A ramble from a guy trapped in bed for a week:
My costs for MEM1 were USD692
The following are all-time sale figures in US dollars, net the vendor's take. Patreon's fee is estimated at 10% for ease. These numbers do not account for currency conversion fees, tax, or payout fees from PayPal.
Drivethru
56 sales - $218
Itch
17 sales - $118
Patreon
10 sales - $50
So that's $386, plus the pseudo-subscription that 35 people get because all paid Patreons received a copy. We can sort of think of those as $6 presales so that's $190ish net).
Sales figures were higher in the first two months than the first two weeks of this month, so the issue has come off peak and is in its (hopefully long) tail. I think it may pick up little bumps of activity whenever I do new material.
In terms of the numbers I gave in my May post (220+patreons as true break even, 143+patreons) as "I paid my income tax to authors instead" break even there are issues. 220 is literally cash out meeting cash in, but I can see I've not given myself a tax break there for the platform fees. I've just treated them as a dead cost. I've done the same on the 143+patreons.
where I can offset the remaining costs of MEM1 entirely onto other writing income from last financial year (I'm Australian, hence COVID in July and a tax year that ends on 30 June). I knew that potential was there going into this for this one issue because I received two lump sums for writing last FY (Thanks Atlas and Shewstone! Buy their stuff! Not a paid ad! Likely a result of being unfit to operate heavy machinery!").
Thanks for asking this question because you made me realise I'd missed something obvious. All of my accounting on this assumed it was a one off product because the two big windfalls were in a single financial year and wouldn't be repeated, so I had this limited time to use the trick to move some of my income tax payment for them into the author community through an expense.
The thing is, a company I'm under NDA to has paid me some money -this- financial year. I'd not calculated in the value of a loss I could carry forward to this year because I didn't assume there'd be income to set it against. I'll tell you closer to Halloween, when my tax filing is due, how much that moves the numbers, but it certainly seems to move them down.
The irritating thing is that the best way to sell more MEM1 is to do a themed issue of MEM2 that pulls in people beyond Ars core audience with a cool idea. Like, if I said "OK, our theme is pirates and we're doing doing a covenant in Libertalia" that'd probably work. Would it let new authors polish their craft as well as a miscellaneous issue? I'm not sure.
So, at the moment, eyeballing this through a haze of brain fog and flu medication, it's not -yet- a go. There's still a loss of about USD120+some fees just on purely cash terms.
That being said someone has sent me an article and I'm going to look at at it once my brain works again because I can tell they've put a lot of heart and skill into it, and their fundamental idea is good. That's not to say I'm saying MEM2 is happening, just that it's something I want to happen and that seems closer to happening than when I started replying because I hadn't factored in carrying forward the expenses. It'd still need to find a way to cost a lot less, sell substantially more, or be held up as a loss lead on profits from other writing, which is too complicated for my brain on Long Term Fatigue levels.
Added later for completeness, assumptions as above. Both offered as Pay What You Want. Does not include roughly 35 Patreon copies which are effectively paid for by a monthly subscription. I'm just saying you got a lot for a buck a month last year, gang.
Mythic Venice:
Patreon 16 sales - USD62
Itch: 16 sales - USD82
Drivethru: 2056* sales - USD210
Includes backers of ArM5DE, but does not include the fee from Atlas to me, hence odd ratio.
AMM1
Patreon: Nil
Itch 3 sales - USD13
Drivethru 382 sales - USD 256
There's probably some lesson to be drawn from comparing the AMM1 and MEM1 numbers, and PWYW against pricing to demand worth but it's beyond me for now.
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