How much is the budget for making a comic book monthly, at least in digital format?
This really depends! It's entirely about the conversation you have with your fellow collaborators.If you want to assume a standard comic is 22 pages and you're doing them at the standard size (which you don't really have to if you're making a digital comic) then use page rates and calculate against the size of the comic to come up with a budget.Using some low-medium level estimates for rates:Writer - $20 /pagePenciler / Inker - $60 /pageColorist - $40 /pageLetterer - $10 /page...you come to an estimate of about $3,000 (and that's just with a minimal team being paid some low rates!) Hopefully this helps.
What is the margin a comic book store gets per piece?
While stores can get 35% to 57% margin on the comics they buy from distributors, most stores are at the 50% range.Add to that the cost of shipping (about 8 cents per comic) and possibly bags and boards (another 10 cents or so) and the margin shrinks a little bit.The real problem comes when you factor in rent, employees, and utilities. Most stores are probably looking at margins of 20% or less.If you’re thinking of opening a comic store, instead you should probably look for another way to make a living…and game store is not the answer either!
How much, on average, do top comic book artists earn in Marvel or DC?
Top rates can vary greatly depending on the sales of the individual project that an artist works on. If a top artist works on an unknown property or they have a love for a certain esoteric character who hasn't been known to sell well, they'll make a lower rate than if they are matched with a comic that's a known big seller. In the latter situation, they can make upwards of $400-$500 per interior page, plus large royalty checks if the comic and subsequent trade paperback continues to sell well. If they do covers, that will usually be another thousand dollars at least per issue. So if they're involved in a big hit, that could lead to $300k or more in a year. 20 years ago, the highest page rates were double what they are now--at least. Thousand-dollar page rates were common for top guys. And they'd make royalties in five, sometimes six figures. Most artists have much lower rates, though, and if they're on a monthly book of mid-level popularity, the earnings are closer to $60-$70k per year.
How much does it cost to make a comic book?
I am the founder of SiouxperCon, a nonprofit comic book convention Sioux Falls, SD. We paid a local artist to do two short comic books over the last two years. “Producing” it was relatively easy. The artist did the artwork and writing for us, with some inspiration for the super heroes coming from an online contest (year 1). Year 2 we introduced villains, submitted to us via contest as well. Depending on the number of pages you would like to have in your comic book and page sizes determines your cost. This year, we opted for a cheaper 6x9″ book. The year before, we did the standard modern size books.To determine price on printing your own book, it really comes down to which printer you use, and whether or not you are using your own artwork or hiring someone, etc. I can tell you that this year, our total investment for a comic book (2,500 books + artwork) came out to about $4,000 (Sisson Printing in Sioux Falls prints for us and do an amazing job). This was for 24 pages, full color, full bleed, saddle stitch binding on some glossy paper.Last year’s full size comic book came out to about $1,500 (500 copies).If you don’t care about going local and all that jazz where you are at, and have time and experience with printing, check out PrintNinja: Single Issue Comic Printer | PrintNinja makes offset printing affordable.Good luck!
How much does your comic book collection cost?
This may not be exactly what the member is asking, but if you just looking for an estimate of current value, register for a free account at Nostomania.com, punch your comics into “My Lists”, and the site will compute an approximate value for you based on actual sales.Note: Many people over-grade, don’t do this! Many people say “my comics are Mint!”. MT 10.0 means absolutely perfect in every way. Only about 1 in 1,000 copies even make it to a comic book store shelf in MT 10.0. It is true certified MT 10.0 comics do sell for crazy amounts of money (for example, a Wolverine 1, Frank Miller mini-series, CGC MT 10.0 sold for over $15,000.00). However, please err on the conservative side when grading your books or you will just be disappointed because in that case they will always be overpriced - pricing curves are near exponential from 9.0 to 10.0. If you need help I also created a grading guide with descriptions and images.
Comic book prices are high and they will steadily get more expensive. How much is too much for the average comic book buyer?
I used to love comic books a lot. I bought a ton of titles and I loved the characters and the stories. And as evidence of this love affair, I have a collection of old dusty long boxes taking up space in my storage.Since then, my love for comics books has diminished considerably. Price and the money I can afford to spend on them is certainly played a reason but in my opinion, the price, in its isolation, would not be a huge issue without some other inherent fundamental issues to the long standing ways comic books are produced and sold. For example, American comics with their indefinite storylines with no firm endings, long reaching histories and difficulty of acquiring back issues all contribute to a problem that requires any new fan (or old fan like myself who missed a few years) to invest heavily financially into collecting issues to catch up. The prices are painful because in order to catch up a reasonable amount of time is a tremendous lump sum payment for either a ton of back issues or trade paperbacks (which also serve up a history that's usually fairly incomplete).And since the series are perpetually ongoing, it's not like we can really take our time about it.Throw in the constant shared universes consisting of multiple titles per character, titles that character is part of (like following Iron Man and the Avengers separately), universe wide events and crossovers that necessitate buying issues from other series and it quickly gets crazy quickly.Thus, the single issue price is high but still tolerable by someone looking to enter comics as a hobby... but the amount of catching up compounds that high price by a ridiculous factor. Given these issues, I've become more and more convinced without an effective method to alleviate these problems, comics have been pricing themselves out of new customers for decades now.
Typically, how often do comic books get released?
US-based answer here …Typically new issues from the major and mid-tier publishers come out on Wednesday (meaning that’s when they’re available digitally or on comic store shelves).Individual titles often have a monthly release schedule — so issue no. 7 of Superduperfabulousman will come out in the third Wednesday of October, the third Wednesday of November and so on.However, the major publishers (Marvel and DC) are doing some titles bi-weekly (meaning,for example, the Stupendous Bedbug-Man No. 22 this week, No. 23 in two weeks, and so on). You often won’t get the same writer and artist for consecutive issues, but alternating.Then, there are some titles, often with indie publishers, that come out less frequently and there might many weeks or even months between issues.
How long does it take normally for a cartoonist to finish one page of a comic drawing (eg. Marvel comic)?
As with everything, "it depends", but a reasonable, general answer is about a day... (or maybe two days, but hopefully closer to one).You can reverse engineer this. Consider: The concept of a "standard" format in comics has all but disappeared, but for monthly comics a 20-page story, a bit more or less, (out of a 32 page publication) has become one of the norms. So, you've got to get 20 pages plus at least one cover (and very probably more than one) out the door each and every month.But you've got numerous professional responsibilities outside of actually completing pages -- meeting with editors and collaborators, design work of various kinds, creation of marketing or licensing materials, promotional appearances such as conventions and so on. And maybe you hope to get a day off now and then. So if you want to do a monthly book that comes out monthly, better to get close to that page a day mark.It's a tight schedule, and that's why rotating creative teams on regular monthly series to create a buffer has become relatively common. But if you're on a monthly for a length of time, you have to get close to that one-page-a-day mark.