$507StickerMule
2 Enamel Pins (1.5″ circle, approximately)600$1,550Alchemy
Mug (11 oz, full color wrap graphic)144 (minimum order)$600AnyPromo; this price includes shipping to us
Rubber Duckie100$59Oriental Trading Post
Mini-Book500$297Mixam; this price includes shipping to us
Dux magnet500$293StickerMule
Tea19$253The Whistling Kettle
Estimated Shipping to Us$50Research indicates most of our supplies won’t charge for shipping, or the shipping is already included in the above price.
Total Cost to Produce Merchandise$5,554

Packaging to Mail to Kickstarter Backers

To ship these items, we’ll need to buy boxes and other supplies. We expect to buy all our packaging materials from ValueMailers.com, except for the protective sleeves, which come from theboxdepot.com.

ItemNumberTotal Price
Bubble Wrap2 Roll @ 175 sq. ft.$28
Small Baggies (to protect merchandise during shipping)1,000$27
Protective Sleeves for Postcards400$22
Protective Sleeves for Art Prints400$44
Box for Book Alone (9 1/2″ by 6 1/2″ by 1.25″)300$240
Box for Book + Flat Merchandise (11 1/8″ by 8 5/8″ by 2″)200$188
Box for Book + Bulky Merchandise (10″ x 8″ x 5″)25$42
Priority Mail 2 Day Medium Box (Provided by USPS)100$0
Packing Tape (2″ wide rolls)72 (cheapest in bulk)$103
Total Packaging Costs$694

Other Expenses

Other expenses, unsurprisingly, cropped up while we were working on the Kickstarter. These include:

ItemNumberTotal PriceNotes
Royalty Payments41$200Royalty payments to Tris Lawrence for sales of “Commit to the Kick”
Estimated Sales Tax We Will Owe$95We’ve contacted many of our suppliers and applied for sales tax exemptions to the extent possible; this reflects some items that either we’ll definitely have to pay sales tax on, or about which we’re still not sure.
Kickstarter Fees$2,211
Collected New York State Sales Tax$133We are based in New York, and must pay sales tax for purchases made by backers who are also in New York.
Total Packaging Costs$2,639

Total Estimated Cost for the Proposed Kickstarter Campaign

Book Production$11,322
Merchandise Production$5,554
Shipping and Handling Materials$694
Other Expenses$2,639
Shipping to Backers$4,711
Total Estimated Cost for Everything$24,920

All our proposed extras were unlocked in the Kickstarter campaign, and we raised a total of $25,808. This leaves us with a little under $1,000 in profit that we can re-invest in the business!