Zub Tales

Thank you to everyone who passed around the link to my blog post last week. It was a whirlwind of conversation and, even with over 140 comments back and forth on the blog and dozens of tweets, the vast majority of people were civil, supportive and incredibly thoughtful.

The most common question that came up last week was “What about digital comics? How do those sales work?” It’s complicated and I don’t know all the ins and outs, but I’ll do my best to share what I know on that front.

With the ubiquitous nature of digital media in all aspects of our lives, digital comics will almost certainly play an important part in the future of the medium. They’re available globally 24/7 and don’t suffer from print run limitations or shipping damage.

The most popular digital comic platform is comiXology. They’re the current 800 pound gorilla in the still-niche digital comic marketplace. Marvel, DC, Image and most of the other major comic publishers are available through their website and app(s).

A lot of people have talked about the need for cheaper digital comic prices to drive impulse buying in casual/new readers. Right now most of the digital comics available are selling at a similar price to their print counterparts. Outside of sales and special promotions, a $2.99 print comic is selling for $2.99 digitally. People assume that digital content should be much cheaper because it has no physical component, but there are development and infrastructure costs that go into creating and maintaining a digital platform. It’s hard to say whether they’re equivalent, but right now the pricing is relatively equal.

Consider this…

…on a $2.99 digital comic ($3 for simplicity’s sake):

-$0.90: 30% goes to the mobile platform (usually Apple or Google). This is a standard fee leveled on all in-app purchases (which is where the vast majority of digital transactions are happening). This is as close to non-negotiable as things get. You use their device, they take their share. It’s my understanding that comics bought directly through the website don’t have this fee levied against it, which means more money for comiXology, the publisher and the creative team, but it’s way less convenient.

-$1.05: 35% (or, more specifically, 50% of what’s left after Apple/Google takes their share) goes to comiXology. Staff is needed to prep files, maintain servers, update the site and deal with technical issues, so comiXology is acting as the digital distributor. Other digital platforms may take a lower percentage of the cover price, so this amount is by no means universal, but it applies to the current leader in the marketplace.

The remaining $1.05 is split between advertising, the publisher and creative team. Each publisher has their own digital rates and it varies quite a bit from what I’ve been hearing. In some cases publishers don’t offer any percentage of digital sales to the creative team on a creator-owned title. Other than that unfortunate scenario, some publishers are making the same amount they would on a print copy (11-12%), while on the higher end the amount is split evenly between the two. With such a large range it’s hard to nail down exact figures, but it does give you a sense of how things tend to work.

What’s more difficult to answer right now is how well digital comics are actually selling through these platforms. Publishers and companies like comiXology have been very secretive about digital sales numbers. Press releases go out talking about “Best Selling Digital Comics” or “Record Breaking Digital Sales”, but no one’s explaining how many copies are involved in the hype. That makes it impossible to calculate sales figures, understand trends or decide the frequency of sale pricing on digital comics.

Some people have bandied about the broad figure that digital sales are averaging 10-15% of print sales. It’s unfortunately an untested number but, if remotely true, then the 5000 print run example from my previous post would be selling 500-750 digital copies per issue. With a rough range and a rough percentage breakdown that would mean anywhere from $255 to $517 left for the creative team, or $127.5 to $258.50 each for the writer and artist per issue (not counting the cover artist, letterer, colorist, etc.). The creative team gets more of the pie with a digital sale, but it’s a smaller sized pie right now.

If you’re buying digital comics when they’re on sale for 99 cents, the above numbers all get chopped down by 2/3. The pricing drives purchases, but 3 times as many copies have to be sold to make the same amount of money. In addition, the readership may come to expect that 99 cent pricing and wait for another sale rather than buying new digital issues at full price as they’re released.

The above numbers are extremely hard to gauge and shouldn’t be thought of as absolutes. Without solid sales figures to work with it’s impossible to nail down how many copies are actually being sold.

The only remotely solid numbers I have are my own. I’ve done quite a bit of promotion about my comic Skullkickers being available on comiXology, iVerse and Graphicly. We have a free zero issue and we’ve had a couple 99¢ sales, so some of our early issues have sold quite well digitally but, if you count 99¢ copies as a 1/3 sale money-wise, we’re selling at about the 15% range of our print sales on early issues. Later issues are sitting at around 8-10% of print sales right now. Admittedly, the 99¢ pricing has expanded our audience much faster and that’s nothing to sneeze at. They’re not blockbuster sales numbers but at least I know that as our exposure increases back issues will keep selling without any fear of ever being out of stock.

At this point, digital creator-owned comic sales through mainstream platforms aren’t generating a substantial amount of revenue, but it’s growing and things are changing quite quickly. As tablets become more prevalent and people become more at ease with paying for digital content, these figures will expand quite a bit and this space is going to see all kinds of upheaval. Right now it’s really hard to say where it will all end up. I think that having a stake in the ground at this early stage is important and making sure my work is available on as many platforms as possible helps grow our audience.

So, you may be reading this and think “Mainstream print distribution doesn’t make much for creators, mainstream digital doesn’t make much either, so how the heck do I get ahead?!”

