“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to get into the comic book industry. So, how can I do it?”

It’s a big question. And unfortunately, I don’t have a straightforward answer to it for most people, because it really depends on what you’re trying to do. But what I can offer are some general guidelines that should help those who have this question burning in their brains to start finding some answers.

Let’s start out with the obvious point: there is no one “way” into the comic book industry. Everyone’s path is different. Most ways in require a large amount of patience and persistence, but some people do get lucky.

My way in was unique, but not so different from many other stories I’ve heard. My first “gig” in the comic book industry came as the result of a writing contest an artist was holding for a Christian-themed comic book called “The Devil’s Keeper.” He’d written a screenplay, and wanted to adapt it into a comic. He asked for submissions, and many people sent them in. I didn’t want to waste my time, so I sent an email requesting more information about the story — I wanted to make sure it was something I cared to work on first. That got his attention. And since I had the writing ability to back up my attitude, I was a good fit for what he wanted to accomplish.

Through this artist, I made many other contacts within the industry, and I was able to put my skills as a Public Relations manager, editor and writer to use in many capacities. Since I was working with startups and independent publishers, I did it all part-time. I probably could have made a full-time gig out of it, if I’d been willing to take the risk, but I never saw an opportunity that was worth it. (Even now, as I run my own publishing company, I have a day job in marketing research to make sure my bills get paid. That gives me the freedom to make sure my projects are top-notch; I’m not pressured to ship an inferior product just so I can get some quick cash.)

My way in involved having a variety of skills, a range of contacts, and a willingness to look for opportunities. I got to do some really neat work, and I was able to work with some big-name fantasy authors whose books I’d read when I was a kid. I even got to see my wife start her own comic book writing career adapting the first few Anita Blake comics. I might not have had a chance to become a famous comic book writer, but I at least enjoyed the experience. I also got to see enough of the ugly side of the industry to set up a solid business plan and start my own company.

Clearly, I was in the right place at the right time several times over. But what you must understand is that I was able to be in the right place at the right time because I was constantly making myself available to expand upon what I was doing. People sought me out to ask for my advice on marketing. Creators brought me their work and asked for a critique. Friends in the industry would send things over for me to ghost edit. I didn’t get paid for most of this work, nor did I even ask for payment. For one thing, I knew most of these folks didn’t have a lot of money to offer. And for another, I knew that it was more to my benefit for them to remember my act of kindness down the road when an opportunity suited to my skills came along and they needed someone to recommend for the gig.

And that’s the general piece of advice I would give to anyone wanting to get into the comic book industry — even if you can write, edit, pencil, ink, color or letter really well, you should take the time to learn some other skills, because the more you’re able to do yourself, the more marketable you’ll make yourself within the industry.

I also recommend spending a little bit of time honestly answering the following seven questions:

1) What do I want to do in the comic book industry, exactly? Be specific. Say, “I want to write Spider-Man for Marvel,” or, “I want to create my own series.” I’m not saying that you will do these things, but it’s important to know what you’re shooting for. After all, there’s a world of difference between trying to get a very specific job on a popular book and trying to go the route of an independent creator.

2) What skills do I have that I can offer to a publisher beyond a standard comic book position? So, you’re a wannabe writer. That’s great. But can you write press releases and website posts, too? Or, maybe you’re an aspiring pencil aritst. Cool. But are you able to do some conceptual art that can define the style of a prospective series? Can you color your own work at a professional level? Believe it or not, publishers are also looking for people willing to fill roles like these.  They may lack the glamor of working on a book, but they’re a way to develop a relationship.

3) What sets me apart? I wish more people would spend time grappling with this question. Too many would-be writers and artists out there are derivative of whatever’s popular. Most can’t define what makes their style their own, and most are all too aware of their influences. My own rule of thumb is that if I can spot a writer or artist’s primary influence within five minutes, I won’t consider them for a project. But the flip side of that is that if I sense the writer or artist is too married to a particular genre or style, I won’t consider them, either. There’s such a thing as being too distinctive — and it often means the person is difficult to work with.

4) Can I work at a professional level? Here’s another question that needs to be asked more often. I get a lot of email from people who want to launch comics, but who have no business trying to get into the industry, because their work is extremely unprofessional in quality. If you can’t match what people are doing at Marvel or DC, you need to spend time developing your skills so you can work at that high level. If you’re a writer, you’d better be able to tell a short story that’s heavy on action and light on words. You’d also better be able to pace things properly and string readers along from issue to issue. If you’re an artist, you’d better be able to draw backgrounds, and you’d better be a master of facial expressions, anatomy, and action poses.

5) Can I work on a tight deadline (even if it’s not my fault things got behind)? It’s amazing how many professionals there are in the industry who can’t say “yes” to this question. A comic book deadline is pretty simple — books come out every month, so writers have to turn in a script every 30 days and pencil artists have to turn in 5-6 pages a week, plus a cover every month. Colorists and letterers often work on several books per month, and thus generally turn around one book every week. This is all good and well… until someone’s late, or revisions are requested. Inevitably, however, someone screws up, and everything falls apart. The deadlines remain, but the workload gets heavier. Pencil artists find themselves scrambling to get 7-8 pages done over three weeks, and colorists and letterers are given a weekend to get a book turned around. It’d be nice if these things didn’t happened, but they do, and rather frequently, at that.

6) Can I handle being told I suck? I have yet to meet a creative person who has not been told, at some point in his or her career, how awful he or she is. Rejection is common in the world of publishing, and editors and art directors aren’t known for mincing words. If you can’t deal with a bad review from a website,  some harsh words from a fan, or an angry phone call from an unhappy editor, you should stay away from the comic book industry, because you’re going to fall apart when you see how much rejection you have to endure.

7) Am I kidding myself? This last question is not something you should assess by yourself. Rather, you should put together a portfolio of your best work, come up with a pitch for what you want to do, and ask a variety of people whom you know and trust to answer it for you once they see what you’ve got to show. I’d say you should show at least ten people of varied backgrounds, ages, occupations and relationships to you (as opposed to, say, just your friends and family). If they’re not persuaded, chances are good that editors won’t be, either. And if they offer you feedback, you’d be wise to listen to it — they might not understand comic books exactly, but their “outsider” perspective might be more valuable than any “insider” advice you’ll find.

Once you’ve chewed on these seven questions, and you’ve determined that you are indeed ready to look for work in the comic book industry, here are some general pointers for working your way in.

Writers: Do not – I repeat, DO NOT – contact people in the industry and ask them to look at your scripts. This is the kiss of death as far as most editors are concerned. Your best bet is to find ways to make personal contacts with editors and publishers (say, offering to be their gopher for an afternoon during a convention, or meeting them for a drink later in the evening) so that you’re top-of-mind when it comes time to hire writers. I do not recommend doing weird, stalkerish things like adding editors to your Facebook or Myspace profile or sending them messages at their personal email accounts unless you have taken the time to make friends with these people first.

If you must send query letters, make sure they’re short and sweet, well-edited, and that they list your full range of professional skills, not just some sob story about how it’s your dream to write comics.  There are far, far more writers out there than jobs available, so make sure you mention the fact that you can write press releases, catalog capsules, website content, and other forms of copy, provided that you actually can. Always include a link to a website or PDF where editors can review your clips quickly and conveniently. Don’t attach it — let them make the choice to download it themselves. Do not include ANY unpublished fictional work in your clips unless you absolutely must — this represents a conflict of interest for editors and they will generally stop reading to absolve themselves of any legal responsibilities.

Artists: Before you approach anyone, you need to set up an online gallery where editors can go to check out your portfolio. Most of the time, artists are hired by responding to requests for submissions, either formal or informal. You can always show your work to an editor at a convention or via the web in the hopes that they have a good match for you, but chances are good they’ll forget your work unless it really, really impresses them. Many referrals come through contacts with other artists, so get connected via social networks and web forums and keep your ear to the rail. The more you share your work and ask for input from your peers, the better known you’ll be when an opportunity suited to your style becomes available.

Paper submission packets should be creative and feature your best work. They should never be delivered to an editor unsolicited, because they will probably be thrown away. In my experience, editors do not like artists to submit clips in email submission packets unless they are requested or specifically tailored to the inquiry. You should also avoid applying for jobs that are outside your stylistic area of interest. If you want to do mature-themed books and the editor is looking for artists who can draw kid-friendly characters, you’re not a good fit, and shouldn’t waste your time, or the editor’s, by submitting.

If you go to a convention, avoid the temptation to sit in Artist’s Alley. Editors perceive this as being the realm of amateurs. Some editors do wander through and look for talent, but very few legitimate offers are made. If you’ve heard someone got a big gig through being in Artist’s Alley, chances are good it’s with a publisher that’s small press or less than reputable. Save your money and focus instead on scheduling portfolio reviews with editors from publishers you’re actually interested in working for.

If you can color, ink, paint or letter, be sure you mention this any time you’re talking to a publisher. Those positions are much harder to fill than the writer and pencil artist positions, and they’re often a smart way to get an “in” with a publisher and build up your professional portfolio.

I’ve got plenty more advice I can offer, but I think what I’ve mentioned in this post is enough to start with. If you have specific questions, please post them below, or email me at sean at seanjjordan dot com. Good luck!

How much should a publisher spend on the production of a comic book?

Believe it or not, there’s no standard answer in the industry, and the fees that writers, artists, letterers and editors are paid varies widely between companies. Obviously, Marvel and DC pay the best, and they tend to attract the topmost talent as a result. Other established publishers, like Image and Dark Horse, also pay fairly well. Indy publishers can’t generally afford those rates, and they have to budget for lower costs… which generally means lower quality.

With that said, there are ways to keep costs down, and there are always top-notch artists who are willing to work at a lower rate in exchange for more creative control and/or profit-sharing. But let’s begin by looking at my estimates of the rates artists are getting in the industry today…

First off, let’s get the big myth out of the way: no one is getting rich from doing comics, save a handful of creators who were smart enough and/or lucky enough to get into the business side of things. And most of them aren’t “rich” so much as they’re “well off.” That’s important to understand, because there’s this weird idea throughout the ranks of the fans that the “big names” are highly successful. That might be true for someone like Todd McFarlane, who created a hugely successful comic book line, sold the rights to a major motion picture, and then applied his earnings towards starting a toy company. But I assure you, he’s the vast exception to the rule.

My experience in comics has been that most of the people working in the industry are doing so freelance and part time. Most of them cannot afford to live in New York, Los Angeles, or San Diego, and most are doing other work to subsidize working in comics. Only a handful are making a living doing this full time, and of those, even fewer are earning an envious income.

So, with that said, here are the rates I’ve observed publishers paying (excluding, of course, Marvel and DC):

• Writers: $10-35 per page, or $220-770 an issue. Writers are in large supply and short demand, and only those with massive fanbases are worth paying more, no matter how skilled they are or how good their ideas are. But don’t feel too bad; a comic book script only takes a few days to write, and some writers can handle 4 or 5 books a month. The sweet spot for scripts seems to be around $500.
• Editors: This varies, since editors often are on staff and not hired freelance. I’d say per book, editors generally range from $50-500, depending on the work they’re doing and the skill required. The upper part of that range is generally reserved for editors who are not only responsible for checking scripts and reading proofs, but also making schedules and keeping people on said schedules. That’s a lot more work than it sounds. Still, I’d recommend $200-300 per book for most editors, and more only if they’re really working hard.
• Artists: $75-200 per page, or $1650-4400 per issue. Pencil artists and inkers are always the most expensive part of the process because they spend the most time on the pages and require the most skill. Many publishers are phasing inkers out and using digital inks over pencils instead. I’m not sure if this is a good move or not; some pencils aren’t strong enough not to be inked. But it’s hard to deny the fact that it makes the books much cheaper to produce, and therefore, much easier on the publisher.

  $200 is a bit much to pay an inexperienced artist, but it’s a good price for an artist who’s willing to handle pencils and inks together. I’d say $100-150 is the “sweet spot” for most indy artists, and $200 is good for established pros who are returning to indy books. But publishers should definitely be careful not to overspend. I know of a situation where a publisher was paying an artist $10,000 per book, or $455 per page. The artist wasn’t worth it, and it did not surprise me when the book stopped midway through its run and lost a ton of money.

