Follow-up on the Costs of the Writer's Dice Kickstarter Campaign

In the spirit of transparency, I wanted to share a basic overview of costs for the Writer's Dice kickstarter campaign. Many thanks to my wife Megan who's been keeping track of this info. Our costs consider the following:

• Kickstarter's cut
• Amazon Payments' cut
• Final product dice
• Prototype dice
• Baggies
• Address labels
• Padded envelopes
• Mailbox rental
• Shipping

A total cost of $4375.

That's rounded up slightly to consider the stragglers we still need to ship out. The amount does not consider things like any returned packages (extra postage), printer ink, mileage, and our time/labor. We haven't found out the costs of North Carolina sales tax just yet, which Kickstarter doesn't have a way of calculating. Also, the amount of postage for parcels went up a bit before we were able to send everything out, which raised the overall cost of shipping somewhat higher than we expected.

We probably could have saved a tiny bit of money by not renting a mailbox or buying address labels, but the first three items on the list were by far the most expensive costs incurred. The one way I might be able to reduce costs is going to an overseas manufacturer, but I like keeping business in the USA and I have a good rapport with GameStation.

Fred Hicks has mentioned that if we were to go to traditional retail, we'd want all our costs so far to be about 20% of the gross. Direct sales, which is actually what we're doing, can be feasible with a cost 50% of gross. The costs of the campaign alone put us at just over 50%... but that's only part of the story.

We still have about ~390 dice left to sell through an online store. If we price those dice with a more accurate shipping cost (especially for international orders) we can cut those costs back down under 50%. The remainder of profits could be enough to fund a new production run of another product, like Utara. That will take some time, though.

It's also worth noting that my initial fundraising goal of $1,000 was probably waaaaay too low. Even with the smaller production run, the costs of shipping and the cuts from Amazon and Kickstarter would've put me well in the red. Now I know what a basic goal should be for a similar project.

So, bottom line: Next time I run a Kickstarter for a single custom die (qty: 2000), I'll need to raise a minimum of $4,000 to cover basic expenses.

Writer's Dice

These are dice for writers, storytellers and gamers! In addition to the normal 1-6 pips, these dice are etched with six words packed with meaning: BUT, SO, AND, AS, OR, IF. Use them to plot your next novel! Roll them into your role-playing games! Gift them to your gaming buddies!

» Buy Writer's Dice from Smart Play Games
» Download the App for iPhone/iPad, Android, or Windows Phone
» Download the Writer's Dice Guide [PDF]

Writer's Dice IOU Holiday Card

Many thanks to Chris Schreiber for offering this suggestion. For any backers who wanted to gift Writer's Dice for the holidays, here's a simple IOU stocking stuffer with a print-and-fold paper version of the dice. The card reads:

"We wanted to deliver Writer's Dice before the holidays... BUT the Kickstarter was too successful... AND our workshop won't have enough materials in-stock until January... SO please enjoy these print-and-fold dice for now."

Furthermore, look for a mobile app to come out soon. We're figuring out the logistics of how to get the app to all backers for free.

» Writer's Dice - IOU Holiday Card

James Stowe illustrating Pop & Locke's Last Heist

I'm happy to announce that Pop & Locke's Last Heist features art by illustrator James Stowe.

James is an accomplished and prolific artist in a variety of projects. You might recognize his most recent work in the series of young children D&D character sheets that went viral earlier this year. Check 'em out here!

Like many of you, I was charmed with his poppy, energetic character designs. I'm really looking forward to his new work for Pop & Locke's Last Heist, too.

Thanks so much to everyone who backed the Writers' Dice Kickstarter. You made this campaign more successful than I ever anticipated and gave us the ability to tap such strong talent.

Writer's Dice Kickstarter Successful! 845% Funded

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to this project! It was more successful than I could've imagined. Here are our final numbers:

475 backers raised $8435 in just 2 weeks, a total pre-order of ~1650 dice!

So here's what will happen next: Kickstarter and Amazon Payments are going to charge your pledges from your credit cards over the next week. Most of you have already successfully done so, but a few might have some transaction errors that Amazon will try to resolve until Saturday, Nov 12.

After the pledges are all resolved, we'll place an order for about 1750 dice. We're ordering plenty of extras just in case any get lost in the mail. Once ordered, those will take up to ten business days to produce, according to our vendor. (Usually they're much faster, but we've never ordered this many dice from them.)

When we have the dice here, we'll bundle them up into your individual packages and ship them to you. Estimated delivery for domestic orders should be around the second week of December or sooner. International orders are, understandably, going to take some more time to deliver so I can't guarantee an exact date in those cases.

If anything comes up that would affect our outbound shipping plans, you'll be the first to know. Er… Well, I guess we'd be the first to know. But you'll be the first we tell! :D

Anyhoo, thanks again for your support! Look for more updates as events progress.

P.S. The Writer's Dice Guide PDF and Pop & Locke PDF are still in development. I need to flesh out the former and I just tapped a really great artist for the latter. I hope to send out both PDFs around the time the Writer's Dice go out the door. Again, you'll be appraised of all development milestones. I'm an over-sharer. :)

Writer's Dice Update #2

As of Saturday night, we have 833 dice pre-ordered and we still have a week left in the campaign. Incredible. I just posted this little video above to show how the dice roll. Nothing fancy, just a product demo. :)

Writer's Dice Update #1

What an epic first weekend! We reached 100% funding in the first 14 hours. Over 200% funded in the first weekend.

As of now, we'll produce at least 430 dice! The next highest quantity we estimated with our vendor was 1000, which would be awesome. Our pace is slowing down now, so I don't know if we'll get that many orders. Who knows? 430 in three days seemed unlikely, too. We'll see!

