A few questions (though I would ask them here as I'm sure other people will be interested):

1) Presumably you have an idea of how many maps vs. how many illustrations you want, what's this number? Curious as to where you pulled the 10% for maps vs. the 20% for illustrations (I'm quicker at doing an illustration, but a map can take me days from concept to final image), so presumably there's just a lot more illustrations.

reply:
each planed book is different, both in art and maps.
ex kingdom book would have the world map and the kingdom map [ players and gm ver] that would be it and the art would be about 60+ pics
so each map would be 3.3% of sales as the art would be 1/3rd of a %

2) The % royalty is based on sales per unit? If so what are you expecting the sale per unit to be? Are you aiming in the D&D supplements pricing (around $30+ per book) or DriveRPG publishing ($5+ mark). If you're aiming at selling them for $5/unit minus expenses (20%?) and as a map maker I get 10% of $3 then you'd have to be shifting a LOT of units for it to be worth putting pen to paper.

reply
pubs will be sold both as a e-pub and printed. e-pubs will range from 4.95 for a module, 9.95 for a expansion resource, 19.95 to 29.95 for a kingdom book. the printed version would be the same plus print cost.
so a $100 map assuming there are 3 in a pub and sold for 19.95. to get the $100 point we would have to sell about 190 copies. 19.95 less 20% selling fee for e-commerce=15.96 times 3.3% for the one map = 53 cents per copy


3) How many illustrators/map makers are you looking to take on? 10% for map making isn't that nice if it's then divided between you and another 2 map makers.

reply:
see above

4) Are you a publisher or are you/your group/company doing the writing/editing/etc. that the other 70% of the royalties go to? If someone is taking a job on royalties it's nice to know whether the person you're giving your art to actually has any experience in publishing previously so that you actually make some money (more so if the price per unit as above is lower). Also, if you are a known publisher then simply having work published can often offset any lack of income gained.

reply:
we are hiring a professional editor but we [3] are doing some of the writing. as the organizers we only get 3.3% of all pubs unless we fill the roll as a freelancer, just like everyone else.
20% profit to artist

20% profit to writers
10% profit to map makers
20% profit to editors
10% profit support of local cons and marketing
10% profit physical assets, data storage, scanners and computers, web site fee's, etc
10% profit to founding members

5) You mention publishing stuff for "The Underdark", which is WOTC intellectual property, do you have an equivalent for your world/system or do are you paying for licensing to actually create and publish content with WOTCs IP (presumably the former otherwise you'll pretty much be making no profit if you're paying for WOTC licensing )?
reply:
underdark is under the concept of open license, but we will have our own name for it just to be safe. we use the term now so everyone knows what we are talking about.

6) What market/ online presence do you already have for your product? Similarly to above you mention a depreciating royalties payment each year, but if you have zero presence then it may take you a year to actually get your product noticed and the higher sales coming in.
reply:
we have little to no presence online as of yet, as stated we are a new company and have not yet created product ready to be sold. next month we should have our herbalist handbook back from editing. it has one artist who did all 24 plant drawings and 4 writers. the same artist is currently doing the fill art. so he gets the whole 20% of sales. it will be released at first as e-pub and we will get the second one done in the series and then get a kick-starter going to get it in print form. estimated sale price is $9.95 and is about 70 pages.

7) What time frame are you aiming for to have each compendium completed? How much of the content/writing is already done?

reply:
the world is rough outlined as it has been used in our local game over the years, but note paper has to be re written for pub and organized.
as stated next month is first pub and we should be getting one done each month after that for a while..... the kingdom book for Anjora is written and now is being cross checked and clearified. it is holding on maps now. once out we will have 7 supplements to it covering a group of cities, towns and villages. ideally I would like to have 10 map makers involved in all 8 of these pubs. it will give a nice flow of the map styles and showcase a varity at the same time. the person doing the world map would have the single map in each of the pubs for a share same with the kingdom maps. thus the return for the extra work for these maps compared to creating a city.



note that the maps are not required to be paper and ink created, their are many digital map tools that could be used.

hope this answers your questions and all that are following

rhos