$53,000 profit in 3 months--from books? Insights gained from xkcd: volume 0
breadpig.com
breadpig.com
...generated $30,000 in profits (for charity, but profits nonetheless). We donated $15,000 to the SF/SPCA that December of 08 and the rest went back into Breadpig, Inc...
I'm reading that as only 50% of the money actually made it an actual charitable organization? I realize Breadpig is probably not running a not-for-profit 501c(3) charity, but that doesn't sound quite right.
(edited to reflect Kliment's statement)
Book production (cost of printing, binding, shipping to xkcd fulfillment center) - by far the most expensive thing Contracted design work ISBN registration A few FEDEX shipments for prototypes
[Ultimately, we agreed with xkcd to share the costs and deduct those from the total revenue before splitting the profits, but I needed to put a hefty downpayment and it helped to have the $ in the bank.]
(http://lolmagnetz.com/instructions#help) So, you're right, upvoted :)
From the recent kerfuffle over Amazon eBooks, it seems that an average book takes about $10,000-15,000 to get from a basic idea to a published copy (at least that was a number that was quoted more than once). Its not an administrative overhead, its re-investing 50% so they can do it again.
Breadpig is indeed a for-profit corporation (for reasons best left to another post) but I'd like to be more transparent about this to the point of real-time reporting. I'll publish our financial statements as soon as our accountant is done with them.
edit: account->accountant
As the reader, I'm left figuring out which part is wrong and it looks good or bad depending on which way I choose...
Then you earn $35,000 in revenues, leading to $30,000 in profit.
You could simply pay out the $30,000 to the charity you provide the profit to, and end there.
Or, you could pay $15,000 to the charity, and use the rest of the money as an investment in a future print run, allowing you to then later donate $22,000 to the charity.
Many of the profits that a corporation makes aren't directly paid back to the stockholder in the form of dividends. Instead, the company keeps the cash on hand, essentially investing it in itself, in order to use it to create larger profits later.
That's the way I read it anyhow. I could be wrong.
Most traditional publishers will broker deals with publishers abroad, who get the rights in exchange for distributing in their territory. We're working on such an agreement right now, so it's fairly reasonable for an upstart to work out such a deal - especially if it's popular in the USA.