Survey Question: Which games would you like to see in the PDF guide? I've got Happy Birthday, Robot!, Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Writer's Dice Kickstarter is Live!

The Kickstarter for Writer's Dice is now live! For a limited time only, you can pre-order your own set of Writer's Dice. If you order two dice or more, you'll get a PDF guide for using Writer's Dice in writing and gaming.

The whole creation process for these dice is documented on this blog. See the initial idea for these dice here. The design for the prototype here. A photo gallery of the finished prototypes here. Budgeting for the campaign here. Making of the video here.

Click the link on the right and pledge your support for Writer's Dice. Thanks!

Prepping for the Writer's Dice Kickstarter: Part 2 - The Video

So you've heard my usual advice for making a Kickstarter video. All that still applies. Here was my strategy for this video in particular.

I was greatly inspired by Trey Parker and Matt Stone's lesson to NYU writing students in which they shared their technique for outlining a plot. In their lesson, they break out each beat so there's always a "therefore" or a "but" in between. That makes a naturally flowing sequence of events. It's a great lesson and one that fits seamlessly into the main appeal of Writer's Dice, to select the most meaningful words to connect each beat.

Normally, I'd start off a Kickstarter video as if it were a short 30sec commercial for the project. This time, I decided to neatly present that writing lesson into a cute tutorial, something like Common Craft or One-Minute Science. Megan and I brainstormed all the ways we could present this lesson: Stop-motion props? Stock art with silly voices? A sketch with actors in costume?

Finally, I settled on using the papery figures from Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. You might recognize the girl with hair buns from the examples of play in the latter half of the book. I dreaded the thought of animating in Flash, though. Surely there would be an easier way to do this.

I ended up recording a screencast from Photoshop. I just moved the individual layers around as needed. I hid the mouse and cursor during the export, then I brought together those screencasts in iMovie and sped them up about 2000%... yes, literally 2000%. Essentially, I was using the same stop-motion technique as a Common Craft video, but entirely on the computer. I wrapped up the video with a description of the dice and long close-up shots of the dice prototypes.

The video is titled "How to Write the Plot for your Story" in the hopes of capturing some SEO in the last few weeks leading up to 2011's NaNoWriMo. The whole video is designed to be (hopefully) edu-taining enough to be shared on its own, thus drawing more eyeballs to the Kickstarter campaign.

Prepping for the Writer's Dice Kickstarter: Part 1: Pricing

In the spirit of transparency, here's the cost breakdown for the Writer's Dice. This is the kind of budgeting and planning you have to do before you launch any Kickstarter campaign.

Production Estimate
Quantity: 100
19mm, .4 oz, Opaque Square-edged Blank Dice, Red
Custom etching on each face
Each die costs $1.75, a total of $175.

Shipping (according to USPS Price List Effective June 6, 2011)
Domestic package shipping up to 3oz (~4 dice + padded envelope) costs $1.71
To Canada, it costs up to $2.24
To Mexico, it costs up to $2.86
Everywhere else, up to $3.46

Pricing Strategy
I want to charge a flat rate of $5 per die, just like the Mathematician's Dice kickstarter. That means the single-die orders are going to be the most costly for us. We'll only have about $1.50 cushion for a single-die domestic order. We'll take At least a 17¢ hit on each single-die international order.

So, we have a couple options here. First, we can just hope we'll have more domestic orders than international and that they will offset our losses. Furthermore, if we have roughly the same turnout as the Mathematician's Dice, the vast majority of our backers will order multiple dice at once. That will further offset any small losses from international orders.

Otherwise, our other option is to charge shipping for international orders. Not sure how the Mathematician's Dice kickstarter afforded not charging international shipping, but I assume they went with the strategy described above and hoped for the best. I think I will do the same. A flat rate for all orders is nice and simple for the customer.

In the Mathematician's Dice campaign, only 83 got a single die. 669 backers got two dice at $10 and 413 got four dice at $20. Assuming The MD team had the same costs as us and these were all international orders outside of North America, those single orders cost them a total of $17.43. The two-die orders got a total profit of $662.04. The four-die orders got a total profit of $3940.02. Their highest tier, $50, only got 60 orders, but each one is a massive profit that more than offset the single orders.

Now, there is a very valid argument to be made in favor of including full shipping charge in the pledge amount, so single orders would be $7. (Essentially charging $5 for each die plus $3 for the shipping.) Then we cut that price down to $10 for two dice. And so on, offering further discount deals at higher quantities. It's a totally valid structure, and one we're weighing, but we honestly just like the no-muss, no-fuss single-price, even if it doesn't explicitly encourage a higher-volume order.

In the end, we'll probably end up with a compromise clause in the single-order pledge tier: "International orders, please add $1." That would suffice to cover the additional expense and still keep our otherwise smooth pricing structure.

This doesn't even take into account the percentage cut that Kickstarter and Amazon will take from the final Kickstarter pledges. But let's set that aside for another time. :P

EDIT: And, of course, after bringing it up with Megan, she immediately came up with an elegant solution. Offer a PDF product at the $10 level to encourage a jump from one die to two. A handy little guide for incorporating Writer's Dice into games and using them in writing exercises on their own. No cost to us, but it would be just enough to spur an impulse upgrade. Nice!

EDIT 2: Okay, we figured out the expenses for the Kickstarter and Amazon cuts. Turns out we must compromise on the $5 flat price in the case of international orders. An extra buck or two for international orders should cover the extra costs.

Writer's Dice Prototype Photo Gallery

Well, that was fast! Gamestation comes through yet again with super-prompt turnaround I've come to expect.

These dice are a little larger than your average dice, with a satisfying heft to their roll. I am very impressed with the detail they managed to pull out of the lettering. Those thin inner strokes are incredibly fine.

See more pics on the Flickr stream. Now, I can begin prepping the Kickstarter campaign in earnest!