• Colorists: $35-125 per page, or $770-2750 per book. Colorists vary widely in quality and ability, and those on the low end are usually artists from other countries looking to get their big break in the US comics industry. I don’t know of any colorists who aren’t doing colors digitally these days, and most can turn pages around fairly quickly. Therefore, I’d say $75-100 is the “sweet spot” for paying a colorist, though some of the guys who work for more can do some amazing things that the lower-end guys lack the skill to do.

  I’d note that Pat Lee’s Dreamwave Studios, which was noted for its flashy artwork and great colors, used an army of low-paid colorists on each book instead of individual pros. If you have the volume to afford in-house colorists, it’s not necessarily a bad idea. But keep in mind that Dreamwave tanked rather quickly once its Transformers books dropped off in sales, so it might not be the best company to follow.

• Letterers: $15-50 per page, or $330-1100 per book. Some publishers attempt to letter books themselves, but I wouldn’t recommend doing so, since lettering is an art of its own that requires specific knowledge to do properly. Also, letterers are supposed to either be using their own fonts or using legally licensed fonts in their work, saving the publisher from legal troubles. Good letterers work fast, ask smart questions about potential typos, and get pages ready for proofing. I’d say $25-40 is the “sweet spot” for competent letterers, though some may charge more if they offer post-production services or other services, like logo design.

(If anyone has specific knowledge of the rates being paid in the industry, please feel free to post them in the comments section!)

Contracting good people is important, but working from a budget is key. I generally start by assigning a production budget to the book as a whole, and then I subtract in-house editorial fees and break it down into costs per page. So, for example, if I budget $250 per page, I can spend $100 on my artist and then try to divide the rest amongst the writer, colorist and letterer. Obviously, for that low of a price, I’m not going to be able to afford an inker, but that’s how it goes when you’re an indy publisher — you have to be realistic about cutting costs, even if it’s at the expense of putting an extra burden on the pencils. But $250 a page is $5500 a book… and that’s not counting the cover or other production work! To make back $5500 at 3.99 per issue with the standard trade discount, you’d have to sell close to 3200 copies of a comic book. And that doesn’t include the costs of printing or marketing. I’ve heard that some publishers budget upwards of $15,000 per issue for production alone. I hope they’re running ads — otherwise, they’re going to run out of money fast, unless they can somehow get their sales up into the tens of thousands.

Cutting costs is always smart, provided that you do it properly. In my experience, writers are the people who are willing to work for the least. Some will even work for free in exchange for a chance to be professionally published. Don’t feel bad about this. I personally believe in paying people for the work that they do, but to a writer, having a professional credit is often the most important part of the deal. Consider that their payment. You can always pay them points on the backend if needed. (Chances are good you won’t have any profits to share, but it’s a nice thought nontheless.)

Artists (and colorists and letterers, too) will generally expect to be paid the agreed amount, with little flexibility. That’s because artists put in considerably more work than writers, often at the expense of free time or personal lives. Artists are generally the first to jump ship when financial troubles surface. Make sure they get paid on time. One of the best ways to burn your bridges in the comic book industry is to develop a reputation for not paying people in full or on time. I saw this firsthand at one of the publishers with whom I used to work — it was ugly then, and it still has consequences for them to this day.

All in all, I’d say the “sweet spot” for production is $5,000-7,000 per issue. If you can get away with less, do so. Just make sure that your quality doesn’t suffer. After all, including printing, at $3.99 with the usual trade discount of around 57%, you’re going to have to sell upwards of 7,200 copies just to break even… and that’s going to be a hard thing to do if your book’s quality is inferior to other titles on the market.

I welcome other publishers to share their input here. It’s always great to hear from people who have firsthand experience!

-SJJ

But first, let’s take a moment to gain some perspective. According to CBGXtra.com, In May, 2008, 7.08 million copies of the top 300 comic books were sold, with the top ten accounting for 15% of the entire market. ICv2’s analysis says that both comic book and graphic novel sales are slowing down, and that the quarter overall has been weak. I should add that these numbers are not representative of what fans are buying; these are repesentative of what retailers are ordering. Many of the retailers I’ve spoken to claim to only sell around 50-60% of all of the books they order in the first month. That means that sales to readers are closer to the 3-4 million range.

There’s no question that these numbers are better than the numbers 10 years ago, when 6.99 million copies were sold in May, or the numbers from 5 years ago, when 5.63 million copies were sold in May. (Comparing actual dollar sales is not a fair analysis since books have gone up 33% in price over 10 years.) But that’s nowhere near the 11 million copies that sold in September, 1996, when Diamond first took over distribution to the direct market. And, for what it’s worth, 1996 was one of the years when the industry was in a sharp decline.

In other words, the comic book industry managed to turn itself around from extinction, but ultimately, the industry is stagnating. That means earnings will level off, investments will dry up, and retailers will go bust. The industry may have righted itself for the short term, but in the face of a declining economy, it may have simply delayed its demise.

Fortunately, there are ways that the comic book industry can plant new seeds for growth. But what I need to make clear here is that the current industry, with its overemphasis on superheroes and collectibles, may prove hostile and infertile to these new ideas. The next generation of comic book creators will need to look outside the established direct market, and they will likely have to carve out a new niche of their own. The next generation of comics may simply be a larger part of the publishing industry as a whole, fragmented into different genres and scattered around bookstores with their respective topics. And as digital options become more and more available, it’s quite likely that successful indy books will start out online, and not in print, in the near future.

But a lot of this will come at the expense of the next generation of creators separating themselves from the icons of the industry. So, with that said, let’s look at my own vision for changes the medium can use for growth over the next ten years:

1. Comic book creators should eliminate the periodical model and focus on longer, self-contained stories. As I’ve said many times on this site, the days of the serialized story are over. They’re simply not accessible to new readers, and they aren’t appealing to the mass market. But single, mini and maxi series stories, on the other hand, seem to have a much greater appeal to readers. One book that’s doing quite well this summer is the reprint of Batman: The Killing Joke. Originally, this was a 48-page one-shot story from the 1980s written by Alan Moore that helped redefine the darker side of the Joker. It’s obviously doing well this summer because of the tie-in to The Dark Knight, but it’s been a strong seller in general due to the fact that it’s a single, compelling, inexpensive way to read a great Batman story.

If comic book companies focused on releasing books every quarter instead of every month, they would have the time to produce the “prestige” editions of books that aren’t quite graphic novel length, but which are substantial enough to be assigned ISBNs and sold in bookstores. These books could have longer shelf lives, better content, and stronger stories since they wouldn’t be chained to the 22-page standard. They could be sold for more than a standard magazine-style book, and they’d be easier for a larger number of retailers to carry. And while some fans might be annoyed at first, the vast majority of readers would welcome the chance to read comics again… but without all the hassles of having to buy magazines that had to be bagged and boarded once they were read.

2. Comic book creators should tell stories that aren’t stuck in the comic book mold. Stories with superheroes, gunplay, and licensed characters from popular TV shows and video games make up the majority of comic books today. Of course, there are other books — Vertigo often puts out unusual titles with unique premises, Archie Comics continue to explore the adventures of the Riverdale teens, Gemstone republishes some of the Disney classics and Fantagraphics fills the need for more artsy endeavors. But those books make up a small percentage of the comics that are actually sold, and the low enthusiasm in the industry for new things discourages new creators from trying to break out of the current cliches into uncharted territory.

But the problem is that the current market doesn’t usually want these new books. In order to make them succeed, creators have to go out of their way to either produce a book that’s of an incredibly high quality, about an incredibly trendy topic, or designed to be incredibly media-friendly. Everything else gets left by the wayside, at least where the direct market is concerned. Manga titles appeared to be turning this around slightly when they helped to open up the bookstore market, but manga’s influence is waning, and graphic novel sales are reaching a point of maturity in the bookstores.

With that said, there are still plenty of opportunities to produce new styles of comic books. The problem is that the creators behind these books are going to have to work hard to find new audiences. I know that it’s possible to do, since I was behind the marketing effort to launch the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter comic books, which were a huge hit despite the fact that they were geared at women and weren’t about superheroes. Granted, the license had some power to it, but what was most rewarding was hearing from retailers that our book was bringing in women who had never shopped in a comic book store before. The audience was out there; we just had to create a product they wanted to read. (Sadly, the book tanked in quality and in sales once the author realized that it was a hit and decided to be more hands-on; that’s the trouble with doing licensed books.)

Still, I am convinced that the comic book medium itself is powerful; the problem is the industry built up around it. As long as the public perceives comics to be mostly about superheroes, the medium will never be taken seriously by the mass market. The next generation of creators have a lot of work to do in that regard, and it’s going to be a tough thing to build a new industry if the old industry insists on clinging to its old ways (as I believe it will). Seeds will have to be planted, and then given time to grow before the public can truly take notice.

3.  Comic books should be sold in places other than comic book stores and bookstores. I remember being very excited a few years ago when I saw a small rack of “Marvel Age” titles in the toy department at Target. “Finally,” I thought. “They’re getting a clue.” Sadly, when I was in the same toy department a few months ago, I didn’t see the comics. And that’s too bad, because it’s the perfect place to sell them.

When I was a kid, comic books were everywhere — the drug store, the grocery store, bookstores, toy stores, and even airport news stands. That’s because comics were sold and distributed like magazines. These days, they’re sold like books, movies, or video games, with street dates, pre-orders, and the occasional marketing campaign. In the old days, only about 30-50% of comics printed actually sold each month; the rest were returned or destroyed as the new batch came in. The money was made in the high margins. Today, most comics that are printed are sold to retailers on a non-returnable basis, which means less overall risk… and lower rewards as a result.

Comic book publishers and comic book retailers have a precarious relationship today — the retailers need the product in order to keep their doors open, and the publishers need the retailers to buy their product so that they can make more of it. But since most of a retailer’s dedicated customers are interested in buying Marvel and DC books, that’s all that most retailers can afford to carry. Most will pre-order books for customers, but many can’t afford to keep large amounts of backstock or fill orders for older titles. This means that publishers who aren’t Marvel or DC can really get the shaft; if they’re not able to maintain the support of comic book retailers, they won’t sell enough copies to break even, let alone make a profit.

Some publishers have suggested that getting back into the bookstore market with monthlies is the next logical step. And I agree. But it can’t stop there. Comic books need to find their way back into the mass market, and publishers need to be more creative about finding new distribution channels. This is difficult to do with today’s books, since so many are based around superheroes and licensed material. But if books were designed to appeal to wider audiences, they would probably be more mass-market friendly. To offer a wild hypothetical, a publisher could work on producing a spin-off comic that ties into a popular daytime soap, and then sell it on the grocery store stands. If the book included articles about the show, interviews with the cast, and a comic, it’d be a surefire success.

On a more realistic level, guidebooks to popular topics could be written in comic book form and sold on impulse racks. Comics function very well as instruction manuals, and they could be easily produced to walk people through household repairs, baking, or hobbies. And while this might sound like a novel idea, it’s not something I came up with on my own; the great Will Eisner was a big believer in making comics into something more than just stories, and he was a pioneer for comics as a mainstream medium.

In today’s society, where people don’t read often enough and aren’t ashamed to buy “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Sex” or “Wine for Dummies,” comics could be filling an important niche.

4. Comic books should not be restricted to having panels or hand-drawn artwork. When I was at the University of Illinois, I had the opportunity to take Dan Yezbick’s “Comic Books as Literature” class. In that class, we read a lot of comics, including one I never would have otherwise picked up: The Compleat Moonshadow. I wasn’t sure I liked the book at first; the tone was fairly pretentious, the story was weird, and the artwork had lots of wispy watercolors that gave the story a surreal quality. Looking back on it now, I realize what an amazing effort it was, especially in the days before Vertigo.

I lost my copy of this book in a fire in 2004, and I haven’t yet purchased a replacement (though I should). But what I remember about it was that the book didn’t always have clearly defined panels, and that towards the end of the book, there was a side story that completely abandoned the comic book trappings and read like a storybook instead. The fact that the creative team had the vision to create something outside the expectations of the audience was impressive to me, and the book had an extremely literary quality about it.

