tool: D20 budget spreadsheet

JohnNephew · Dec 18, 2002

Folks,

I'm pleased to say that d20Weekly has published an article I wrote, entitled "The Spreadsheet of Many Things." It's at:

http://www.d20weekly.com/login/article.cgi?326

The article includes an Excel spreadsheet you can download and manipulate, and a breakdown of the typical expenses of a D20 System book.

We have a lot of discussions here about pricing, expenses, profits, etc., so I think this may be of interest to a lot of folks, especially aspiring D20 publishers. It's also a useful tool to bring to the information in that thread about PDF sales (though the spreadsheet needs a little tweaking to suit the peculiarities of PDF economics).

I hope folks find it valuable.

jgbrowning · Dec 18, 2002

password

i don't have password.

joe b.

Fast Learner · Dec 18, 2002

d20Weekly is a subscription site, well worth the $20 a year, in my opinion.

tensen · Dec 18, 2002

Yes it is. Always seems to have interesting articles like this... Well in this case more interesting to the publisher. But also in this week's issue is an article on mapping in your campaign.

JohnNephew · Dec 18, 2002

Re: password

jgbrowning said:
i don't have password.

Yep, it's a pay-subscription site. $20 for a full year, a new issue each week, is a pretty good value, I think. (And if you're a D20 professional, it should be a legit tax deduction, too.) Sorry I didn't mention that; I assumed everyone knew.

(Them being a paid subscription site means I actually get paid for putting many hours into that article and spreadsheet.

)

MythicJustice · Dec 18, 2002

Re: Re: password

JohnNephew said:
Yep, it's a pay-subscription site. $20 for a full year, a new issue each week, is a pretty good value, I think. (And if you're a D20 professional, it should be a legit tax deduction, too.) Sorry I didn't mention that; I assumed everyone knew.

(Them being a paid subscription site means I actually get paid for putting many hours into that article and spreadsheet. )

This is an incredibly useful tool John. Thank you very much for such an informative and candid article!

tensen · Dec 18, 2002

JohnNephew said:
We have a lot of discussions here about pricing, expenses, profits, etc., so I think this may be of interest to a lot of folks, especially aspiring D20 publishers. It's also a useful tool to bring to the information in that thread about PDF sales (though the spreadsheet needs a little tweaking to suit the peculiarities of PDF economics).

Actually not too difficult to handle PDF economy. The internet sales shop takes the place of the fufillment house, and a few locations get blanked out. The only point that comes into question is what to put in the number of copies printed field, since that denotes what the end cost per unit is.

MEG Hal · Dec 18, 2002

It is a great tool, and when John first showed us MEG played with it and compared it to ours and I must say we felt pretty proud about how similiar they looked. That is a compliment to John who Doug and I respect a lot, it was nice to know a veteran's spreadsheet was close to ours.

Great idea John about d20weekly!!!!

Oh and congrats.

annadobritt · Dec 18, 2002

This was definitely an excellent article!

I gave it the highest rating.

Something that large and small publishers alike should have a look at.

JohnNephew · Dec 18, 2002

Re: Re: tool: D20 budget spreadsheet

tensen said:
Actually not too difficult to handle PDF economy. [...]

Yep. The quantity printed line gets chopped. Page count can remain, so you can use it with text density and art ratio to calculate your art and writing budgets. All the development expenses are the same; the whole manufacturing expenses section goes bye-bye (no pre-press, printing, freight, or warehousing costs). Cost per book should be deleted, since there isn't a specific print run. (What's the right way to handle this in bookkeeping for taxes? Expense the development costs, or amortize over an expected quantity of sales?) Suggested retail stays; distributor discount goes; freight goes; sales commission uses, say, RPGNow's commission percentage. Revenue per unit stays, but profit per unit is meaningless (since you can't calculate per-unit cost unless you have a units sold figure). Break-even point is the important number you want to calculate at the end of it all. Max. profit again is cut (since there isn't a print run to cut out).

One way to approach the open-ended nature is to replace the Qty Printed with "Expected Sales." Then you can look at things on an "expected profit" sort of basis, which would be helpful.