This was not a pizza topping we ordered.
April was continued aftermath from the Kickstarter. We finally finished reading slush from the submissions and shipped out add-on rewards for backers. We also shipped out contributor copies for Spring 2019.
The Money Aspect
Amounts in parentheses are losses/expenses.
Web Resources: (-$17.06)
Stories: (-$70.00)
Art: (-$239.22)
Advertising: (-$140.04)
Processing Fees: (-$15.48)
Printing: (-$890.55)
Donations: $178.33
Kickstarter: $41.00
Online Book Sales: $39.13
Total: -$1,113.89
QTD: -$1,113.89
YTD: $2,493.42
All Time: (-$33,690.15)
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.
Kickstarter income includes both the money brought in through the original campaign and additional funds brought in through add-ons in Backerkit.
The big expense last month was fulfilling all of the add-on orders in Backerkit as well as backer copies for Spring 2019. Normally we fulfill these book orders through KDP Print and ship the books directly to authors. However, we learned that because of a change in import laws, Amazon won’t ship the books from KDP Print to Australia. That turned out to be an expensive problem when we needed to send 30 books to Australia. Lesson learned.
Submissions
We were open to submissions in March for the anthology, but didn’t finish reading slush until April. For the anthology we received 113 submissions, of which we accepted 28 (24.8%). Our all time acceptance rate is 34.3%.
Followers
Below is the social media following we had at the end of April.
Patreon: 32 (+0)
Facebook: 2,202 (+1)
Twitter: 691 (-1)
Tumblr: 350 (+2)
Mailing List: 234 (+6)
Instagram: 204 (+3)
Traffic
Last three months:
April 2019: 1,156 visits, 897 users, 1,768 page views, peak day 79 visits.
March 2019: 2,179 visits, 1,593 users, 3,564 page views, peak day 131 visits.
February 2019: 1,018 visits, 801 users, 1,775 page views, peak day 61 visits.
Last three Aprils:
April 2018: 2,256 visits, 1,500 users, 3,871 page views, peak day 117 visits.
April 2017: 1,141 visits, 717 users, 1,759 pages views, peak day of 58 visits.
April 2016: 1,138 visits, 802 users, 1,945 page views, peak day was 66 visits.
