Established 2003. Now incorporating The Sudbury Hill Harrow and Wherever End Times

Saturday, March 04, 2017

Competition accounts 2016

The itemised details go to an accountant at the end of the financial year and thence to the taxman etc. Here's a quick overview.

The prize formula said "either (a) half of all net entry fees OR (b) all net entry fees after the first 150 entries,  whichever is the greater, will be divided equally among the ten short-listed." It was (b) that was activated. These go into the accounts of Object Tree Ltd. except where otherwise stated, e.g. PGP below.

In:
Entries 344 @ £5. Proceeds from Submittable after their commission and dollar conversion: £1320
Sold 11 books at the event: £66
"Wine fund" envelope at event: £4
There was no other income or sponsorship in 2016, other than a bottle of Champagne donated.
Total in: £1390

Out:
Prizes £10 x £75 = £750
Book setup + costs for (2 x 10) authors, actors copies (event), judges and helpers copies, approx £220.
Adwords adverts: Approx £40
Performance space for event: £120 (there is a query over this as we were expecting more and it could go as high as £272, according to our records, but only £120 has been invoiced).
Wine: 6 bottles used (out of 12) at about £6.50 each: £39
Bottled water and pretzels: disregard, took most home.
3 WH mugs: (winner, judge and agent) about £40
Total out: £1239 so far, possibly £1361 if Brent council bills the additional items that were quoted.

Further book sales and costs
There are a few books left over for sale from the New Short Stories shop (about 6?).
Proceeds from sales on Amazon, B&N etc go to the publisher Pretend Genius Press (PGP), a registered not-for-profit corporation in Maryland, US.
There is an annual fee to keep the books available in the Ingram catalogue, which is an ongoing cost to PGP on all the back issues.

You can see for yourself, it's just about break even (or a loss really - see update below). If you want to see previous years' details, click on the Accounts link below. Note, there was no competition in 2015.

Update: After reading the previous year's accounts myself, I see I've forgotten to mention the web server costs. These are ongoing at £230 per year (Webfusion now taken over by Heart ISP). That hosts NewShortStories.com but also several other domains. If that's taken into account, we're running at a loss, of course. (Steve)

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