Rocket Bomber - article - business - commentary - Never ask advice from a blogger - Part II

[never ask advice from a blogger, as we tend to blog about it]

I don’t get these very often, but the occasional email is certainly worth it:

Sir,

My name is [redacted] and I am the president of [redacted], Ltd., a small [redacted]-based visual and audio entertainment company. I read through the three ways to contact you on your site and opted to take the easiest for all of us. I am seeking information about new comic book sales and noted in one of your posts that you track them. I was hoping you could give me some insight regarding a project we’re considering. Please forgive this inquiry if it is inappropriate but it seemed to touch your stated expertise.

We are planning a series of audio dramas and would like to concurrently release a series of 24 high-quality comic books, (36-42 pages each, average of 2 panels covering 1/6th the page (standard) and one covering 1/3rd (widescreen)). Our intent is to produce some good comics with lasting value to the owners while concurrently widening awareness of our audio series. We are also using both the comic and audio efforts to demonstrate the viability of film proposals based on the same theme. To this end, we aren’t looking to make money on the comics but we also don’t want to loose them either.

I’ve contacted a few of the comic producers and some have offered to create the artwork for the comic panels (digital versions) for an average rate of $500 per page.

Rightly or wrongly, we’ve been led to believe that a fair run for a new comic is 3000-5000 copies at an average price of $3.99 each. By our math, that means that even if we managed to get the distribution and printing services free, we’d at best just break even or would be losing about $8000 per comic released. Naturally, printers and distributors want their pay and cuts and I presume, if comics are like independent films, we’d expect to hand over at least half of the returns to the distributor for his time/advertising expenses. That changes our math to losing up to $16,000 per issue of what would be titled a “successful” comic book.

My gutt feeling is also that these companies see us as something of a money pool from which they can fund or compensate for their other stressed efforts. I can’t prove this but its the impression I get from talking with their editors.

Associates we have in the music industry have told us to go direct to the distributors but since we don’t have any established connections with them, and don’t know the ground rules of the comic business, we aren’t sure if such a thing is feasible or common or even whom to go about contacting other than blind e-mails to the companies.

We can afford to finance the artwork and printing independently if such an option seems more viable. We don’t want to get stuck with an unsellable product due to the hidden conditions of the comic book world.

We’d appreciate any insight you could offer us as we’re sure our understanding must be skewed or we wouldn’t be getting some of the answers we’re getting. Of course, we’d apprecite tips to any connections you may know whom would be interested in such a venture for its own merits rather than merely as an influx of money. Mostly, we’d like to get your opinions and insights to our situation.

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
[ID info redacted]

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Oh, where to start…

Dear querent,

I’m not an expert, or a sir, but I can try to help you out anyway.

First: What I track through my site are online sales, like those through Amazon and others, but since I’m not privy to actual sales (I get the data I need by looking at what is publicly posted each day on Amazon et al.) I’m not sure how much I can help on this one.

That said, it seems you are in need of at least one correction, re: comics as cross-promotional vehicles:

Unless the comics are already made, you’re chasing diminishing returns: Sure, you might think comics are just an afterthought, or an add-on, or good exposure, but in fact comics are their own thing — and when done correctly, they require professional writers, artists, and full time editorial support. And you can’t make comics by looking at rates per page, or costs for a print run of 5000 copies (or 10000 copies) as the industry doesn’t work like that.

Comics are still books, stand-alone products with their own writers and artists and audience. If you want to tap that audience, instead of making your own books, you’d be much better served by buying advertising space in existing titles. This will be cheaper, too.

If you want to make comics, that’s great. But I don’t feel you can make ‘comics’ as an appendix to some other project, and I think the math you’ve already done will prove that to you.

Comics are not ads. They’re not marketing. If you’d like to publish a book, comics or otherwise, you’ll be entering a field with which you have no experience. A decade ago, marketing was all about Push — getting the message out on as many platforms as possible. And this was a fine model for the last century, when the only models were broadcast models — a top down approach where your customers are all passive members of an audience. The internet (and even current advertising) has shown that push-marketing doesn’t always work, and that if you’re serious about doing a comic of your property, you need to consider “pull” and “buy-in” on social media platforms.

Unfortunately, “pull” and “buy-in” are not something you can just throw money at — not even if you’re willing to subsidise your own comic book in an attempt to reach this market. People have to like — and want — what you’re selling, and this is a much harder proposition.

I wish you luck. But merely considering a ‘comic’ version of your project and emailing some random blogger isn’t going to get you there.