How much $$$ did my Kickstarter ACTUALLY make?? (Kickstarter Expenses Breakdown)

it's time to reveal if I actually made any money whatsoever from my recent Kickstarter for the Queen's rise so in this video I'm going to show you literally everything that I purchased and we're going to break it down do the math and find out how much money did I actually make from this Kickstarter because it definitely wasn't $113,000 and at the end after you see the results I think we should talk about if I feel like it was worth it and what you think as well and I would also like to share just anything that

I would change specifically to make it more cost effective this is my spreadsheet so at the top I put the income that you'll see on the Kickstarter website where it says this project made $1 13,580 so let's just go through the list together the first thing to consider is that this is not even the dollar month that goes into my bank account because Kickstarter actually takes about 10% in fees before they even transfer the money into the project person's bank account whatever the actual word is I just put a little asterisk here that Kickstarter actually

deposited exactly $1,111 36 I'm just going to use the sum feature so we're taking this amount minus their cut I guess you could call it there are fees and this is the actual amount and $12,100 actual cost to design and create this book itself so there's a lot of cost that Indie authors do incur like the cover design or the edits or um formatting or whatever so I'm going to tell you ones that I personally did to create this beauty only thing that I'm not going to count is these original cover cost because they obviously

went on different books and not on this book so I'm not counting that but we have the gorgeous gorgeous character right here and I'll shout out my amazing artist this cover designed to get commercial right to use it as book cover was $700 now I also had to get photoshoop to do the typography as you can see here and to do that I had a little bit of a learning curve as well and technically I use Photoshop for other book covers I am not prepared such as designing these gorgeous covers that I was learning how

to do during the same time period so technically technically I could say that the $12 was more for this series but I did use it to also Design This cover I had to learn how to do the flaps and I had to learn how to do the What's this called case laminate underneath as well so that was $120 and then this specific photo you see here on the front cover was actually one that I got from a place called deposit photo and I had to pay $69 for this one photo that I actually used twice

as you can see here and then I put the typography over it myself again using Photoshop then I am so n prepared oh my gosh this is heavy I put that I ordered five proof copies but here I'm counting six hold on oh okay this is the one that I forgot the paperback I didn't even think to include this if you watch my recent vlog series I'll link this specific video below where I was like I need to see some of these things in person like the signing page table of contents how the chapter headers

look how the gorgeous Spotify playlist looks in the back things like that so forgot to count this cute floppy thing I'm put that right there and then of course I was testing just the case laminate through KDP this is a final I don't want to mix that in but we have the ones I got through Ingram spark right here here and here can you see that that is six books total so I need to add in the paperback let's see what was the paperback though I don't remember I'm going to guesstimate it was probably 10

to be on the safe side 130 okay at the top here you can see that I put the total is roughly $1,009 now I need to make it more like, 120ish and I'm going to take this total that we had to play with subtract 700 120 69 and 130 to get a total of $1,092 the next costs that I subtracted were ones that the kickstarter actually funded they were stretch goals which is something commonly used to say hey if we meet this dollar Mount you know XYZ above and beyond the original goal then I will

do XYZ so some of my stretch goals I didn't have to pay anything to complete them I would just give bonus chapters or you name it but in this case I did promise a couple things that ended up being very expensive and that was the Kota and Jezebel character art which I'm very excited we got to do it looks like this and I'll shout out the artist who did that it was amazing and we get to do an illustrated map of JY which is the world that this book is based in if you didn't know

and so that also is in the book and it looks like this and I'll shout it out my artist as well he did a great job with it I did put two asterisks by each of these things though because I wanted to remember to tell you that for the character art I had to pay for commercial usage rights to put it inside the book and that was $740 total and then for The Illustrated map of Jen it was going to be about half this much but I did say hey is there any we can move

up the time frame CU I just I promised my backers a certain time frame and waiting 3 months would you know I might have to go with somebody else and he was happy to do it for a rush fee which basically doubled the normal price so I did that for $480 I'm going to use the sum feature again to take our 11,000 and subtract 740 and 480 and now we have $987 my next expense was ordering through a place called Vistaprint which is awesome for a lot of cool bookish things if you're wanting to get

