gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
And that, with all due respect, is where you're going horrifically wrong. You obviously haven't done much in the way of even casual research, and that's a recipe for disaster. The notion that a first-time designer is going to sell 10,000 copies of an adventure is pure fantasy, and I don't mean of the D&D variety. (Yes, anything is possible, but you're doing the equivalent of basic a business plan on creating a top tier best-seller the first time out of the gate.)
I understand that this is a very difficult industry to get hard numbers, but you can at least get some basic ideas by seeing what's been said in public forums by people in the industry.
And if I were publishing this alone, you'd be quite right. In truth, I'm a just a cartographer with good storyline and setting idea, the actual publisher is Dementia 5 Publishing House, and while small have quite a few products in their stable, and the publisher/author has been in the industry for quite awhile. He was sold on the idea of my project. The person with the real knowledge of the market is the publisher, not I.
I began my discussion to this, based on what I know of the product costs. Wulf asked subsequent sales venue/price questions, and I lack the knowledge/experience to answer it realistically, so I probably shouldn't be doing so now.
Beyond art cost and my personal time involvement, my true investment is almost neglible. I did do six maps in trade with the publisher for his writing/editing staff in this project - so a defined "cost" there, but again, it was my time spent, and the "loss" of commissions I should have gotten for those six maps. All in all, my cost so far is very low. Some investment on the part of the publisher exists, but are costs that I am not incurring.
So really if I sold 200 products, I would still earn some profit, so my numbers previously presented is most likely wild speculation. Since I'm not going into debt creating it, its only a failure, if I sell nothing - or if it doesn't at least pay for itself.
GP