Is It Possible to Make the Hobbyist to Professional Transition?

The Kickstarter for Yoon-Suin 2nd edition is finally coming to full fruition with the imminent printing and distribution of physical copies. I thought this might be a useful opportunity to reflect on the exercise itself, in the hopes that anybody considering entering the world of RPG-product self-publication and distribution finds it useful. 

My primary goal in creating and releasing Yoon-Suin 2nd edition was to get Yoon-Suin back out there in print form (it used to be available POD from lulu, but they stopped producing books in its format), with updated content, new art, and also additional content. But like anybody, I nurse wild fantasies of giving up the day job and focusing my energies entirely on transforming my hobby into a living, and in the back of my mind I had the idea of using the exercise as a test run to see if I could do this.

Let's, then, do a little bit of a breakdown of the profit & loss statement on Yoon-Suin 2nd edition as a way of opening up for reflection the broader question of the viability of RPG self-publishing as a Way of Life. All of the figures I am using are rough ones, for illustrative purposes, and no doubt there are savings that could have been made here and there. But looking at them is useful all the same.

First, then, the figures.

The Kickstarter itself raised roughly £78,000. Of this, Kickstarter takes 5% in fees, a 3% payment processing fee, and then £0.30 per backer. That works out at about £7,000, which once you deduct Stripe fees and so forth leaves us just north of £70,000.

From this, I paid contributors (all artists, mostly working for a percentage of total revenue after KS fees, Alec-Guiness-in-Star-Wars style) about £23,000. That takes us down to £47,000.

The cost of printing, warehousing, VAT registration, etc., along with Backerkit fees (which I used for pledge management) takes us to roughly £17,000. That takes the leftover revenue to £30,000. The cost of shipping, distribution and so forth is itself is paid for by backers, so that's a wash. 

Now deduct 40% tax (I am in the UK's 'higher rate' for income tax) and what's left is £18,000. Deduct a nice bottle of whisky or two as reasonable expenses and it's £17,800 left over for, off and on, four or five years of work. 

So that's the accounting 'on the books' profit. What though is the economic profit? God knows how many hours I put into rewriting the original text, adding new material (around 100 pages), and laying it all out - I wrote much of the new material across the course of 2020-21 during evenings and weekends, and then spent an inordinate amount of time across 2022-2024 editing it, proofreading it, and doing layout. Then there are all the hours spent on the administration of the endeavour, responding to emails, dealing with fulfilment, and so on and so forth. I can only guess at the number of hours spent, but I would say something like, on average, between 1-2 hours every day for three years. So I would say around 1600-1700 hours - rather more than a full-time job per annum if you take into consideration holidays and leave. 

The figures would of course be different if I was doing this full time - I would pay less tax, for one thing, and no doubt could use my time more effectively and efficiently. And I should also say that I do make roughly £100-£150 a month in sales of my existing products to add on top. But what we are in effect saying is that I would have to produce a Yoon-Suin 2nd edition each year in order to make what is probably rather less than the minimum wage level (£12.21 per hour) - and only just a little bit more than a quarter of what my actual day job delivers.

Could I quit the day job and produce the equivalent of fourYoon-Suin 2nd editions a year in order to live in the manner to which I have become accustomed, support a family, and so on and so forth?

No, I couldn't. I could certainly produce more products - maybe one a year. I could market more effectively, which would increase revenue. And I could generate more income through a 'long tail' of a back catalogue. But I do not think I could keep myself and my family from the bread line doing this alone. I could make retirement more comfortable, say, when it comes to that. But I could not live off RPG bread alone.

There are people who can. They lie, however, at the extremes. They are dedicated, talented, disciplined risk takers who I greatly admire. For me: I will reconcile myself to the life of a dedicated hobbyist who keeps himself in beer.