XKCD Book

15 Sep 2009

So at last a xkcd book is out. Signed copy costs $10USD more than an unsigned one — my guess is Randall’s gonna make more off that than the books! *does maths* Signing 6 books/minute is $3600/hour… not bad for a dude with a pen & a blag.

It’s only going to run for 24 hours, so realistically that particular activity would max out at $86,400 – but that’s pure profit, because there’s already a profit built into book sales. That’s assuming relatively modest sales of 8640 units — for a website with a reach peaking at just over 0.1% of the Internet’s daily users, I’m not sure if this is realistic or not. Still, Alexa reckons it’s the 1735th most popular website on the planet, so that’s got to count for something.

Oh, and remember it’s independantly published with royalties split between Munroe and the philanthropic backer – so, guessing it’s ~200 pages, and an initial run of 10,000, even an unCorporation like breadpig ought to be able to make, if you’ll pardon the pun, some dough (groan) from the $18 list price.

At any rate, Munroe stands to make dramatically more from the mundane activity of book signing than possibly any other cartoonist in history. The moral of the story is do something you love, so long as it’s got tremendous merchandising potential ;-)