Another book I picked up, by chance, was called Veils. It was produced in 1998 and must have been very cutting edge for the time, since it featured digital artwork in some scenes and hand-drawn artwork in others. Both styles were used to tell two parallel stories, and I found the effort intriguing. I remember showing it to my girlfriend at the time and watching her eyes light up as she read through it; though she didn’t like comic books in general, she enjoyed this graphic novel immensely.

With the capabilities of today’s digital artists, comics could be a tremendously exciting medium, full of big ideas and interesting new styles. Sadly, they’re not, because so many artists are still trying to imitate the popular styles rather than innovate with new ideas. Those who do go “indy” are often paired up with writers, colorists and editors who are below par and who aren’t able to help the project succeed in its ultimate vision. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way the comic book industry tends to work.

5.  Comic books should not be restricted to being books. It’s amazing how far the Internet has come since I first began running a video game review website 10 years ago. Back in those days, streaming video, Shockwave applets, and animated buttons were something that only a major design firm could handle. Today, updating websites is automated, it’s easy to stream video and audio, and much of the mystery has been removed from Flash and Shockwave as developers design tools that make both programs easy for a novice to use.

Comic books could be using this new technology, and comic books should be using this new technology. But most publishers aren’t willing to make their products accessible online, and even when they are, they want to get paid a lot of money for giving customers eBook downloads that are, quite frankly, unreadable on a computer screen. A reader can either zoom out and appreciate the artwork, or zoom in and read a book one bubble at a time. Neither is as easy as just reading the darn book.

Scott McCloud tried to figure out how comics could evolve into the digital era in his book, Reinventing Comics. Sadly, Scott proved a better historian (with Understanding Comics) and guide (Making Comics) than he did a visionary. But he did realize that comics were going to have to change to become popular online, and he was right.

It wasn’t long after that a company got the idea to set comic books to DVD, displaying images onscreen with voice actors adding dramatic effect for the characters. The DVDs played out somewhat like poorly animated cartoons, and they were a really bad idea as a home entertainment option. But the same idea could easily be applied to a flash movie (sans the voice acting), displaying the comic panel by panel and including some neat animation effects to make the stories visually interesting. The stories could be played automatically, and pages could be flipped with a DVD-style menu in the bottom corner of the movie. And easter eggs could even be hidden in the background for those with sharp eyes and itchy mouse fingers.

“But how do you make money doing this?” someone might ask. It’s a fair question, because the only plans that have worked thus far have been subscription services, ad-supported services, and merchandise-based models. Clearly, these flash movies would cost quite a bit of money to produce (~$5,000-15,000 per video, if it’s the length of a standard comic book), and it’s doubtful that people would pay to watch them. They might be better used as a promotion vehicle to encourage book sales than as a product themselves.

It is interesting, however, that several web-based comic strips have been able to build large communities and generate revenues solely based on having a dedicated fanbase. That means that there’s probably a similar market for indy comic books on the web; some creator just needs to figure out how to do it and blaze a trail for the rest of us.

Make no mistake, though — using the web to distribute comics is the wave of the future, and companies like Marvel and DC that are slow to respond are going to find themselves in trouble when the paradigm shifts. It’s just the “how” that needs to be worked out.

In closing, I’d like to remind those of you who have made it through this article that the status quo exists only because people allow it to. The comic book industry may never change, but it doesn’t have to. Comic books and daily newspaper comic strips can exist in separate industries and still have a medium in common; the same can be true of the next generation of comic books and the established generation of the “direct market.” The only thing that holds new creators back is the sense that they are alone in what they want to achieve. But hopefully, after reading this article, they’ll realize that they’re not.

-SJJ

“Really?” I asked. This was news to me — from what I have seen over the last decade, sales in the comic book industry are growing marginally at best, and they’re nowhere near the points they reached in the 1990s.

But my friend argued that the success of movies like Iron Man, Hellboy II and The Dark Knight this summer indicate that comics are back at the forefront of popular culture, and that the upcoming Watchmen film is only going to improve comic books’ position. I’ve read similar arguments on websites and in entertainment columns lately. But the idea that comics are making a comeback because comic book characters are showing up in other forms of media is both naive and misguided.

Now, personally, I would love for comics to make a comeback — I’m a big fan of the medium, and I think it has a lot of untapped potential. But the problem is that comics, as they’re currently produced, are not attractive to consumers for a number of reasons, and unless the industry is willing to change, what we know as comics today will likely disappear down the road. It’s a sad thing to say, but it’s true. And there are many reasons behind it.

But before I get into those reasons, let’s step back and take a look at the comic book industry as of 2008. (If you want to know about the history of comics, you might want to read this article first.) Currently, Marvel and DC own around 80% of the total market, with Marvel commanding the lead. These two companies have been neck and neck over the last several years, and they often switch places. Behind them are around a dozen mid-range publishers (Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite, Devil’s Due, IDW, Avatar, Archie and so forth) who own around 10% of the total market. The final 10% of the market is the battleground for over one hundred indy publishers, most of whom come and go very quickly.

Marvel and DC primarily do superhero books, and they both do them really well. Both of them have long histories of doing these books, and both have stables of characters who are easily recognized as pop culture icons and who are popular with non-comic book readers. Many companies have attempted to go toe-to-toe with Marvel and DC and release their own superhero lines, and almost all of these have been abysmal failures. In fact, there are only four superheroes not created by Marvel and DC that most non-comic book readers can identify: Spawn, Hellboy, The Tick and Captain Marvel (who was not originally a DC character, but who’s currently a part of the DC universe). Nobody really remembers any of the superheroes from the old Image, Valiant, Wildstorm, and indy publisher days, and what’s more, no one really misses them, as the failed relaunches of Youngblood, WildC.A.T.S. and the Ultraverse have shown.

And therein lies the first problem of the comic book industry: the two biggest companies are focused on an extremely narrow genre. DC gets the credit for starting the superhero craze, since it was the company that launched the genre with Superman, who still remains the most iconic character of the bunch. Marvel gets the credit for reinventing the superhero into a more realistic character, thanks to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and John Romita, among others. But Superman was created over 70 years ago, and Marvel’s been putting out books featuring its current crop of heroes since the 1960s. The genre’s gotten pretty stale, because there are only so many stories you can tell about superheroes every month before you start repeating yourself.

And that brings me to my second point: the comic book industry is built on an outdated serial periodical model. This model was great in the newstand days when comics were distributed like magazines and supported by paid ads. But today’s comic book readers expect more from their books. Most people don’t like reading their comics in 22-page installments, and most people aren’t really that big on collecting magazine-style books. The industry fought this mindset for a long time, and only recently became aware of this when a secondary market, the book market, began demanding more graphic novel style anthologies and collections. And because of the industry’s reliance on the old way of doing things, many readers simply gave up on comics altogether, particularly as costs of individual issues rapidly doubled in price in the late 1990s.

My third point plays off of this as well: the comic book industry insists on producing serialized soap operas instead of mini or maxiseries stories. The mindset here is that as readers get hooked, they’ll continue to buy books every month. But the problem is that many readers approach comics like they would any other book: they want full stories that have a beginning, middle and end. A mini or maxiseries can do this very well, with the potential for a followup series that uses the same characters to tell a new story. A serialized story has to bring one story arc to a close and then immediately introduce a new one in the next issue. If the new arc’s not ready, the book might get a filler issue or two that do nothing to advance the plot. It’s easy to see why readers give up on this mode.

A fourth problem with the industry involves the writing of the books. Now, clearly, comic book writing is no longer just for hacks; some high-quality writers from film and television and stepped in to write comics over the last few years. But the problem is that these comics have become much more adult in their style, with dark plotlines that twist on old classics and self-referential humor that only long-term fans will really get into. Case in point: Marvel’s introduced a female version of Kraven for Spider-Man to go up against in recent issues, and it seems like they’re trying to retell the story of Kraven’s Last Hunt. (My friend Chris Sims talked about this in a bit more detail on his blog, if you’re interested.) That might be interesting for those who want to relive that book, but most readers would rather just pick up the orignal graphic novel. And DC’s Final Crisis is another example of how silly it is to try to keep all this continuity going; the fact that DC has had to have multiple crossovers across multiple universes to resolve its continuity issues is simply maddening to the casual reader. It’s just another signs that the writers, in the process of being fans, have made many of today’s comics inaccessible to the average reader by holding on to the baggage that’s involved with these long-running stories.

A fifth problem involves the misperception that interest in a character equals interest in a comic book. Many, many people went to see Iron Man this summer, but it’s not going to translate into a surge in long-term sales of Iron Man comics. Those who used to read the book might get back into it, and those who’ve never read an Iron Man book might give the story a try. But really, most readers are going to feel that the comic books are inferior to the film, and they’re going to give them up pretty quickly. The same thing will happen with Batman and The Dark Knight — the comics and graphic novels will see a brief surge (particuarly books like The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns), but film fans aren’t going to want to get involved in the ongoing story since it lacks the punch of the current film.

One interesting point about superhero-themed comic book films is that they are popular novel for precisely the same reason superhero comics grew popular in the first place — they provide a fantasy that requires strong visual effects to stimulate the imagination. Comic books were the best choice for rendering superheroes in the past, because they were able to capture the dynamic nature of these heroes without concerns about special effects budgets — if it could be drawn, it could be done. Movies have finally gotten to the point where they can realistically portray superheroes, and that’s precisely why people flock to see them. The idea of the superhero is quite compelling to people, and Americans in particular. But it’s much easier to enjoy a superhero story in two or three hours than to spend years collecting magazine-style books that cost $3-4 a pop and that fail to provide the same payoff.

These are five of the many reasons that the comic book industry has got to change; it’s got to focus on using the medium to tell better stories, and it’s got to focus on creating products that are more in tune with what the mass market wants and less concerned with what a handful of collectors are looking for. I’d recommend ultimately abandoning the magazines altogether and focusing on web content and graphic novels, but the current state of low sales make this a difficult thing for comic book companies to do. And that, ultimately, is why the industry is doomed; the companies with the biggest market share are choking the life out of the industry as they attempt to keep their profits up. And while both of these companies are making the bulk of their money from licensing and other media, they’re hurting the rest of the industry in the process.

In my next article, I’ll address my vision for the future of comics. It won’t be pretty, but it might be accurate.

-SJJ

Believe it or not, the format we use for comics today happened as much by accident as anything else. Prior to the 1930s, comics came in many different sizes, such as 7″ x 9″, 10″ x 13″, and the tabloid-sized 11″ x 17″.  But the current size, 6 ?” × 10 ¼”, traces its history back to a comic called Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics. Though this book is often erroneously called the first comic book (it’s not), it’s probably the first comic book that modern readers would recognize as such.

One story behind it is that a printing company called Eastern Color, Inc. was trying to find ways to keep the presses rolling during the Great Depression, and a sales manager named Harry I. Wildenberg was idly folding a newspaper broadsheet. He folded it once into the tabloid size, and then folded it again. It occurred to him that this produced a tidy little book in which newspaper strips could be printed. Another story attributes this idea to Maxwell “Charlie” Gaines, who is generally credited as the creator of the modern comic book format. Gaines happened upon some old newspapers in his mother’s attic, and started reading through the comics pages. As the story goes, he realized that people would be interested in reading reprints of these old strips, and he pitched the idea to Eastern, who’d published tabloid-sized books in the past. Gaines suggested that they fold the tabloid books in half and use a saddle-stitching binding to create a small book.

Whichever way it happened, the size of the book was a little bit larger than the modern format (reduction to the current size occurred years later), but the benefits were obvious: a smaller book allowed the publisher to cram more comics inside, and it was just as easy to produce a 64-page comic book as it was to produce a 32 page tabloid-sized book. Thus the modern comic was born. (Interestingly enough, this format an American convention; in Britain, comic books have traditionally been printed in full-size magazines.)

But the size of comic books isn’t the only thing that has its roots in industry history…

Prior to the last decade or so, most comic books have followed a magazine subscription model and been supported primarily by advertising. This, too, derives from the Depression era. In those days, people had little to spend and looked for inexpensive methods of entertainment. Eastern approached department stores and convinced them to offer free comic books, containing reprints of popular newspaper strips, that contained advertisements and coupons. The idea was that these books would help promote the stores and bring in new customers. Some stores tried the concept, and though it worked, they weren’t interested in making heavy use of the idea. But what’s important to note here is that practically from the start, comic books have been used as a promotional vehicle.

