Comic Book Economics

There was this:

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/06/quote-of-the-day-the-economics-of-creator-owned-comics/

Which I’ll quote a bit of:

“If Rocket Girl dips into the 8000s, we’ll start thinking about when to wrap it up. If it stays above 12,000 we can do it forever. At 12,000 copies I can make as much writing Rocket Girl as Hulk; Amy Reeder can make as much penciling/inking/coloring as she would on Batwoman. 8000 vs 12,000 is a significant difference in percentage, but it’s not a huge amount of readers.”

Yup.

One thing you should understand about Image books is that, for the most part, there’s no advance money. Which is why single issue sales matter.

Kyle, Felipe and I have Spread coming out on July 9^th. Spread is an ongoing book. The earliest we’ll see non single issue money from that is March 2015, when we’ll start getting digital money. We won’t start getting trade money until September 2015.

Which means that for a minimum of nine months from launch, the only money that is coming in is those single issues.

I can and do work on multiple books, so I have flexibility there. For Kyle, and for almost all artists, if he’s the artist on an ongoing book, then that book is all he’s doing. If it’s a monthly ongoing, there’s not much day job going to be happening either.

So single issues matter, because that’s effectively the only way for many books to pay the artist to, you know, live.

You’re under no obligation to buy books you like in a format you like. And you might think that floppies are a drag on the industry. But the reality is that single issue sales will determine the futures of a lot of books.