

$53,000 profit in 3 months--from books? Insights gained from xkcd: volume 0 - kn0thing
http://breadpig.com/blog/2010/02/17/53000-profit-in-3-months-from-books-reasons-to-self-publish-or-start-your-own-niche-publishing-company-reasons-not-to/

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fragmede
Could someone help me parse this differently?

 _...generated $30,000 in profits (for charity, but profits nonetheless). We
donated $15,000 to the SF/SPCA that December of 08 and the rest went back into
Breadpig, Inc..._

I'm reading that as only 50% of the money actually made it an actual
charitable organization? I realize Breadpig is probably not running a not-for-
profit 501c(3) charity, but that doesn't sound quite right.

(edited to reflect Kliment's statement)

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kn0thing
Sorry about the misunderstanding, yes, at the end of 2008 we donated $15,000
of LOLmagnetz sales to the SF/SPCA (keeping the other $15,000 to cover cost of
inventory. At the end of 2009, we donated $22,000 to the SF/SPCA to cover the
$15,000 we 'owed' along with some more gravy gained from LOLsales during the
year.

Breadpig is indeed a for-profit corporation (for reasons best left to another
post) but I'd like to be more transparent about this to the point of real-time
reporting. I'll publish our financial statements as soon as our accountant is
done with them.

edit: account->accountant

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bricestacey
I still don't think the sentence adds up. $30,000 profits which require
"$15,000 to cover cost of inventory" is not really $30,000 profit. That'd be
revenue, right?

As the reader, I'm left figuring out which part is wrong and it looks good or
bad depending on which way I choose...

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lambda
OK, say it costs $5000 up front to do the initial print run.

Then you earn $35,000 in revenues, leading to $30,000 in profit.

You could simply pay out the $30,000 to the charity you provide the profit to,
and end there.

Or, you could pay $15,000 to the charity, and use the rest of the money as an
investment in a future print run, allowing you to then later donate $22,000 to
the charity.

Many of the profits that a corporation makes aren't directly paid back to the
stockholder in the form of dividends. Instead, the company keeps the cash on
hand, essentially investing it in itself, in order to use it to create larger
profits later.

That's the way I read it anyhow. I could be wrong.

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ohashi
How do you deal with worldwide audience and shipping? I suspect in many cases
it costs more to ship than to actually even sell the product (this is where
those economies of scale might help a lot)? That's been my experience so far
living in Sweden and wanting a few things from back in the US.

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kn0thing
That's the magic of xkcd's fulfillment center. Without it, we'd probably be
using Amazon (or shopping indies). Davean can speak better about just how it
works, but there's one facility in Virginia that serves the USA and another in
N. Ireland that serves Europe. Unfortunately, shipping to places like
Australia (because of theft/loss, which apparently happens very often)
requires a significant markup to compensate for shipments that go missing. If
you know anyone who works at the Australia mail service and has a
disproportionate amount of xkcd schwag - let us know.

Most traditional publishers will broker deals with publishers abroad, who get
the rights in exchange for distributing in their territory. We're working on
such an agreement right now, so it's fairly reasonable for an upstart to work
out such a deal - especially if it's popular in the USA.

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whatusername
Really? This is the first I've heard that shipping stuff to those 3rd world
countries like Australia means that lots is stolen. Our country can't seem to
do anything right lately.

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prakash
Congrats, Alexis!

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kn0thing
Thanks! BTW, did that shipment ever make it to India? :)

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prakash
Shipment made it safely to Dubai from Atlanta. next leg of the journey is on
march 3, from Dubai to India. will keep you posted :-)

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kn0thing
This is going to be quite the odyssey! I'd love a photo of xkcd in Bangalore -
bonus points if you can involve naan.

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prakash
done :-)

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mdg
kn0thing++

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mdg
kn0thing-- ?