The idea of circulation fees was soon to follow. Gaines took a bunch of the unsold books and stamped “10 cents” on the cover, and convinced some local newstands to offer them for sale. To everyone’s surprise, the books sold out, and there was demand for more. Eastern went on to produce the Famous Funnies series, which initially lost money with its 10-cent price tag, but which eventually was making the company over $30,000 a month. Though Famous Funnies was an anthology book that featured Buck Rogers adventures, reprints of humorous comics like Mutt and Jeff and Joe Palooka, it also featured non-comic content such as puzzles and games.

When Gaines left Eastern (or was kicked out, depending upon the source of the story), he went on to work with a comics syndicate to create a rival publisher. Other publishers formed as well (including the companies that would become Marvel and DC), and comics became a hot new style of storytelling.

But what’s interesting about comic books is that they were never treated like regular books; like their cousins, the dime store novels, they were frowned upon by the literary world and could only be found in places like newstands and drugstores alongside magazines. And, much like the pulp novels and magazines, they were considered disposable entertainment, meant to be read casually and stored in careless piles. Comic book readers of the 1940s, 50s and 60s would have been surprised to learn that decades down the road, comic book buyers would be bagging and boarding each book they purchased.

Through the Golden and Silver ages, comics had circulation numbers similar to magazines; they were designed for the mass market, and many featured three or four short comic stories in an effort to provide something for everyone. In the Golden age, continuity was not important, and each story stood on its own. In the Silver age, some stories began to have continuity, particularly in the Marvel universe. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that a demand for deeper, darker stories began to emerge. This was the point at which most comics began to feature single stories that played out in a serialized fashion, which is most like the comics we have today.

It was around this time that comic book stores began showing up. Since comic books had traditionally been a newstand item, they were treated like magazines — publishers overshipped orders, and retailers would tear off the covers after 30 days and submit them for credit on unsold copies. This meant that comics were extremely hard to collect once they became back issues. Some fans would write to the publishers and attempt to order them, but with limited success. Comic book shops thus evolved to serve the demand for back issues, and also to provide fans with a place where they could consistently find new issues. This also led to the rise of the comic book collector — individuals whom were interested in building up personal collections of old and hard-to-find books.

Since these shops were operating on thin margins with little control over their product, a distribution system that has come to be known as the “Direct Market” eventually evolved. The idea behind the direct market was that comic book retailers would purchase books on a non-returnable basis in exchange for larger discounts. Several distributors offered services to this market (you can read about one retailer’s famous experiences here), but big publishers such as Marvel and DC ignored the shops entirely, relying on the newstand magazine style of selling books instead. It was not until 1979 that Marvel opened itself up to work with specialty shops, and DC didn’t follow suit until the 1980s. Additionally, newstand and subscription sales continued during this time, though they dwindled every year.

The comic books of the 1980s began to set the stage for many of the modern marketing conventions we see today; epic crossovers, one-shot side stories, and prestige format books (later assigned to the title “graphic novel”) all become quite common during this time. Comic books were still primarily supported by advertising, and they were still printed on low-quality newsprint and designed to be disposable products. Superhero comics received a pop culture boost from the blockbuster Superman (1978) and Batman (1988) films, and both Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk had live-action TV shows to complement Spider-Man’s Saturday morning cartoon show. Then, as is the case now, the comic books were almost ancillary products to their licensed products; far more people saw the movies and television shows than ever read the comic books.

The 1980s also led to a spike in comic book collecting, which ushered in an era of speculation as the 1990s rolled around. Every now and then, a story would surface in the news about someone getting rich selling off an old comic book or baseball card, and many people wanted a piece of the action. Thus it became normal for comic book companies to relaunch series and put out multiple variants of each book. The more often a publisher could launch a book as a “#1,” the better– would-be collectors would buy up one or more copies, bag them up individually in plastic with cardboard backing boards, and carefully set them in a long box in their closet to ensure they didn’t lose their value. When seven major Marvel artists left to form their own company, Image Comics, they were able to ride this trend so well that their initial books sold much better than they should have. The poster child was Spawn #1, which sold 1.7 million copies, primarily to speculators who were hoping the book would be a good investment. (As of 2008, I believe it’s still valued at around a penny.)

DC Comics found a great way to manipulate the media in 1992 by killing off Superman; the trick has since been re-used by Marvel to announce the death of Captain America. (DC may re-use this trick as well down the road, since many rumors have circulated that they’re planning on killing off Batman.)

Still, despite all the buzz, the 1990s nearly killed comics, for several reasons:

• It was getting harder and harder to find comics outside of comic book stores, thanks to distributors focusing on the direct market. Though comic book stores went through an incredible boom during this period, most went bust quickly. This resulted in stagnating the growth of the industry and hurting the publishers as stores began to close.
• Over the course of a decade, prices for individual issues doubled, making it hard for fans to collect large numbers of books. At the same time, Marvel more than doubled the number of books it was producing each month, putting severe financial strain on retailers and turning off those who had been long-term collectors.
• Several new publishers jumped into the fray, attempting to make money off the higher prices that were being charged for books in lieu of an advertising-supported model. Decreasing demand, combined with a sudden increase in supply, hurt everyone involved.
• Marvel went through a bankruptcy process in the mid-’90s, and also purchased a distributor in an attempt to control its own supply chain. Marvel also made a series of bad business decisions, including contradictory licensing agreements and the purchase of trading card companies. Though Marvel went public in the early ’90s, its stock was overvalued by the end of the decade. (You can read more about this in the book Comic Wars, which details the power struggles that were going on at Marvel.)
• The distribution system narrowed down to two very competitive companies: Diamond Comic Distributors and Capital City Distributors. Both companies were constantly trying to steal market share from the other, and though Diamond won out eventually, their feud resulted in oversaturating the market with too many stores and too much product.
• Many comics were produced as “gimmicks” rather than actual books. This was the era of the triple-gate-fold holo-foil covers, the summer swimsuit issues, the “Valiant Vision” glasses, and other such nonsense.

Thus the current system we have today, with a near-monopolistic distribution system, high-priced books, low circulation numbers, a decreased reliance on advertising, gimmick sales and dwindling retailers, is a direct result of the 1990s.

The 21st century has been marked by a few new changes:

• Licensed books became popular following a brief wave of 1980s nostalgia, and though most of the ’80s comics proved to be a fad, licensing has helped publishers such as IDW, Devil’s Due, Dynamite Entertainment and the Dabel Brothers gain traction in the industry. (Dark Horse was one of the few companies already benefitting from licensing prior to the year 2000; its Star Wars comics have long been a staple of its lineup.)
• Japanese manga comics became quite popular as anime secured its spot in pop culture. Though Dark Horse and VIZ Media began by trying to introduce these titles in an American-style format, the Japanese pocket-style books quickly became more popular, and manga books saw a rapid growth as TOKYOPOP and VIZ cranked out hundreds of titles.
• The book market, once chiefly characterized as small mom + pop retailers, began to consolidate under major big box retailers such as Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million. Graphic novels became a huge growth area for these retailers, leading to a large demand for collected anthologies and prestige format reprints. Bookstores also became the primary marketplace for the emerging manga titles.
• The Internet has changed the way that comics are produced and published, allowing publishers to more effectively promote their books directly to consumers and to rely less on the comic book direct market. This has been good for some retailers, and bad for others; those who have benefitted most have been those who have embraced the Internet and used it to expand their business.
• Comic book-based movies and television shows have brought the medium back into popular culture, though their popularity has not necessarily translated into sales.
• Alternative forms of comics, such as webcomics, have arisen and created a new niche category of amateur-produced entertainment that is enhanced by strong online communities.

And thus we arrive at 2008. Hopefully, this brief survey of history has helped you to understand why the industry has dwindled down to its current state, and why many of the things that are done in the industry today are bourne out of an old style of producing comics.

With that said, let me offer a few closing thoughts on how the industry’s current state affects a would-be publisher.

1.  Marvel and DC have traditionally ruled this industry, and they will continue to be dominant players down the road. DC isn’t going anywhere anytime soon; it’s owned by a major media company with deep pockets, and it continues to turn a profit due to its backlist catalogue and its strong stable of books. Marvel, likewise, has turned itself around and is in fairly good shape for growth, though most of its revenues are going to come from licensing and branching out into other media, not the sale of comic books.

Any publisher who tries to compete with Marvel and DC directly will be crushed in the long run; the implosion of Mark Alessi’s Crossgen proved that. There simply isn’t room in the direct market for a third major player. Too many retailers are built around Marvel and DC, and that isn’t going to change. What will likely happen, however, is that superheroes will eventually dip in popularity again and Marvel and DC will either have to focus on diversifying their lines or suffer the consequences.

2. Though the bookstore market has been growing steadily as a new marketplace for comics, it’s still not an ideal place for comics to be sold. Bookstores will only carry monthly issues as periodicals, and graphic novels are only a subset of the manga section as far as shelf space is concerned. Plus, bookstore product is returnable, which means that publishers take many financial risks in trying to focus on this market alone.

3. Ad-supported content is probably a thing of the past. Every time I’ve worked with a small publisher, they’ve wanted to sell ads in their books. But the problem is that big companies aren’t out there looking for opportunities to advertise in comics; the circulation numbers are too low, and the prices are too high. If comics could get back on the newstands with a low ciculation price, ad-sponsored books might be feasible. But since the print industry as a whole is going through a huge decrease in ad revenues, the newstand market is dwindling, and there are no real opportunities to get comics back in there.

And, with comics currently costing around $3-4 per issue, it’s unlikely that circulation numbers will get high enough again for small publishers to sell ads at high enough prices to offset production costs.

4. Long-running series are dead. The longer a book runs, the more its sales tend to dip, and unless it’s able to build a regular base of fans, it’s probably doomed to conclude within a year or two. Though there have been books that have been an exception to this rule, the simple truth is that fans are jaded and lose interest in most titles quickly. Only a very unique concept, or a very well-marketed book, will be able to sustain itself in today’s industry. A far better strategy seems to be running a series of miniseries (4-6 issues) that each tell a complete story, but which can be cut off if the sales grow stagnant.

5. The best strategy for a small publisher seems to be running a miniseries of 4-6 issues at a time, and then collecting each miniseries into a graphic novel for sale in the book market. The sales to the direct market help to offset the cost of production, leaving the sales to  bookstores to generate profits. Additionally, this strategy is helpful to publishers because it allows them to plan gaps between miniseriesto get production teams caught back up.An added advantage of this strategy is that one miniseries is generally about the content length of a feature film, which opens up the book for easier licensing to the film industry. That’s often where the real money is made anyhow.

6. Publishers need to take advantage of the Internet. It’s the best way to cheaply promote books, and it’s a great way to develop strong relationships with fans. The whole purpose of developing the “direct market” was to bridge the gap between publishers and readers, and Marvel and DC both benefited from it tremendously. Modern publishers need to recognize that the next step is in using the Internet as a form of direct marketing, and take advantage of the power of a dedicated fanbase. It’s entirely possible for a publisher to sell all of its books directly to fans simply by creating or targeting a community of readers. And though that thought doesn’t make comic book retailers happy, it’s one of the best ways that a small publisher can survive.

This has been a lengthy article, but I hope it is a worthwhile one. Understanding the context of how comics came to be is crucial in today’s marketplace; too many would-be publishers don’t take their time to learn about the industry, and make predictable mistakes as a result.  My hope is that the next generation of publishers will help transform the comic book medium into something new and fresh, rather than focus exclusively on the stagnating battleground of the direct market.

Note: If you’re really interested in learning more about the history of the comic book, I’d recommend checking out this page or this page, both by James Coville. Though I’m not 100% certain that all of his facts are correct, it’s a nice walk through the development of the medium. Another good reference is Don Markstein’s Toonpedia, which has specific information about many classictitles.

