It occurred to me sometime late Friday afternoon that there was something I wanted to put into the post that I had forgotten. Numbers.
First off, let me remind you that I am a total tightwad. Also, if I didn't have Hubs behind me assuring me that the budget is there, I would be tighter with my publishing budget.
Also, since I don't like talking about money publicly, the numbers I'll be giving here are percentages of the total amount Hubs has budgeted for each book, and percentages of total money spent.
Dying Embers:
Total Spent to Date percentage of total budget - 79%
Of the amount spent:
Editing - 27%
Cover Art -53%
Marketing - 20%
With Accidental Death, I went a little different - just to see what would happen.
The early numbers for Accidental Death break down like this:
Total Spent to Date percentage of total budget - 21%
Total of projected expenditures vs Total Budget - 50%
Of the amount projected:
Editing - 44%
Cover Art - 6%
Marketing - 50%
Lastly, I have totally projected book numbers because I haven't spent a dime on Djinnocide yet.
I expect to spend 100% of the per-book budget on this.
Editing - 25%
Cover Art - 37.5%
Marketing - 37.5%
Obviously, those numbers are flexible. I'm still not done spending on Dying Embers, for instance. I'll do some more marketing for that when Accidental Death is closer to coming out. And I'm not sure if I'll end up spending 50% of the remaining budget money on marketing for Accidental Death (especially since I'm only projecting to spend half of the total budget getting that book to market anyway).
This first year of self-punishing... I mean, self-publishing... is all about seeing what works and how it works and then adjusting accordingly. Accidental Death is coming in lower because I did the cover myself, but then again, the subject matter lent itself more easily to a self-done cover. The cover art for Djinnocide will be going up again because graphic design with Photoshop won't create the cover I want and, while I can draw, I don't have the skill to create what I want.
It's all a learning curve.
I hope that helps provide some more insight for those of you out there interested in self-publishing - whether for yourself, a loved one, or for curiosity sake.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'll answer what I can.
You're so business-like! That's good. Me? I just threw money out there. LOL Of course, I was lucky. Only does my covers. She gets paid but I get the family rate. That reminds me. I need to cut her a check. LOL I look for free ways to advertise. I'm probably even cheaper than you are!
ReplyDeleteWith luck and more books out, you should begin to recoup your expenditures. If not, big write-off on taxes for a year or two. Yeah...been there, did that.