Starting to work out the financials for my book FROZEN DREAMS.

I gotta do something while the book’s out to the beta readers, after all. So far, I have it broken down into three main categories:

Expenses:

  • There has to be a cover, obviously: and I’ve spoken with a couple of artists whose work I’d be happy to have for it. I should have the finances in place by March to get that started, at a bare minimum.
  • Publishing is almost certainly going to be via Amazon. As in, ‘it would take a minor miracle to get FROZEN DREAMS optioned by a publisher.
  • Editing is going to be the real expense here, I think. This alone could easily set me back at least a grand.

Revenues:

  • The primary funding mechanism’s at the moment is the Patreon (tell your friends! No, seriously, tell them). Besides: more Patrons = more people I can sell books to. So: gotta push the Patreon.
  • There’s also Kickstarter. This, I need to research further. But even five or six hundred bucks will go a long way towards recouping my editing expenses. And if it takes off somehow, I’ll just use the money to improve the book and hopefully pay for the next one, too.

Marketing:

  • I’ll worry about this one… as soon as possible, obviously.

Anyway: that’s where my head is right now.

5 thoughts on “Starting to work out the financials for my book FROZEN DREAMS.”

  1. So I’ve run both a “successful” Patreon and a failed Kickstarter, and I can say that from a pure numbers game, it’s easier to reach it on Kickstarter than Patreon. It’s a lot less of a commitment to donate once than monthly. We didn’t make our $5000 Kickstarter goal, but we got pretty close in forty days, while we’re barely at $200/month on Kickstarter. Most of the money came from friends and family who were more dedicated to us than to our project. I think reaching a $500 Kickstarter is very doable.

    1. Yeah. I also want to start small because I have no experience in managing a Kickstarter campaign, so I figure that the first one should start small.

      1. Speaking from the other side .. there’s a couple writers I Patreon .. and one writer where I’ve kicked in for their Kickstarter.
        .
        Both work for me, for different reasons – Patreon because I get snippets and samples and short tales .. Kickstarter because the eventual book will be buy-on-sight anyway, so it’s no different than a pre-order.
        .
        Mew

      2. There are a lot of expenses that you need to keep in mind, though some of them you can forgo if you trust yourself to do it well. Off the top of my head:

        1. Content editing — a lot of authors skip this, and it doesn’t hurt them much. This is what an agent and/or editor brings to the table in traditional publishing, and some people swear by the advantages of hiring a professional editor to help them make the story great.
        2. Copy editing — always pay for this. No matter how good you think you are, you’ll miss a lot.
        3. Layout — For ebooks, if you’re handy with CSS and HTML, you don’t need someone to do this. For paperbacks, there are templates available that will do this pretty well. So you can often manage to avoid paying a layout artist. But professional layout can make a real difference in a book.
        4. Cover art — unless you’re a professional artist, pay for this.
        5. Cover design — Sometimes cover art and cover design will be done by the same person, sometimes not. Unless you’re a graphic designer, you’ll want to pay someone to do this. You’ll need the layout done first if you’re doing a paperback, so you can size the cover properly.
        6. ISBN — it’s not that expensive on an individual level, but I think you need to buy ISBNs in lots of 5 or 10. You’ll need an ISBN.

        For the first Mysterion, the total cost was around $10k, but over half of that was paying the authors, and we could have gone cheaper on cover art and cover design, and we did hire a layout artist.

        1. Welp, of that list:
          1) and 2) I’m definitely planning to have done, at as high a level as I can manage from either my own funds or the Kickstarter.
          3) is a good point. I’m doing a Kindle ebook for the first one, but I don’t know CSS/HTML, so that may be dependent on the Kickstarter? I’m not sure about the costs for that, though.
          4) and 5) are definitely going to be done by a professional artist, and I’ve budgeted for that and have gotten a preliminary quote that I like.
          6) is another good point. I’m going to probably buy a few at a time to save money. I might be able to budget for that.

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