If my experiences in the industry reflect the population as a whole, I’d guess that hundreds of thousands of people have. And many of them have actually attempted to do it, whether they’ve created an amateur book to print at Kinko’s or gone through the process of putting together a professional-quality series. Every time I go to conventions, I’m struck by how many new faces I see… and how many people I don’t see again because they’ve quietly exited the industry.

I’ve devoted quite a bit of this blog to talking about the creative side of comics through my Comic Book Writer’s Guide. But I’ve noticed that there’s a real lack of advice out there pertaining to the business side of comics. That’s partially due to the fact that most of the companies who do succeed are tight-lipped about their best practices for fear of helping out future competitors. I get that. But it’s mostly due to the fact that most comic book publishers aren’t run like businesses at all; they’re run like hobbies. Thus, there’s a lot of bad advice out there from people who really don’t know what they’re talking about.

In my 6 years in the industry, I’ve been exposed to some of the worst practices, and I’ve learned quite a bit about how not to run a comic book company. And so today, I’m going to offer a quick survey of the business side of the comic book industry… and some tips on how emerging publishers can actually survive amidst all the problems they’re going to face.

First of all, let’s be clear on one thing: a business makes money. I feel silly pointing that out, but every time I speak to would-be publishers, I’m shocked at how often that fact is forgotten. People get into comics because they want to create, darn it, and because the barrier to entry is low. A full-color, 22-page comic book on newsprint can be created for around $5,000-7,000 and printed for around 60-75 cents a copy, provided the quantity’s high enough. If the book’s priced at $3.50, the publisher can break even at around 2,500 copies if selling directly to consumers, and at around 9,000 copies if selling through the retail channel. In terms of risk and reward, the risk is pretty low, and the reward is reached fairly quickly.

You may have noticed the disparity between direct sales and retail sales. According to my calculations, one book sold directly to a customer is worth three and a half books sold through the retail channel. That’s because the standard distributor discount for comics is currently around 55-57%. This means that publishers sell their books to their distributor (almost always Diamond Distributors, Inc.) for 43-45% of cover price… but this isn’t the end of the story. A book that would sell for $3.50 in a consumer sale sells to Diamond for $1.50. Once the publisher factors in variable printing costs, the company will see around 75 cents per book, as opposed to $2.75 per book sold directly to consumers. In other words, once variable costs are factored in and before fixed costs are assigned, a book sold through the retail channel only nets the publisher 22-27% of cover price, as opposed to the 79% the publisher would see through consumer sales.

Is your head spinning with all these numbers? Take a breath. The good news is that you’ve just been exposed to an ugly truth about the comic book industry — though the barrier to entry is low, the system is set up to make it difficult for new entrants to gain a lot of traction. This isn’t an intentional design, of course; both distributors and retailers need new product in order to satisfy customer demands, and there’s always room for a hot new product. But what this design does reflect is the fact that a would-be publisher can’t bank on a single book’s sales in order to be successful; the publisher needs to have a plan in place that can take advantage of multiple methods of distribution.

So, let’s get the big question out of the way now — How many copies of a comic book can a publisher expect to sell through comic book stores? On average, the number’s around 2,500 if you rank below the top 300, 4,500 if you can crack the top 300, and 8,500 if you can crack the top 200. (You can find sales figures here, though I’ll warn you that they’re based on guesswork and aren’t 100% accurate. They also don’t include re-orders.) It’s rare for an independent publisher to break into the top 200; those slots are chiefly dominated by Marvel and DC and by licensed books. It’s almost unheard of for an indy publisher to break into the top 100. But getting a book into the top 300 isn’t too hard, provided it’s supported with an adequate promotional campaign.

So, assuming a publisher’s got a book in the top 300, the expected sales should be around 4,500 copies, all of which are non-returnable. That’s good, but it’s still only half of what the company needs to sell in order to break even. The difference needs to be made up by other distribution channels. The most profitable channel, direct-to-consumer sales, can cause problems; retailers don’t like competing with publishers for sales. So, it’s often best for a publisher to wait a month or two after the product ships before engaging in direct sales. But notice that I don’t say it’s necessary — while a few retailers will get annoyed if you offer your books for sale while they’re currently available in stores, most won’t have a problem with it unless you’re undercutting them. After all, they don’t have to tack on shipping and handling fees that effectively double the cost of the book; you will if you’re selling via a website. They also don’t have to sit at a crowded booth and try to sell a narrow line of products to indifferent passer-bys; you will if you’re selling via a convention booth.

But there are other channels as well. One of the most popular right now is to repackage 4-6 issues into a “graphic novel collection” and offer comics through mainstream bookstores. This is a great way to make some extra money off already-produced material, and it allows comic book publishers to get their products in a store that won’t generally deal with individual issues of comics. The downside, however, is that bookstore product is returnable, and around 30% of books sold to bookstores will come back. Some publishers work around this by under-shipping orders. Unfortunately, under-shipping limits sales, and can impact re-orders. Also, based on the information I’ve seen, most graphic novels sell 10,000 copies or less; only a handful get re-ordered in large numbers. Since the cost of printing at the 10,000 copy point is roughly $6 for a color paperback and $9 for a color hardback, publishers have to be careful not to over-estimate how many copies they can sell; it’s much harder to eat the cost of unsold graphic novel collections than the monthly magazines.

“What about going straight to the graphic novel phase?” you might ask. My advice: don’t do it. Produce graphic novels in monthly comic book segments, and use the sale of the individual issues to help defray your production costs. That will allow you to realize profits from the graphic novel. Avoiding the individual issues will lower your printing bills, but drastically decrease your revenues and exposure.

There is an exception to this rule, of course, and that’s the manga market. Manga books are printed in pocket format in black and white, and often are close to 200 pages long. They cost about $2 to print, and they’re well-liked by bookstores. Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult for titles not produced in Japan to catch on, because manga readers are selective and savvy. Tokyopop, Viz Media, Del Rey Manga and others have tried to introduce American-made titles, with mixed results. Generally, only licensed books (such as the Avril Lavigne based manga) have done well. Papercutz bucked the trend with its Nancy Drew manga, but it’s more likely due to the license than the format.

Speaking of licensing, most of the independent publishers out there are making licensed books their business. I dealt with this a lot when I was working with Dabel Brothers, and I’ve noticed that most of the other mid-range publishers, like IDW, Devil’s Due, Dynamite and Dark Horse, focus on producing books based on popular licensing. It’s a smart strategy, because consumers like to buy what’s familiar, and licenses with a following can translate into big sales. But licenses cost money and often introduce restrictions, so they’re not a surefire solution. Also, some licenses are just duds; I’ve seen a “Mr. T” comic floating around from publisher to publisher for quite some time, and I suspect it’s because the license lacks selling power. The insanely popular “World of WarCraft” license should have been a surefire success for Tokyopop, but the way it was handled by the creative team turned many fans of the MMORPG against the comic book. (Let’s hope they fare better with the “StarCraft” license, since my good friend Jesse Elliot is working on it.)

So with low expected sales, an increased reliance on licensing, and high variable costs… can an indy publisher make money in the comic book industry?

The short answer is no. The comic book industry is not built for small publishers, and it’s extremely hard to get in and stick around. The industry has chewed up and spat out hundreds, and maybe even thousands, of would-be publishers. The best most indy publishers can hope for is to break even; most accumulate so much overhead that even that task is difficult.

But the long answer is yes, provided it’s followed with ellipsis that wraps around the Earth seven or eight times. There are ways to make money in comics. It has been done, and it can be done again. But it requires adhering to most, if not all, of the following strategy:

1. Have enough cash reserves to be able to withstand losses during the first year.
2. Have enough cash reserves to be able to fully produce books 4-6 months ahead of release.
3. Have enough cash reserves to pursue one or more lucrative licenses.
4. Have enough cash reserves to be able to fund appropriate printing levels instead of banking it all on large runs, even if smaller, more manageable runs translate into higher costs overall.
5. Have enough cash reserves to properly promote and position a book.
6. Have enough cash reserves to advertise in Diamond’s Previews.
7. Have enough cash reserves to attend conventions and trade shows.
8. Have enough cash reserves to have a retail incentive program.
9. Have enough cash reserves to quickly run a second printing.
10. Have enough cash reserves to have an adequate support staff.

Clearly, there’s a theme here. In order to succeed, you have to have a large reserve of capital. Based on what I’ve seen, it takes most indy publishers around $15,000-20,000 to fully produce and print a single issue of a comic book. In order to make that book succeed, the publisher should have double that amount of cash available and on hand for every issue the company plans to produce during the first year. Having the correct amount of cash available will put a publisher in a much better position to stay in the game. And believe it or not, it’s because most publishers plan to have too little money on hand that they fail.

I hope that this article has been helpful. I apologize for painting such a bleak picture of the comic book industry, but the truth of the matter is that things are bleak right now. It’s not impossible for a new company to break in… but it’s very hard to stay in the game. I suspect that this will continue to be a trend, and the best way to break in as years go by will be to bypass the industry entirely… and focus on making comics available in new places, to new people, with a new philosophy of what comics should be.

-SJJ

This clash definitely exists in the comic book industry, and it’s actually part of the reason that comics are often bad. You see, the comic book industry is loaded with people who, to put it bluntly, have no idea what the heck they’re doing. I’m not just talking about writers, either; I’m talking about publishers, artists, marketing people, and pretty much everyone else involved in creating books. As I mentioned in my previous article, there are a startling number of publishers who have come and gone in just the five years that I’ve been involved in comics, and we’ll see plenty more in the next five years. The cost of entry is fairly low, and the status of being a “œcomic book creator” seems desirable to those who love the medium. Because of that, most of the people who are not working for the largest and most established publishers are inexperienced and idealistic.

One of the great things about comic books is the degree of creative control a creator can have. If something can be drawn, it can happen; a story about two teenagers going to school costs the same to produce as a story about two teenagers going to school on the moon while a giant space battle is going on overhead. Imagination knows few limits on the comic book page, which makes the medium appealing to people who like to tell fantastic stories. Creative people are attracted to comics because it’s a wonderful place to share their ideas in a show-and-tell style.

But creative people are not especially well-regarded for being fastidious researchers; rather, they’re known for getting so interested in what they’re doing that they shut out the rest of the world. It’s the analytical folks, who often fill the business roles, who have to bring those creative people down to Earth a bit and explain to them that no matter how much they enjoy their idea, at least 5,000 other people need to enjoy it too for the book to make any money. The creative people accuse the business people of not understanding the power of fresh ideas, and the business people say they don’t care what the story’s about as long as it makes money.

This is a dangerous dichotomy, since it can create two different cultures in the publishing process that simply do not get along. Suddenly, writers hate editors; artists hate production managers; the production team hates the marketing department. Everyone’s bickering over how a product should be developed, and everyone has contrary goals. Eventually, someone has to back down or nothing will get done. The proof is in the final product; copycat books come from the business-minded folks who want to ride on the success of others, while artistic books come from the creative folks who believe they’re not accountable if the book fails since that simply means that people “never understood their vision.”

This is a lousy way to produce anything, and it really robs everyone involved of any joy that might be derived from putting out a good book. Fortunately, there is a way around it, but it involves everyone — whether they’re business-minded, creative-minded, or a touch of both ““ understanding the problem and working together to solve it. They need to become a team, each playing an important role in the process of helping their product to succeed.

Here are a few points that can help to start the process along:

1) Marketing isn’t just for people with business degrees. As I’ve said before, marketing begins when a product begins. So once a product is decided upon, it’s not a bad idea to get everyone — business people, production people, and anyone in between — together to work up a plan for the project. This plan should cover the broadest aspects of production and help everyone to form a common vision for the product’s creation and launch.

For example, if Doggone Publishing decides it’s time to launch The Adventures of Oscar the Scottish Terrier, the creative team and the business team should schedule a meeting to discuss the product and to lay out the production plan. Some of these details will be decided before the meeting — especially those pertaining to the creative elements of the story — but it gives the entire team a chance to question any weak elements and to make suggestions about how the product can be improved. Oscar might be too fearsome in a book that’s clearly for children, or the artist might have drawn Oscar as a mid-sized Schnauzer instead of a small Scottish Terrier. The story might be patronizing in tone, or it might be too complex for children to understand. The creative team is not likely to arrive at these conclusions, since they are deeply involved in the project. But the business team, being outside the process of production, can provide valuable “first reaction” feedback.

