Thank you for such a nice reply! Just as you feel great from messages from fans, it feels amazing to receive replies from artists I enjoy. I remember back when I wrote professionally. When I received an email from a fan I was over the moon. I never thought anyone would read what I wrote. Those were the days.
As a funny aside, I used to write erotic fiction. I never told anyone I knew about it. Well, I made an error when trying to hide my identity and of all people, one of my grandmothers (a hyper religious woman) found one of them. She called me and said she found an "interesting book" and asked me if I'd read it. Of course I denied it but she pressed me on the issue. I got angry and said, "Yes I did and I also wrote..." and I listed them out for her. At that point I think I had about 150 short stories. When I finished she just laughed and said "I always knew you were a pervert, now you're a professional pervert. I'm proud of you son." After that I told the rest of my family and the reception was warm. Heck my close friends even bought some of my books. My best friend at the time was upset to hear about what I did. I was supposed to be his best man at his wedding, but he removed me from the guest list. Such is life.
My apologies for the long aside. The main reason I'm writing this is because I think you're writing budget is too high. Writing is very important, but for a startup you need to do what you can to keep your costs low. That is, until you turn a profit, then you should jack them up. When I started my publishing company I started writers at "token" rates, and when I started turning a nice profit I bumped up the pay. I paid seven cents a word at the end, but that was after a long time of showing profits.
Your projected art budget looks good. If you take the time to search you can find a lot of younger artists who would take lower rates for exposure. Take some time (ie a few hours) to browse (please don't hate me for listing a few of these) e621, furaffinity, Weasyl, FurryNetwork, and sofurry. I found an artist on Furaffinity to do cover art for me in the past. The pay was low at first but like the writers I drastically upped the pay over time.
Anyway, sorry for the long message. Please keep up the amazing work. I'm going to play your rendition of Utopia again. Your AI in that game is good and I feel like I'm playing someone who knows what they are doing.
Take care!