bookmarks or postcards you name it so I got trying not to make a mess I got some gorgeous postcards through them I got some individualized stickers as well as some of these um like I guess you could call them label stickers like a sheet of them and what else they also do cute tote bags like this so this is like the original that I ordered and then I made even nicer ones with a better design and then I ordered the final for everybody and the notebooks with the gorgeous character art cover I love it love

it love it oh but technically I only ordered these postcards because the character art wasn't done yet so I think I got 250 of each but in this particular round of ordering I just ordered 250 of these guys okay let's do the math 9,872 minus 31285 I now have $955 my next purchase was the CRA BRS and the paperbacks from Amazon so I had a massive order of like paperbacks specifically for the people who added those on and then I also got the gorgeous Crown I just love it oh my gosh it definitely does not

fit my head but it makes for some absolutely gorgeous bookstagram content right I need to use that some more because I kind of forgot that I had it oh and I also ordered the collector's edition I think there were like 66 people who added this on so I got a ton of this and that was extremely fun that total as you can see here was massive $1,422 so let's do the math take our total and subtract 1422 and we've got $ 8,136 then I ordered the puzzle separately because I really ended up liking this company

called puzzle U here's the really cool thing I had factored in for eight puzzles it was going to be about $352 plus shipping so I was like estimating that math does not make sense let me delete that just going to put plus shipping question mark I thought it was going to be based on what their website said $352 but then I got a discount on every single puzzle that made it end up being only $261 57 that company was a huge win I would absolutely recommend them because not only did they have amazing discounts and

their puzzles were cheaper than anybody else's but they were better quality than the at least the one other puzzle that I had tried and I was pretty impressed so now we have $ 7,875 all right then I came to another Vista Print order and again Vista Print is just one of the companies I use I've also tried got print and I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of others that I'm blanking on right now but this is just the one that I happen to find really good deals cuz I was trying to scope out the best

deals but still good quality so this time around I was ordering I'm sorry this this was when I ordered the tote bags for everybody for the book boxes because I had to send out a survey and make sure everybody picked the color they want that's one of the things that I would do slightly differently in the future because that did hold up my being able to order but it ended up actually working out in my favor because doing a second order meant that I got a discount for $50 in this first order that I could

then apply to the second order so yes I paid a second round of shipping but that definitely didn't cost 50 bucks so I think I still saved some money and then of course the the character art was finished so I got to order 250 of these guys as well I think that's it so that was $175 with that $50 off which I love let's do the math add it up 7,875 minus 175 we got 7700 then we have our packaging materials so with packaging I thought that I had saved up a ton and I was

really really trying to save cost there because saves the environment right it's Recycling and honestly the packages that I saved up fit this size book so much better than the ones that I ended up having to buy where I had to like squeeze this book in and it barely fit which I guess it's good it's better than it being loose but I ended up going to the Office Max or office dep or whatever they're called I still don't remember three times because I had to buy two different types of mailers and a bunch of them

I had to buy ink twice and then I had to buy a couple more boxes I didn't have quite enough boxes that fit the book boxes so I had to check my receipts but that ended up being a total of 100 $74 for those three trips and then I actually ended up going somewhere separate for wrapping paper and tape which I had to get a bunch of I could not find my receipt for that because I put it on my personal credit card I forgot to do the business credit card actually I think it was

probably only 20 cuz I bought at a grocery store and I got like three of them so I'm going to just guesstimate and round up to 20 for that I think that should be right feel free to dock like $5 if you're like your way off we're going to go ahead and do the sum for that and subtract both of these guys why is that huge okay so now we're at 7500 this next phone's going to blow your mind because then I finally ordered all the omnibuses and there were 100 what did I have here

185 copies total but 25 of those were free so really I was paying for 160 and then they give you a 25 free deal after after a 100 ordered or more you get 25 free so that was really cool I absolutely took them up on that and that was $5,245 that was by far my biggest purchase oh it's going to go down quite a bit are you ready for this 7500 minus 52 we're down to $2,293 I should pause here and just say how many is this here let's see 2 4 6 22 extra so

these are all technically free okay and all of these I've got a plan for doing like a good re giveaway which I'll talk more about at the end and I also want to do um an influencer Tour on Instagram just future plans so I did set aside those extra free books for that but technically they're not even included in this cost here cuz those were all free oh my gosh we are almost done here we're at the shipping cost oh Kickstarter duh Kickstarter states that they collected 1737 for shipping and my total if I did

