Fair point. The draft originally included some "if this then that" questioning for polyphasic sleep, but it was becoming complicated. We'll have to try a little harder in the next version.
Results were gathered in August 2014 by Cameron Moll. The sample size (471) is rather small and therefore should not be construed as indicative nor representative of the entire HN audience.
The sample size doesn't indicate how representative a sample is, the polling method does. In this case, it's almost certainly not representative - internet polls rarely are. But even a sample of 5000 wouldn't be representative.
You may be thinking of statistical significance. 471 is actually often a pretty good sample size, you would e.g. need <100 responses to have a fairly significant estimate of the mean salary of HNers (assuming a representative sample).
Collecting emails for notification might have been wise, but I wanted to be completely clear no highly personal details would be collected or published. (Salary might be considered highly personal, but without contact information to attach that salary to, it remains generic.)
"It's not Kickstarter's fault that he failed to budget the vast majority of his costs..." Definitely not. But this is a primary reason for authoring the article—a heads up to others who may launch a KS campaign and not fully understand where all the money might go.
First and foremost, congratulations on a wonderful piece of art. The realities of accounting should not distract you from the fact that the project was a success and enriched people's lives.
Although you paint a pretty bleak picture of the finances, as others have pointed out above, this does not reflect the economic reality.
The typo impacted your profit margin significantly - without it, you would have had an additional $7k and a margin of 19%.
But this is only a side show. Even if you had made 0% on the posters shipped to the Kickstarter backers, the 800 posters remaining represent a book value of $96k. (Less a few hundred dollars for storage).
Assuming you can sell at this price, your three years work will be amply remunerated for a part-time project.
In the end, Kickstarter functioned as it should. It reduced your risk by providing a pool of known buyers and left you with the infrastructure for approaching your market. That market is your final reward.
Right, but you are left with an extra 800 posters, which have already been printed and just have to be shipped. Had you just done a printing run to fulfill the commitment to the backers, you'd be left with more profit from the project at this point, but instead you've been paid less, with the potential for more revenue with higher margins. More risk, (potentially) more reward.
Very happy with the outcome, indeed. I thought it was important, however, for others to understand what goes into (and comes out of) creating a Kickstarter project, and how they might avoid misjudging costs—as others have pointed out here.
