“Dude, Ben, I think I saw Galactus.”
December was focused mostly on getting Winter 2019’s quarterly out the door. Amazon’s Createspace is being absorbed by Amazon’s KDP Print, and this was our first stab at publishing a book through them. There was a sharp learning curve, as KDP Print publishing is far more restrictive than KDP ebook publishing.
None of this is visible in the numbers, since we don’t track time and effort in these metrics. But it was the most stressful publishing experience we’ve had in a long while. We got ours resolved in under a week, but there are people who have struggled for months with trying to get books published in the new platform.
Anyway, here are some more concrete data points.
The Money Aspect
Amounts in parentheses are losses/expenses.
Web Resources: (-$17.06)
Stories: (-$45.00)
Art: (-249.00)
Advertising: (-$369.93)
Processing Fees: (-$16.53)
Printing: (-$129.39)
Donations: $173.39
Online Book Sales: $35.64
Total: (-$517.20)
QTD: (-$2,572.04)
YTD: (-$11,928.44)
All Time: (-$35,666.37)
As usual, I try to list costs for art and stories under the month that the stories run on the site rather than when I pay them. (This does not apply to special content for quarterlies, which does not have a specific month associated with it.) Sales are for sales when they take place, not when they’re actually paid out to me. Online book sales reflect the royalties given after the retailer takes their cut. Physical book sales represent gross income, not counting the cost of the physical book. Donations include Patreon, as well as other money sent to us outside of standard sales.
The main unusual cost incurred this month was the first wave of ordering copies of the quarterly for Patreon backers. Otherwise, it was a pretty mellow month.
Submissions
We were open to submissions in December. We received 91 submissions: 45 regular submissions, 36 quarterly-exclusives, and 10 classified ads. Of these we accepted 23 (25.3%). This consisted of 10 regular submissions (22.2%), 4 quarterly exclusives (one was technically accepted as a regular submission instead) (11.1%), and 9 classifieds (90%). Our all time acceptance rate is 34.7%.
Followers
Below is the social media following we had at the end of October.
Patreon: 27 (-1)
Facebook: 2,086 (+5)
Twitter: 655 (+14)
Tumblr: 345 (+9)
Mailing List: 212 (+8)
Instagram: 159 (-1)
Traffic
Last three months:
December 2018: 1,269 visits, 970 users, 2,207 page views, peak day 77 visits.
November 2018: 1,012 visits, 813 users, 1,481 page views, peak day 58 visits.
October 2018: 1,060 visits, 874 users, 1,627 page views, peak day 62 visits.
Last three Decembers:
December 2017: 1,441 visits, 1,077 users, 2,419 pages views, peak day of 84 visits.
December 2016: 916 visits, 700 users, 1,564 page views, peak day of 61 visits.
December 2015: 620 visits, 447 users, 1,053 page views, peak day of 36 visits.