On the other hand, the business team might have few creative ideas on how they can promote this book while it’s in production, and the creative team can explain the ideas behind the project and give the business team a deep understanding of the direction they’re hoping to take with Oscar’s adventures. Together, both groups can develop the initial announcement for the story, and discuss a rollout plan for the book’s launch. They can even work up some rough promotional artwork and listing copy.

With just one meeting, the entire team can outline the marketing mix (4 P’s) and have a clear idea of what they want to do with the finished product!

2) Everyone involved should test the product: This is a no-brainer, and yet it’s surprising how infrequently this happens. If Doggone Publishing puts together a book, everyone whose name appears in the book (production and corporate) should be required to read it and submit a summary of their thoughts. Not only will this help correct any glaring errors, such as typos, repeated speech bubbles, and so forth, but it will also ensure that a variety of perspectives are considered before publishing, which should help cut down on negative customer reactions.

What happens too frequently is that companies like Doggone are behind schedule and rush their product to the printer without having anyone aside from an editor look over the proofs. But editors are not an effective last line of defense, because generally, they’ve seen the product at every stage and they’re familiar enough with it that they miss little things, like artwork that might be more suggestive than it should be, or dialogue bubbles that are coming out of the mouths of the wrong characters. With ten pairs of eyes on a book, these sorts of problems would likely be caught before the book went to print.

3) A rough draft of anything is usually awful. Time is a publisher’s enemy, especially when that publisher is expected to have a product out on a monthly basis. But what that means is that the publisher needs to build a long lead time into its books instead of doing everything at the last minute. Nowhere is a publisher’s last-minute tendency more obvious than in a book that is obviously rushed.

If Doggone Publishing is preparing the proofs for The Adventures of Oscar and finds a continuity error in the story, it might be tempting to print the book anyhow and hope that readers won’t notice. But it’s better to make the proper changes and get it right the first time; readers can be unforgiving about errors, and they often have little love for publishers who don’t take the time to stamp them out. Yes, corrections are annoying (and potentially expensive), but if they’re needed, the publisher should make them, because it will improve the product.

Back when Dabel Brothers Productions was adapting Dragonlance: The Legend of Huma, the art team got in a time bind and the fourth issue had three different artists working on different sections of pages. The problem was that the artists didn’t work as a cohesive unit; it was obvious when they switched because the colors and character designs would shift. The book looked terrible, and no one had time to go back and reconcile the art, so it went to print looking like three different comics rolled into one. It was embarrassing for everyone else who’d worked hard to make the book a success!

4) Projections, budgets and sales numbers should be open to everyone working on a project. Often, creative teams are left out of the loop when it comes to knowing what their book is expected to do in terms of sales. They’re also often not told the budget because the publisher doesn’t want them to deduce what people are being paid for work. This is stupid. If everyone on the team is made aware of the projected goals and the actual sales, they’ll work that much harder to bridge the gap between the two. If everyone knows what the budget for the project is and where the break-even point is, they’ll be able to help cut costs and make sure the book doesn’t lose money because of excess.

And when I say budget, I don’t just mean the production budget — I mean the entire profit and loss (P&L) projection for each project, which includes production costs, promotional costs, overhead, and printing, among other things. And incidentally, one of the best ways to make sure that a project stays under budget and sells a bunch of copies is to offer some sort of reward, like a cut of the profits, to everyone involved. It doesn’t have to be a large cut, but a little bit of extra money always helps emphasize success.

5) Drastic creative decisions and drastic business decisions should be left to the group and not individuals. If Doggone Publishing decides it’s going to kill off Ramses, Oscar’s big brother, and the death will have serious repercussions where readers are concerned, the decision should not be made and executed by the creative team with no input from anyone else; everyone involved in the project should have some input. After all, Ramses might be more important to readers than the creators realize; he could, in fact, be the reason readers are picking up Oscar’s adventures. Killing him off could generate a negative backlash and seriously hurt the business.

On the other hand, if a comic book publisher decides it’s going to abruptly shift its format from monthly comics to straight graphic novels every three months, the creative team should have the chance to weigh in since they will probably feel that such a goal is unrealistic.
Too often, mandates come from one side or the other, and everyone is expected to fall in line. And it’s dumb, because all it does is create friction.

It can be tough to reconcile the differences between creative-minded and business-minded folks, and these ideas are just a starting point. But if they can learn to rely on each others’ strengths and perspectives, they can create a book that’s both unique and marketable.
-SJJ

In recent years, there have been several major shifts in the comic book as a product. Traditionally, comic books were produced inexpensively on newsprint with a limited color range. They were also supported by advertising. Since the 1990s, however, comic books have become increasingly more sophisticated, with high quality glossy pages, a broad range of colors, and eye-popping artwork that isn’t restricted to its panels. Many comics also run few, if any, ads, and instead rely on circulation sales to make them money.

But since comic books cost so much to produce while generating minimal sales, many publishers are wondering if it isn’t a better idea to publish graphic novels instead. After all, while comics are only really available at around 2,000 specialty stores in North America, graphic novels are available at most of the territory’s 10,000 bookstores. Graphic novels are also easier to order (since they have ISBNs) and they stock well since they sit nicely on shelves. While the cost of entry is higher (since artists are paid by the page), a graphic novel has a lot of longevity, and can be a consistent money-maker if it stays in print.

Bearing all this in mind, I thought it might be a good idea to offer a comparison of the two formats, and then share my own views on which format is best for which type of book.

Comic Book

Defining characteristics
• Softcover (heavy paper or cardstock).
• Staple-bound.
• Newsprint or glossy pages.
• 6 ⅝” × 10 ¼” (North America).
• Generally 24-48 pages.
• Generally categorized by issue number.
• Generally part of a series.
• Generally released on a monthly basis.
• Generally found at comic book stores.

Strengths
• Controlled, often low production cost.
• Potential monthly readership.
• Inexpensive to print.
• Low reprint costs.
• Lightweight, easy to ship in large quantities.
• Highly collectible.
• Advertising vehicle.
• Small amount of content means multiple issues can be generated from a single story.

Weaknesses
• Higher consumer cost per page than graphic novels (13.6 cents per page for a $2.99, 22 page comic book versus 11.4 cents per page for a $14.99, 132 page graphic novel).
• Story can be interrupted by advertising.
• Low print run and/or collectible nature can make early issues difficult to find.
• Not widely available.
• Difficult to order back issues without exact information.
• Require bags, boards and index boxes to store properly.

Graphic Novel

Defining characteristics
• Softcover (heavy paper or cardstock) or Hardcover.
• Glue-bound, sometimes stitched.
• Glossy pages.
• No standard dimensions.
• Can be stand-alone or part of a series.
• Generally 96-200 pages.
• Generally categorized by ISBN.
• Often available at bookstores and comic book stores.

Strengths
• One-time production cost.
• More expensive books require fewer copies sold to break even.
• Shelve nicely, easy to merchandise.
• Have longevity, often remaining in print for years if they are popular.
• Substantial, represent a value to the reader.
• Higher quality than comic books.
• No advertising.
• Often provide readers with better value than monthly comic books.

Weaknesses
• Expensive (many are $14.99-$24.99)
• Many are simply reprints of old stories.
• Much larger gap between volumes than between comic book issues (6 months to 1 year or more).
• Only titles within the last decade are widely available.
• Lack of standards in size and format results in some books being oversized or pocket-sized.

Which format is most profitable?: This is a tough question, because statistically comparing an original graphic novel with a single issue of a comic book won’t generate a consistent trend. Many graphic novels are one or two-man operations, while many comic books have an entire team due to their monthly schedules. Also, some comics do far better as graphic novel collections than they ever did in single issues; DC’s Sandman and Watchmen are two notable examples.

In the case of original issues versus graphic novel collections, graphic novel reprints certainly appear to make more money than single issues because they don’t have to account for production costs and because they bring in more revenue per book. Surprisingly, however, if production is removed from the equation and only initial print runs are compared, monthly comic books tend to generate slightly higher revenues per page!

Which format is easier to produce? I would definitely say that graphic novels are the easier format to produce, assuming the company can afford to front the printing and production costs. The reason I say that is because monthly comic books must come out regularly once they’re released or retailers and consumers will not take them seriously. Graphic novels come out so infrequently that retailers and consumers are more forgiving if they’re late.

The drawback is that revenue takes longer to make its way back to the company once production begins, but as I’ve illustrated in other articles, graphic novels have wider access to multiple markets and are easier to sell.

Is it a good idea to print a monthly comic book and then collect every six issues or so into a graphic novel collection?: It can be, and this is the business model that most comic book publishers are using these days. I like the system because it expects the monthly comic books to earn back a quick return on production costs, and then relies on the graphic novels to generate profits. In the broader publishing industry, it often takes 18 months or more for a newly signed book to appear on shelves. In the comic book industry, it’s possible to release six issues of a story over six months and then republish them all into a graphic novel collection the day after the sixth issue hits shelves. If a publisher managed to break even on the monthly books, every graphic novel collection sold is pure profit after some slight production, marketing and printing costs. And what’s more, if the book keeps on selling, it can continue to build revenue for the publisher for years.

What I don’t like about this system is that publishers generally don’t make any changes to the original work to make the story fit together; they just reprint the books as they were in the monthly issues and stick the covers in the back. This is fine if you just want to read the story, but it cheapens the feel of the book overall. As a writer, I’ve always tried to keep my books flowing from issue to issue so that the breaks between books feel like chapter breaks, but most writers have no problem repeating panels or dialogue between issues.

Some publishers add supplementary materials, which are nice, but that usually angers fans who bought the monthly issues and who don’t want to have to re-buy the books in a new format just to get the extra content. If publishers could find some way for those buying the monthly issues to be able to read the exclusive content on their websites or to receive discounted supplement books, it would solve this problem.

I also wish publishers would get out of the mindset of just cramming six issues into a graphic novel and putting it out. At Dabel Brothers Productions, we’ve tried to plan our graphic novels so that they end at a natural break in the story and tell a full story of their own. In some cases, we’ve just kept the series down to six issues so that the collections (such as George R. R. Martin’s The Hedge Knight) are the full story. Graphic novels are roughly the comic book equivalent of a film; there’s no reason they should end a story arc 5/6 of the way through the book and then begin a new story in the final chapter.

What about manga? It’s doing well without monthly comic books…: This statement is true, but what a lot of people forget about manga stories is that they started out as serialized stories in Japanese magazines like Shonen Jump. The manga we read in North America are reprint collections of Japanese comics that are generally 3-4 panels per page. As comic books, they lack substance. As black and white paperback collections, they present a better value for consumers.

When VIZ Media started publishing manga in the US in the late ‘90s, they tried the comic book approach and discovered that pocket trade paperback books were the way to go. Incidentally, Dark Horse had been doing this for years; their Lone Wolf and Cub series was always sold in trade paperback format.

Also, as a side note, manga is printed in black and white because that’s the way the comics were originally drawn, not just because it’s cheap. Japanese artists are masters or precision, and their line art is very neat and clean. They don’t need colors to have vivid imagery. American artists, on the other hand, usually do. I would advise any American publisher against black-and-white books unless they’re going to hire a killer art team with tight pencils and crisp inks.

Tomorrow, we’ll touch on the last chapter of my “Creating Comics” series – Creativity versus Marketability.

-SJJ

I might as well start today’s article off with two scenarios: one of what marketing is about, and one about what it is not.

Scenario A: A publisher plunks $10,000 into the printing and production of his new title, The Adventures of Oscar the Super-Powered Scottie, an all-ages title about a pet with super powers which he is self-publishing under the “Scottish Terrier Comics” imprint. The first issue of the book is solicited through Diamond’s Previews magazine with a full page ad (~$7500) and the publisher hires a PR firm to gain some mass media attention for the book, and even hosts a launch party at San Diego’s Comic Con International. The total cost for all of these activities is another $7,500. The book is priced at $2.99, patterned after the industry standard.

