I got my first (and possibly only) royalty check payout from sales of the novel today. I curse modern technology that I didn’t actually get a check that I could frame. It’s much harder to frame a direct deposit. But, that’s $3.36 I didn’t have before! Of course this was never about the money, if it was, it would be positively depressing. Since I like being depressed, here’s some napkin math on the numbers:
Mostly to make this number bigger, I’m going to theoretically pay myself minimum wage for time spent working on the novel. I would estimate that I worked an absolute minimum of 200 hours on the book -including writing, re-writing, editing, and research. So at minimum wage, that would be $1610 (if I worked at a McDonald’s for $15 an hour, that would be a cool 3k. goddam Obama). So:
$1610 Labor
$350.00 Cover Design
$350.00 semiProfessional editing
$250.00 Purchased copies of book
$100.00 Shipping supplies
$171.86 Postage (so far)
$255.00 Advertising (so far)
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$3086.00 Total
– 3.36 Royalties
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$3082.64 Total
– $20.00 One person sent for postage, but I haven’t yet (and probably won’t) cash it
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$3062.64 Total
Do it for the love of the game, kids!
Even discounting the 1610 in ‘labor’, there is still a fairly significant chunk of out-of-pocket for this project (about $1400, but I know I am missing expenses in my list). I knew there would be going in, so it doesn’t come as a surprise. The fact that the book is now in the hands of about fifty people, and the kindle version has been downloaded by over 300, is more reward than money would be (although it would be nice if they weren’t mutually exclusive). Now if I could just get some of those who have read it to review it on Amazon and Goodreads in the Kindle version and/or paperback, it would really be a shot to the old ego.
