> art is costly
Are you sure you are not being scammed? The game has only two (well, three now) sets of characters sprites and only 1 CGs. Other vns have much more robust and varied art (like Monster Village or Far Beyond the World) and devs behind them seem to get along just fine. I would hire another artist to make my money worth, if I were you.
The art alone from someone like Wagnermutt costs 150 minimum, not including background and everything, I only (and recently) started making 200, I'm already working with him on installments at times, plus at the end of the day I'm also handling coding and writing alone, and as you can imagine, I can't pay the bills and eat with 50 ~ 100 a moth, still here I am working on the project with all the love and passion I got and right there to answer everyone's questions about it whenever they need.
So I guess it's quite fair to compare popular VNs making 1k+ a month and me trying to work through mine with the little I got.