When orders come in, the publisher is dismayed to find that he has only sold 4,600 copies of the book, and re-orders seem to be extremely light. What’s more, orders for issue #2 seem to be stalled at 3,200, while orders for issue #3 are even lower at 2,800. Three issues and other expenses have brought the book’s price tag up to $45,000, but it’s only realized about $15,000 in eventual revenues. What’s more the publisher has thousands of copies of the books left, most of which he’s going to have to store in a warehouse until he can sell them.

The publisher hires a marketing consultant, whom he asks to help him improve sales of the books. The marketing consultant studies the problem, looks at the publisher’s business model, and reasons that short of relaunching or repackaging the product, there is nothing that can be done. The publisher is stuck with at least $30,000 in debts and is forced to make some tough decisions about the viability of the product line.

Scenario B: A publisher wants to get into the comic book game, and she has a great idea for a book called The Adventures of Oscar the Super-Powered Scottie, an all-ages title about a pet with super powers. She starts by building a business plan and researching the comic book market carefully. After collecting information from the Internet and from talking to various publishers via phone and email, she concludes that publishing her book as a monthly comic book is not a smart move since the production cost for a single book is much higher than her average expected returns. She discovers that the children’s book market, while crowded, has relatively few comic books written specifically for kids, and decides to publish her book as a graphic novel instead.

Her total costs on production and printing run around $20,000. She prices the book at $9.99 to make it cheaper than other graphic novels, but comparably priced to other children’s books. Since she knows through research that the bookstore market will return, on average, 30-35% of her orders, she plans to only ship 66% of her initial orders to bookstores to cut down on returns. She also keeps her print run close to her order numbers so she isn’t stuck with a bunch of extra books, deciding that she can always print more if orders are high. She toys with the idea of calling her imprint “Scottish Terrier Comics,” but realizes that placement in Previews is determined alphabetically and that her listings will get buried towards the back; she opts for “Doggone Comics” instead.

The publisher toys with the idea of hiring a PR firm, but decides instead to use a grassroots approach by sending free copies of her book to parent/teacher organizations and influential librarians. She also hires her nephew to build her a simple but professional website where she can promote and sell the book directly to customers. She decides against a full page ad in Previews and works instead on contacting retailers directly and asking them to carry her book by giving them her ISBN. Her total marketing efforts cost her $500.

Initial orders come in lower than expected, around 2,000 copies total. 500 of these are ordered from the comic book market and are non-returnable; the remaining 1,500 are ordered from bookstores. The publisher ships out 1,000 copies to her distributor and waits for a request for more. Three months later, the distributor requests another 1,500 copies to fill orders, and reports 10 returns. They also report that many bookstores have direct orders for the title from customers. The publisher ships out 1,500 copies and eventually receives 100 copies back. In the meantime, she manages to sell 500 copies directly from her website and another 1,000 by visiting local schools and talking to students about creating a comic book. In total, she’s sold around 6,000 copies, but she’s generated over $30,000 in revenues.

A vs B: In the first scenario, the publisher was operating based on many assumptions. For instance, he assumed that because he created a book, people would buy it. He also assumed that because he created a comic book, he needed to release it in the style of other comic books. He assumed that his book would sell better (and perhaps it did!) due to spending his money on his Previews ad and his PR campaign. He assumed that his sales would stay consistent when, in fact, they did not.

And on that last assumption, let me offer a word of advice to would-be publishers, something that you’ll only learn from someone who has some inside knowledge of the comic book industry. If you are releasing a monthly comic book, chances are good that you will not see a growth in sales until your fourth issue. The reason for this has to do with the way retailers order comic books, and it’s important to know.

If I am releasing the first issue of a book in March, it will appear in the January issue of Previews. Retailers will typically order the first issue the heaviest because it will give them an indicator of how popular the series is. But the problem is that the second issue, due out in April, will be ordered during February, and the third issue, due out in May, will be ordered during March. Unless the first issue comes out at the beginning of the month and sells extremely well, chances are good that retailers will place the order for the third book before they’ve tested the performance of the first. Thus if a first issue does attract some interest, retailers won’t take it into account until they order the fourth issue, which will appear in Previews that April.

Had the publisher in the first example done his market research, he would have known this. But then, that’s exactly why he failed; his thought process was to create and sell a product to a market he didn’t understand, thinking that advertising and a PR campaign would see him through. What I want you to understand here is that this is exactly how many publishers approach the comic book industry (and even the broader publishing industry) — and it is exactly why so many fail. Marketing is more than sales and promotion; it’s a whole range of activities that begin at the conception of a product.

The publisher in scenario B applies these activities constantly throughout her business. She takes the time to craft a business plan and spends a large amount of time involved in market research. She realizes that the idea she had for a product is a dead end, so she refines the idea to fit into a more viable form. She doesn’t waste a lot of money on unnecessary promotion. She spends more on production and printing initially, but less overall, and she sells fewer copies to make higher profits. She also diversifies her selling channels so that she’s not relying solely on comic book stores to sell her products; she’s relying on bookstores, website sales and school sales as well.

When people come to me and ask me how they can “market” a book, they’re generally asking the wrong question, because they’re already decided on all of the questions involving the product, the price and the place, and they just want to know how they can promote it to magically make it sell better. I can offer some tips on how to promote a comic book, sure; in fact, they’ll be the focus of tomorrow’s article. But good promotion can’t sell a bad product, no matter what salespeople tell you.

I once heard a rep from video game accessories manufacturer Pelican say “there’s no such thing as a bad product; just a bad price.” That is probably the stupidest statement I’ve ever heard in business. There is such a thing as a bad product, and it’s almost always borne out of a company creating something based on its employees’ ideas about what a customer wants rather than talking to the customer directly. The electronics industry in particular suffers from this problem because companies are so concerned about getting new technology out the door before their competitors that they don’t take the time to find out what customers actually want.

The comic book industry is terrible about this as well. Too many publishers put out books because the creators think they’re “cool” and not because they’ve bothered to find out what customers want from the product. This is part of the reason that the manga market is killing the North American comic book industry in the bookstores; consumers wanted stories available in pocket-sized volumes with stories that weren’t about superheroes. Marvel responded with its atrocious Mangaverse and DC responded with its ho-hum Teen Titans line. Both were sorry imitations of manga that came from publishers who didn’t understand why people were interested in the genre in the first place. And though Marvel and DC continue to do well with their superhero comics, they’re both unable to sufficiently expand beyond what they’ve been doing for the last fifty years. Many other publishers have messed up as well:

–Crossgen was one of the biggest new things in comics at the turn of the millennium, but they got too big too fast and wound up cannibalizing their own sales. Their solution to every problem was to add more money, and their doors closed not long after because their marketing strategies were not built around sustaining growth.

–Dreamwave Productions was the other hot new thing at the beginning of the 21st century, putting out beautiful books like Darkminds, Warlands and Shidima, all of which had a cool anime style and amazing color effects. And then they got the Transformers license and got even bigger. A few years later, they closed their doors because they were spending far more than they were making.

–Alias Enterprises arrived in the summer of 2005 with a massive wave of 9 launch titles, ranging from mature supernatural fiction (Elsinore, Lethal Instinct) to all-ages (Lullaby, The Imaginaries). The company also brought back The Tenth Muse and The Legend of Isis, two titles from earlier in the decade. In under a year, the company canceled all its books and announced that it would be publishing Christian comic books exclusively. It has since ceased operation.

–Speakeasy Publishing came on the comic book scene quickly and vanished suddenly less than two years later. Though the company seemed to have strong fan support online, its books did not sell well, and the company abruptly canceled several books it had just picked up with little warning.

–Devil’s Due Publishing broke off from Image Comics in 2003, confident in the strength of their G.I. Joe books. They made a few solid gains with their Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books, but then they plunked a bunch of their time and money into a superhero universe called Aftermath, which bombed within months. This allegedly caused the company to lose a lot of footing with the retailers who were stuck with unsold copies of what they were assured would be a hit.

–Many people have predicted the eventual death of Image comics over the years, but the company is still alive and kicking. It’s not for a lack of bad decision-making; things have looked extremely sour for the company on many occasions over the last 15 years. What’s kept them alive is that they’ve taken a smarter approach to publishing and that they’re worrying less about market saturation and more about the quality of their line. Good for them!

All of these companies made a crucial mistake in their efforts: they failed to incorporate the marketing process into the creation of their books. Instead, they looked at the comic book market and thought, “Surely, if I publish books about the things I’m interested in, people will buy them.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you want to properly incorporate marketing in a comic book, use this evaluation tool before you start production:

Comic Book Marketing Evaluation Tool

I. Target Market (Place)
-Who is in my target audience?
-What sorts of books do they usually read?
-What genre should it be?
-How well do those books sell? (Useful link)
-Does my target audience primarily shop in comic book stores?
-At bookstores?
-Online?

II. Product
-Are monthly comic books the right way to go with this?
-Are graphic novels a better option for this?
-Does this book need to be in color?
-If it’s a manga-style book with around 200 pages, no.
-Anything else, probably yes.
-How many pages should it contain?
-32 printed pages with 22 pages of story is standard.
-How many issues should it be?
-Maxiseries, miniseries or ongoing series?
-Does my genre fit this format?
-Can I find seasoned professionals to help work on this?
-Will I be able to afford them?
-How long will it take to produce my book?
-Will the bank balk at my slow rate of return?

III. Price
-How much do books like mine cost?
-Remember that books sold to retailers are sold for 45-65% discounts.
-Can I afford to charge that and stay in business?
-If I raise the price, will I scare away sales?
-Have I asked anyone else, or am I guessing?
-Can I use an economic model to help me out here?
-Am I charging too little?
-The difference between $2.99 and $3.50 adds up quickly!

IV. Distribution (Place)
-Am I selling my book through Diamond?
-Will they accept it?
-Should I publish myself or go through someone like Image?
-Will it add enough to my sales to be worth the extra cost?
-Can my printer deliver directly to my distributor?
-How long is the wait between receipt of books and shipment to retailers?

V. Promotion
-Do I have an up-to-date website with relevant information about my books?
-Is there old info I need to update?
-Are there any dead links or old images?
-Is my website easy to find in Google and other search engines?
-Do I need to fix my meta tags?
-How can I make retailers aware of the product?
-Press releases
-Promotional mailings
-Street date
-Preview copies
-How can I make consumers aware of the product?
-Interviews
-Previews
-Street date
-News articles

(The tool is by no means comprehensive, but use it as an outline to help you develop a marketing plan!)

And to round things off, here are five traps to avoid as you begin marketing your book.

1) Don’t print to sell Base your printing numbers off your orders. Don’t overprint to get a volume discount and then get stuck with 48,000 extra copies of a book that only sold 2,000. You laugh, but it happens.

2) Don’t advertise. It’s expensive and wasteful. Promote and publicize instead. See my Marketing 101 section for more tips on this.

3) Don’t pick a lousy name for your company. Put thought into the name of your imprint. Avoid “X” as the first letter in the title. Remember that Previews lists publishers alphabetically. It’s no coincidence that so many publishers have names beginning with “A,” “B,” “C” or “D.” (Army Ant Publishing and Cutscene Comics, for example!)

4) Don’t assume people want to buy your books. You have to persuade them with a cool concept, good production values, timely publication, and great promotion.

5) Don’t refuse to listen to fans. People will tell you what they think, whether you want to hear it or not. Listen. You don’t have to follow their advice, but you should be aware of what they like and don’t like about your product. Marketing is as much about building long-term relationships as it is about getting those first sales. Long-term customers are the most likely to stay loyal if you start to suck, so cultivate them and listen to what they have to say.

-SJJ

But first, a public service announcement:

As I mentioned in my previous article, I regularly avoid people who begin sentences with “I have an idea” or “Let me tell you about this story I want to write”. It’s not that I resent being a sounding board; it’s that by listening to an idea before it’s fully formed, I’m doing a disservice to the creator. As weird as this might sound, experience has taught me that writing is something many people are only willing to do when they have no one else to turn to; it is a solitary endeavor of sharing thoughts with a sympathetic friend who will never forget what is said. If a writer verbally shares his or her ideas with others, the sense of urgency to develop those ideas is lost. If a writer furiously scribbles those ideas on a cocktail napkin or in the margins of a book, they can go on to become brilliant and famous creations down the road.

