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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Upper_Krust" data-source="post: 9722826" data-attributes="member: 326">I already have plans for the Stretch goals.We will see how the Kickstarter does. I'll be able to do a better budget 'post mortem' after the Kickstarter so I don't make the same mistakes again.Obviously I completely messed up my Art Budget for this project when I quadrupled the size and had to split it into 2 books (Player's Guide and Bestiary). Even taking that into consideration I have already commissioned and licensed probably 50 illustrations that won't show up until a 3rd or 4th book (So that is thousands of dollars to artists alone, not counting the 100+ on this project).But even assuming you allocate 50% of the perceived Backer Profits to art, these books are tricky to budget for. Ideally you want 1 illustration per 4 pages for a rulebook (1 per 3 or better in a Bestiary). So that's 25 per 100 pages (33+ in a Bestiary).So if you think the book will make 20,000 dollars, and budget 10,000 for art, that gets very stretched the more pages you have.With 10k. Art budget100 pages = average 400 per piece (25 illustrations)200 pages = average 200 per piece (50 illustrations)300 pages = average 133 per piece (75 illustrations)400 pages = average 100 per piece (100 illustrations)500 pages = average 80 per piece (125 illustrations)...and that likely doesn't count the cover art.Obviously if you know from past Kickstarters your book will do 50k or 100k it's not as big a problem. But not knowing the size of the audience makes it a guessing game.You could of course take the art budget from the Kickstarter itself, then just set the release date 12+ months later and get the art commissioned with that money. Which is what I maybe should have done (in hindsight).Of course you still need to get some art up front to showcase in the Kickstarter.But of a learning experience this time though.I'm wondering if the Epic Bestiary would be better sold as multiple 32-48 page chapters (which could be released every 6 weeks or so, rather than as another 480 page book in a year's time...?</blockquote>

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