The Cost of a Game.
So, we recently launched our first game with our new company, Kids in the Attic. It isn’t our first game, as previously we have published hundreds of games and accessories, but this is our first starting completely new. Let’s get into this and see what it would cost a new company to make a book like this.
Full disclosure, this book cost us nothing but time. We are fortunate enough to have experience in writing, game design, art, editing, layout, etc. That is not a reality for many publishers.
Mycelium Soup
A fun game using our Rudimentary Rules System (d6-based) where you play as a small mushroom humanoid on a great hunt for meat to fill the pot of Mycelium Soup and allow your tribe to survive the winter.
The corebook includes specific game rules and setting but mostly consists of copy/paste from our master system document for the system we already have written. But even with that content, new words, and editing would cost us about $226.52. That is just for the edited original content (5,663 words). Total word count is 8,163 words.
Illustration
The art was a lot of single-figure images, but we also have several 1/2 and 1/4 page images as well as two full-page images. Even at reduced rates, the total art costs would be about $1450. Using stock art could cut this number down drastically, but we had a specific look we wanted.
Layout
Simple layout at about $4 per page would run us about $200 for this 50 page book.
Other Expenses
There are tons of other expenses we haven’t included, from logo design to cover set-up. To paying $25 for some light advertisement, but we want to keep this simple, not exhaustive. . . but keep these things in mind.
Totals
Overall, we would be invested somewhere between $1800 - $2000 for this fun little game. We are selling the book for $5.95 and after hosting/distribution costs, we would need to sell about 500 copies to cover costs. Now, the book will be available in print, so that will offset the numbers we need to sell, but we’ll see.
I hope you found this somewhat insightful, especially if you are thinking of starting your own publishing company or want to release your own book.