this math right let me double check my math here yeah 1585 okay so the total for my shipping supposedly was $15.85 and I think not positive but I think that was because the pirate shipping got me some unexpected deals I actually had a really good experience with pirate ship did not expect to say that cuz that name still throws me I'm like are they legit I still don't know uh but a lot of the international packages in particular which I was really worried about cuz I'd never done International via my home before those went through

pirate ship and they have been doing really well so far I just got a message yesterday about a package that like couldn't be delivered I how can I I don't know how to help you with that I don't even know who it is they don't say who it is so I don't know how to tell them I don't know I don't know what's going to happen with that so it's not necessarily a perfect experience like I'll keep you posted in a future video maybe but other than that phone call I just got the other day

that absolutely freaked me out and I'm hoping it was spam or something and not real it's been a good experience and then I started out on PayPal shipping because that's my comfort zone that's what I've always used for like virtual Book Sales in the past and I just feel more comfortable using that and I understand exactly how it works I've got all my pre sets for shipping set up on there so I started out with that at $650 29 and then I was like okay it's time to figure out pirate ship I've got some International

packages to send which is probably the bulk of this right here and then I also had some um Regular us packages left to send to like book box size so that was 93464 for a total of 85 oh shoot I had this whole plan to make it pretty and show you the total expenses first before I show you the final sum so let's just grab this whole line these are all the expenses total $2,872 5 in expenses which leaves me with a net profit of $78 comment below if that's what you expected or if that

was very shocking to you because I knew that I wasn't leaving a ton of buffer for myself and I was just trying to cover the cost of mailing everything but I was still still shocked I I definitely was like oh my goodness so let's talk about this quick because let's scroll back up to not the kickstarter fees but the well okay first of all the initial book cost like I said this all except for the proof copies I guess technically but all of this was stuff that happened over a year ago so do I have

to to count it no and if I don't count it that's about $11,000 more so then I would say I made about $1,700 I don't know if we want to count that or not I kind of feel like it should be counted but at the same time that was a last year expense so you could consider that technically still money in my pocket this year I guess uh but then the really interesting detail that I thought we should talk about was the character art and the map of Jin which were probably my least smartest choices

but also my most fun and exciting expenses for this whole thing the rush fee would have saved me money if I had planned that ahead and actually had a map ready but did I know if I was going to make it no so I'm not exactly sure how I would have handled that maybe I would have just said to the kickstarter backers hey if we get to these stretch goals I just want you to know the delivery time is actually going to be I don't know how much further out that's also tricky to plan you

do have to give your Kickstarter backers kind of a time estimate so I do think I would just set it further out I would hope personally to still make it early but I would set it further out so that I don't have to pay Rush fees on things and then of course I'm obsessed with the character art but I didn't have to put it in the book and if I hadn't put it in in the book and it was just like for fun to show on social media or whatever then this would have also been

cheaper however what's the point of character art if you're not going to use it in the book you know what I mean that said let's just say that I made different stretch goals that did not cost me this much money I could have saved 1,2 $20 and that also could have been basically a little over 2,000 oh hold on I'm not mathing very well today almost $2,000 in my pocket instead of what was it $78 that said I wanted to point out some awesome savings when I did the Vista Print in two separate orders like

I said that saved me 50 bucks and the puzzle U was almost what was it almost $100 less than what they quoted on their website which was super cool now if I had saved up more packaging materials of course that would have been great but the fact that I did save up a good what did I have by the time it was all done cuz I was using the 48 hour books that they came in I was using all the last minute you know the stuff that the postcards and the tote bags came in I

was using everything so I had probably I don't know maybe almost 100 packaging items I guess you could say and I think that saved me money I I mean I assume so I don't really know how to estimate that but anyway coming back to the last place that I I could have saved a lot of money I think honestly I'm not sure how much I would have saved but the fact that the Queen's rise books were foil covers this is um 3D clear laminate and it's on the spine as well and it's on the title

I don't know if you can tell unless you're in person and then it feels it's all raised and then obviously this gorgeous foiling which I just love I love that shine what did that increase for the books cuz it was a certain cost it was like I don't know3 to $5 more for each book we should look it [Music] up if I hadn't done the foiling the fancy covers but I had still gone with this company at least it would have been about $872 cheaper for that as well I had put my takeaways and writing

and I forgot to show you so let me just scroll up so you can see this I'll make it a little bit bigger as well technically I said yes I did pay for a few extra things like giving everybody else an actual print of the second postcard I didn't have to do that and then I also did these extra stickers and I had another style as well that I used to basically seal all the packages and then that wrapping paper was out of my own pocket cuz obviously I didn't promise that I'd wrap them but