Good question!

In my next couple blog posts I’ll talk about online outreach, other revenue streams, working with focused retailers, conventions, and more. Until then, feel free to add your two cents to the above, improve my accuracy and let me know if I’m missing anything. And, if you’re hungry for other things to read, feel free to check out my other tutorial articles about breaking in and writing technique.

If you found this post helpful, please let me know here (or on Twitter) and share the post with your friends. Please consider buying some of my comics online, from your local retailer or from me in person if you see me at a convention.

I’m absolutely thrilled to be working in comics. I’m even happier that one of my major projects right now is a creator-owned comic series I have control of. Writing/Creating Skullkickers and being published by Image Comics is a thrill and an honor. They give me complete ownership and stewardship of my creation and that’s a rare thing in this industry. I want to make sure that’s all up front and very clear.

(UPDATE: I posted an update in February 2015 about how the comic market has changed over the past two and a half years and the expanded potential for creator-owned comics. A lot of the information in this article is still relatively accurate for low print run books, but I recommend checking out the new article as well to get a sense of the whole picture.)

A recent discussion I had about money making in comics took a weird turn and I realized that a lot of people make assumptions about how the financials break down in the comic business. Being published isn’t an instant key to fame and fortune.

Consider this…

…on a $2.99 cover-priced comic ($3, for simplicity’s sake):

-$1.40: 40-50% of that cover price goes to retailers, the people selling the comics to customers. This amount varies quite a bit based on the publisher and the number of copies ordered by the retailer, but is a base approximation. Retailers deserve their share for selling comics to their local customer base. They buy non-returnable product and take great risk each and every week. In many ways, they’re the distributor’s actual “customer”.

-$0.80: Printing is substantial (and it varies wildly based on the amount printed, paper availability, and press availability so this is NOT an exact figure). 80 cents is a pretty good benchmark for small print runs. On very low print runs (sub 3000), printing can cost more than $1.00 per copy, which really eats into the budget.

-$0.50: 1/6 of that cover price goes to Diamond, the distributor who solicits orders and ships comics to retailers. This varies based on shipping, gas prices, amount ordered and who the publisher is but it’s a good approximation. Diamond deserves their share for soliciting, storing and shipping comics to retail outlets. They’re an international distributor with lots of expenses to keep the system running.

Printing varies wildly, but let’s say 80 cents per issue holds true. With the remaining 30 cents per issue, the following has to be paid:
• Advertising/promotion.
• Publisher operation/office expenses.
• Money left over for the creative team to actually get paid anything.
• Profit?

On a print run of 5000 comics (and many, many creator-owned titles sell less than that in the current market), it means $1500 remains for those 4 important categories. Guess how that breaks down?

If the advertising cost was ZERO and publisher expenses were ZERO, then the writer and artist of a 20 page comic would each get $37.50 PER PAGE. Oops, no money in there for the cover art, sorry. Add in more people (inker, colorist, letterer, etc) and the amount gets split even further, but this is a BOGUS number. The publisher has expenses/staff to pay for.

The reality is that once the publisher takes their share of what’s left (and they absolutely deserve it), there may be no money left for the creative team, let alone advertising.

Even if the cover price was $3.99 for that same indy comic, the distribution and retailer amounts are percentages, not flat rates. An extra dollar for the comic doesn’t suddenly put an extra dollar in the creative payment pool. It gives about 40 cents more per issue for those 4 categories listed above. It’s quite helpful and can keep a book afloat, but doesn’t magically solve the equation.

Lastly, none of the above considers copies lost or damaged in transit that cost money to print but make ZERO dollars. A small percentage of books don’t make any money for anyone in this chain (except printers) when they’re wrecked or lost. Accidents happen.

The above is simplified. Percentages vary depending on the publisher, special discounts and order volume. Please don’t use these figures to make an exact budget for your future comic project.

Believe it or not, I’m not bitter about all of this. It’s the price of doing business in the mainstream comic industry via retail outlets and international distribution. That’s how it works. I just want to make it very clear so people understand what I mean when I say I’m not getting rich making my own comic. Skullkickers is the most expensive hobby I’ve ever had. 😛

That’s why you should
• Support indy titles.
• Support creator-owned comics.
• Pre-order books you’re interested in from your local retailer.
• Tell your friends about books and help build support.
• Support Kickstarter campaigns for great independent comic projects.
• Buy direct from creators at conventions so that more of the cover price goes into their pocket.

Now you know.

There are other outlets and, when I get a bit more time, I’m going to talk about trade paperback collection/graphic novel sales, digital sales and convention sales. The above is the reality of small print run indy comics competing in the same sales space as mainstream pop culture icons like Spider-Man, X-Men or Batman. Mainstream retail production/sales relies on large volumes sold at deep discount. For every breakout Walking Dead there are thousands of titles that will never make a profit in the same space against that competition.

If you found this post helpful, feel free to let me know here (or on Twitter) and share the post with your friends. Please consider buying some of my comics online, from your local retailer or from me in person if you see me at a convention.