If you, as a writer, have an idea for a comic book story, let me urge you to please go write it down instead of tracking down someone to share the idea with. Then, spend every spare moment you can find developing that idea into a story, a novel, a script, a poem, or whatever form you feel it should take. You will find an addiction forming in your spirit as you mold your idea into a full-blown creation, and you will learn what it is to really, truly, be a writer. (If you are married, your spouse will learn, too, as they grow jealous of your newfound love for the written word. It’s part of the process; they’ll simply have to learn to live with it, because the desire to write and create will never fade away entirely once it is realized.)

Once you have committed your idea to paper and made it permanent, then you should seek to share it with others. It doesn’t need to be complete, but it does need to be coherent. In sharing, please remember the following four guidelines:

1) Spouses, friends and family can be good sounding boards, if they’re honest. But most of the time, they’ll tell you they liked what you wrote regardless of how dreadful it really is.

2) Writing circles can be excellent sounding boards, if they’re supportive. But many writing circles are filled with people who are either terrible writers or who are bitterly competitive; either sort will offer bad advice.

3) Professional writers, editors, agents and publishers are unlikely to be interested in anything you write unless you’ve got a finished copy, ready for publishing. And even then, they’re usually uninterested in reading your work, so don’t pester them.

4) Your own intuition is suspect as well, since it is heavily biased towards your work. To paraphrase a famous writer, the first draft of anything is manure. The best way to self-evaluate your writing is to put it away, come back a month later, and read it out loud. If it doesn’t sound good, start revising.

Before you move on to the next part of this article, you need to have a finished, polished script in hand if you’re a writer or a creator. Having an idea, a partial script or a rough draft is not good enough. So, read on, if you like. But don’t act until you’re ready.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled article

If you’re like many comic book creators out there, you’ve got a great idea for a book¦ but no idea how to turn it into a comic book! Today, I’m going to tell you how to do it. But be prepared for hard work and financial setback — it’s not cheap or easy to put together a professional-quality comic book!

But first, another reality check. As an editor for a comic book company, I’ve regularly been approached by people who want to “pitch me ideas, in the hopes that I think their ideas are so good that I’ll want to pay them to bring them to life. All I can say is that these people have a very unrealistic understanding of how comic book publishing works. There is no market for ideas; the supply exceeds the demand exponentially. There’s not much of a market for writers and editors, either; many publishers are, in fact, founded by writers and editors, and they tend to keep all the choice gigs for themselves and hire trusted friends or colleagues to fill in for the rest. There’s a slight market for artists, but still less than one might think; most of the art jobs available are for smaller companies, and many of them do not pay the full amount up front or on time. There is a market for colorists and letterers, provided that they’re competent; both of these trades actually require a substantial amount of specialized skill, and there are few people who actually want to do them.

If you’re going to approach a publisher with a pitch, you need a finished script, a finished cover and at least ten pages of finished pencil art, minimum. Even then, they probably won’t be that interested in talking to you; a fully finished issue (with colors and letters) of a professional quality is much preferred. (It does not need to be professionally printed and bound, though that always helps.) If nothing else, that shows that you’re able to get things accomplished on your own.

But how do you turn a script into a fully published product? For most writers, the real question here is “how can I find people to work on my book? It’s really not hard, but understand right away that your ability to succeed will be directly influenced by your ability to pay for work up front.

I would estimate that the average 22-page independent comic book costs around $7,000 to produce. This assumes:

¢ That the writer is being paid $20 per page, or $440
¢ That the artist is being paid $100 per page, or $2200.
¢ That the colorist (who is also digitally inking the pages) is being paid $100 per page, or $2200
¢ That the letterer (who also usually handles design work) is being paid $30 per page, or $660.
¢ That the cover artist is being paid $200.
¢ That the production team (script editor, layout editor, designer) is being paid $400 per person, or $1200.

This is just a rough estimate, of course; some companies are able to produce books for a lower cost by finding people who are willing to work for less. You can shave off some of the cost immediately by writing and editing the book yourself, though I would still recommend having several people proofread the script and the final book if you feel you absolutely do not need an editor. Some books will cost more, depending upon the quality of a writer or artist. But these prices, for 2007 at least, are a good place to start when you budget production costs on your book.

And what if you don’t have seven grand? Some artists will take a small amount up front in exchange for a share of the profits or a larger amount on the back. Most will not work entirely for backend pay, though. It’s too much like working for free, and they have no guarantee you’ll pay them. Incidentally, always define payment terms in a contract, even if it’s just a simple written agreement. Make sure you each have a signed and dated copy that explains all of the terms of payment (including the timeframe) and the royalties.

Where can you find artists? There are several sources. I’ll list a few:

1. Deviantart.com is the Internet’s largest community of artists, allowing them to post samples of their work for critique and encouragement. Some of the artists who post work on DA are very good; most are amateurs. The best way to find good artists is to find an artist whose work you like, and then see who some of their favorite artists are. You can use DA to query them, but don’t overwhelm them; just say that you’re developing a comic book and would like to see if they’re interested in working with you.

2. ConceptArt.org is a great site for finding artists, and it even has two different boards where you can post jobs: one for “Paying and one for “Non-Paying gigs. Just don’t post non-paying gigs in the paying section; it provokes the wrath of the community.

3. DigitalWebbing.com has comic book specific job postings and available for hire boards, but in my experience, most of the people hanging out there are preying on amateurs and want way too much for what they’re offering. Most are not exactly what you’d call high quality professionals, considering the prices they’re charging. Several of the people hanging out there are brokers for artists living in other countries; they can provide inexpensive artwork, but often with a large language barrier to get in your way.

4. The “Artist’s Alley at any local comic book convention can be a good place to find talent, though many of the people paying for booth space are already trying to sell products they’ve put together and may not be interested in working on your book. I’ve never found it a suitable place for recruiting people, but it never hurts to look!

5. Local colleges with good art programs can be an excellent place to find young people with plenty of free time who are dying to get into the comic book world for very little money, and often, they’re quite skilled and talented too. The problem with working with young and inexperienced people is their priorities; it’s easy for them to shirk off work duties when other things seem more important. As such, college students are not usually the most reliable employees.

Once you locate an artist, try them out by having them do a few drawings for you. Generally, having an artist work out a few character designs and a promotional piece is a great way to test their limits in terms of art and timeliness. Hungry artists work quick and are generally eager to please; lazy artists work at whatever pace suits them and generally insist that their vision is correct. Don’t expect an artist to suddenly change their colors if you hire them; in my experience, the longer they take to get you samples, the more likely they are to miss deadlines and even quit down the road.

Note:If you decide not to use an artist, do not keep their artwork for future use unless you have paid for it. It opens you up to too many legal problems. If you do pay for it, make sure you have something in writing that demonstrates that they’ve been fairly paid for their work.

Once you hire an artist, you’ll need to track down a colorist and a letterer. You can use the same processes listed above to find these folks. One lettering firm I will recommend is Lithium Pro, owned by my good friend Bill Tortolini — he’s one of the best in the business, and his rates are excellent.

Often, letterers and/or colorists are also experienced in book design, so if you don’t have someone on hand who can help you get your pages print ready, ask your colorist or letterer if they can handle the job. If they can’t, they’ll often know someone who can. A page designer will not only help you get your 22 pages and cover set up; they’ll also help you with things like your interior cover (often used for credits) and your dummy pages, which are usually used for ads in the back.

Incidentally, please remember that books must be printed with page numbers that are multiples of four. A 22-page comic must be printed in a 24-page book. And though it confuses some people, the cover does not count as a page. 24 pages means 6 sheets of paper, printed on both sides and folded in the middle, plus a slightly heavier paper cover. 32 pages (the industry standard) means 8 pieces of paper plus a heavier paper cover. Also, comic book art should never be printed on the interior covers; the pages will look different from the rest of the book and seem out of place.

There is no set rule that a comic book must be 22 pages; this is simply an industry practice that is dictated more by the price of production than anything else. If you are printing a 32 page book, there’s no reason all 32 pages can’t be filled with story; just keep in mind that the book will cost you more to produce than a 22 page book since you’ll be paying artists, colorists, writers and letterers for 10 more pages of content. Most major comic book publishers use 6-8 of those pages for outside ads, as well as some of the cover space. The remaining pages are used for in-house ads and previews of the next issue.

Once you have your book print ready, you have the option of other self-publishing or finding a publisher. Here are the strengths and weaknesses of both models.

¢Self-publishing means you incur all the costs, but it also means you reap all the rewards. What’s challenging about self-publishing is that you will probably have a hard time getting retailers to carry your book unless you have some established credibility in the industry, and even then, only a handful of retailers will give you a chance. You may also have to produce a few issues of your book before you can convince Diamond, the only distributor in the comic book industry, to carry your line.

The best business model for self-publishing is to start small and focus on direct sales to consumers while you build up some credibility. Let’s assume you spend $7000 on production and $1500 on printing, which gets you 3,000 copies of your book (an estimate entirely off the top of my head). If you can sell most of those books directly to fans at cover price (2.99), you’ll break even and still have a couple hundred left to send out to reviewers. Control your costs and you can lower that break-even point even further.

The problem is that selling nearly 3,000 copies of a comic book directly to consumers is not an easy feat, and you’ll need one heck of a publicity plan to pull it off. Assuming you get your book picked up by Diamond, you would need to sell quite a few more copies to retailers to break even — around 6600, in fact. Also, you’ll have to pay for printing up front, which means you will have to make that money back to stay out of the red. It’s doable, but it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.

¢ Working with a publisher can be much easier. If you can find a publisher willing to help produce and publish your book by helping you out with costs, go for it. Just make sure you don’t have to give up control of your property, unless that’s what you really want. And don’t even waste your time pitching Marvel or DC; they won’t even look at your submission.

In most cases, you’ll be self-producing your title, and you’re going to want to publish through Image Comics. There are many advantages to publishing through Image, like enhanced credibility with retailers, better exposure in Diamond’s Previews, and a pool of people you can ask for advice when you’re having trouble getting your book print-ready. Though Image has had its shaky moments, it’s currently headed by Erik Larsen, one of the coolest and most down-to-Earth people you’ll ever meet. From what I understand, Image will generally cover marketing expenses and printing costs and take them out of your earnings on the backend, which makes the book easier to produce since less money is needed up front.

But remember that Image is in business to make money. They don’t accept books they don’t think can at least break even, and they have content guidelines to ensure that they’re maintaining a consistent level of quality. They will charge you fees and they will cancel your book if it’s not making money. Fortunately, from what I’ve heard from Larsen, they no longer send publishers bills for losses if a book loses money (they used to, allegedly), but I’m sure they don’t mess around with books that are hurting the company financially.

I’m not sure what it takes to be successful publishing a book through Image, but a title produced for $7000 will probably wind up costing a total of $10,000 after publishing and fees (again, totally off the top of my head). At that price, a comic with a $2.99 cover price would need to sell over 7500 copies through the direct market to break even (since Diamond will take its cut as well for distribution). To give you an idea of how difficult it is to do that, only books within the top 200 generally break that barrier, and most of them are published by Marvel and DC. Even by lowering your production costs to $5000, you would still need to sell around 6200 copies to break even after printing and publishing fees.

Incidentally, I don’t blame Image or Diamond for the high number of books that need to be sold; they’re just filling roles to help publishers make money in the first place.

“But wait! you might be saying. “Can’t I sell advertising to help defray my costs?

You absolutely can, and if you are good at getting advertisers to pay for space in low-circulation comic books, don’t waste your time publishing; just go out and line up gigs selling ad space for established mid-range publishers and you’ll be a very rich person. Truth be told, it’s extremely difficult to get advertisers to see the value in reaching a target audience of 5,000 people, and unless you have a large line of books that can boost your circulation up in the 50-60,000 range, most ad firms and advertisers won’t be interested.

Tomorrow, I’m going to explain how you can market a comic book and reach a reasonable audience. Be prepared for some more hard truth, though; unless you’re Marvel or DC, it’s pretty hard to get people to pick up an unknown comic book, even if it’s something awesome like Dork Storm’s PS238, which surely one of the best comics out there that no one’s reading.