I felt like they would arrive safer and it would just be a more exting experience so I felt like it was worth it to do I don't know it was probably like less than $100 to make that experience more special for everybody one last takeaway that I wanted to talk about was is it worth it like would I do it again and the short answer is surprisingly based on that number yes I do think I would do it again so I have a few thoughts and reasons for this number one obviously I could do it

smarter financially I've learned a few things along the way and I would just probably price things a little higher like other people do on Kickstarter to cover my time I was pricing too low and people in the kickstarter Facebook group actually pointed that out to me and I raised my prices a little bit thank goodness otherwise I would have been in the red for sure but I probably should have raised them more cuz I see people doing hard covers for $60 on there that's a lot in my opinion as somebody who typically buys on like

a retail store like Amazon or Barnes & Noble but it is actually pretty normal on Kickstarter to price things higher because you're getting this special edition much higher quality like unique version of things that you can't get elsewhere so they're always being upgraded and that's why they cost more on that website people who go on Kickstarter regularly do actually seem to understand and expect the higher prices which makes sense now cuz I now I know how much things cost on the back end the other thing that I wanted to point out though is that this

is not a normal book this is three books in one plus two bonus scenes so you don't typically see a 512 page hard cover on well I don't know actually I think there are other omnibuses on Kickstarter but obviously if this was a smaller book like this both the size and the page count would bring down the cost of the book and the fact that it's a paperback if I did paperbacks for example would all bring the cost down dramatically if I offered that as an option say in the future and that could save a

lot of costs as well but I still think this was worth it I just want to make that very very clear because even though I didn't really get paid a lot for my time and I put honestly weeks worth of hours into this project I still think it was worth it because it is really fantastic promotion for everybody who got a copy to be excited about the story to share it with their friends and essentially hype up the book before the release when the book does come out hopefully there will be people already who've reviewed

it online who've shared with their friends and there's hopefully going to be some attention to this book so it's like a cool marketing tool I jokingly called it like my street team essentially because that's basically what it is uh when people get books in advance they become your street team they're on the streets you know online streets talking about your book and that is really really valuable so I do think it was worth it and especially if I can take what I've learned and do it even better next time so I already have my next

Kickstarter pre-launch page set up if you're curious I would love love love to have you check it out all you got to do is click the little green button that says notify me and you will get an email when this actually goes live and the reason I say that's important is because this is not going to go live for a long time this book is not written yet and that's another cool factor of factor feature of Kickstarter is that I can set up this pre-launch page and just gather emails and gather interest while I'm writing

the book while I'm editing the book while I'm getting ready to publish the book and then when I'm ready when this book is done I can notify everybody who's interested through the kickstarter super cool if you haven't heard of this book you're going to be like butter book why on Earth would I read a book about butter is that like some weird recipe book no it's actually a really fun um project code name that we came up with back in October 2023 when I did this series on outlining live here with you guys on YouTube

and we actually outlined the entire book to be very buttery meaning that it has tons of tropes and just details that you specifically picked out with me together we designed this book to be something that's going to be full of butter and so tasty and so yeah it does not have an official title it does not have a release date and it does not even have an official name or cover but I promise you these things are coming and this is what I want to be working on next going forward so you're about to get

a bunch of videos for me as I start writing this book and in the meantime please please please hit the notification link for a Kickstarter cuz I would love love love to have you on there oh and before I go I promised I would mention that Goodreads giveaway one more time check it out it should still be live when this video goes live and for a little bit longer click if you want to potentially win one of these gorgeous gorgeous copies of the book it's the foiled covers in the giveaway that aren't available anywhere else

the addition that comes out publicly is not going to have this gorgeous foiling so if you're interested in getting one of these copies definitely enter the Goodreads giveway away all you got to do is add it to your TBR and even if the giveaway is not going on I really hope you'll still add it to your TBR the link is below let me know what you think of the cost cuz it definitely surprised me but I hope you enjoyed this video I'll talk to you again soon bye [Music]