Everywhere you look in the comic book industry you seem to see people just barely scraping by. Artists and writers are often paid measly wages unless they are superstars, comic books shops are always closing, new publishing start-ups are often collapsing, comic books as collectible items are a pretty poor bet these days.
If it sucks so much who really making money at it?
It’s getting better. The industry has largely recovered from the crash it took in the 1990’s, although it may never return to the unsustainable high it reached earlier that decade, let alone the grand sales of the Golden Age.
Anyway, the real money isn’t in the books themselves, but in the intellectual properties they create and maintain. Spider-Man the comic may sell peanuts in the grand scheme of things, but Spider-Man the movie makes many millions of dollars.
There are a couple thousand people working in the comic book industry. The ones who earn more than $100K/yr would all fit comfortably in your living room. The ones who earn more than $50K/yr would fit in your local Denny’s during dinner rush.
The ones who earn more than a million a year would fit comfortably in your bathroom. There used to be about a dozen millionaire superstars, but most of the “Image founders” found their natural market value within a few years.
Unless you manage to develop a “hot” style and are a decent businessman, you’d probably make more money as an electrician or a plumber.
Krokodil is probably pretty close in his/her estimations. The comic book industry is not like other entertainment industries, however. Most people do not get into it expecting to make a lot of money. Sure, there must be a few delusional guys out there who think that The Waffle of Justice will be the next Superman and they’ll retire off the merchandising alone, but for the most part it’s an industry run by fans. Comic book writers all grew up reading comics, as did most of the artists. If they can live comfortably on what it pays, why not?
Think of the perks: You can work from home if you choose, pretty much anywhere in the world. A comic book writer making $35k in West Virginia is living a lot more comfortable than a struggling actor making $35k in Los Angeles.
This of course ignores a growing trend of people well-known from outside the comics industry working in comics. Joss Whedon is the current writer of Astonishing X-Men, and I bet he makes more than $100K a year. Richard Donner will soon be co-writing Action Comics. One of the writers of the OC now writes Wonder Woman. Even comics superstar Neil Gaiman is probably now better known for his prose novels and screenplays.
Comics are a side project. The creators make them because they enjoy it, and the publishers keep putting them out despite slim profits from book sales because they can mine them for ideas for more profitable forms of media.
Kevin Smith and Orson Scott Card have both done comics recently, too.
The publishers, especially the big 2 - Marvel and DC - make the money. That’s the way it’s always been. It’s basically true in every facet of entertainment. Movies, television, books, music - the publishers/producers/owners make the bulk of the money. That’s how they can afford the glittering salaries of the very few superstars. (All of whom make tiny fractions of what the companies as a whole make.) It’s never changed. The only difference is how much the superstars make and how many of them there are. In good times, there are more, and more money trickles down. In bad times, there are fewer and less money trickles down.
Sure, there are bad times and bad management and bad decisions and that means that the owners can lose money or even go out of business. That has essentially nothing to do with the way the money inside an industry is distributed. Just means that a different set of people does the distributing.
As long as an industry exists, the owners are making money. This is true in comics today. Doesn’t mean that would-be owners can join in, though. Or that others can make secondary bucks off the primary industry. Or that the employees make good money. But there’s money there to be made.
Posted by Meno “One of the writers of the OC”
What’s “OC”?
umm, “The O.C.” Fox’s latest blockbuster teen soap opera.
My cousin works as a colorist. He works from home, sets his own hours and makes a comfortable living. It was a lot of work to get there, but he’s doing what he’s dreamed of since he was a kid.
I don’t think anybody’s making a fortune in comics, including the publishers. There isn’t a fortune to be had in the business. The publishers are, if anything, probably in a worse position than the artists and writers - the creative people don’t have to risk going as far into debt as the business people do. Comic book publishing companies are always on the edge and are constantly going under and declaring bankruptcy.
The only real money in the business is what gets brought in from outside. If somebody has the rights to some character that gets picked up for a TV series or a movie, they can suddenly reap a fortune. But nobody’s going to get rich selling comic books.
Well, the industry is not a total bust. I think Marvel is selling about 100,000 copies a month of its top-selling title, Civil War. Wholesale price is, I believe, about 20% off of retail, so say they’re making $2.40 an issue. That’s $240,000 a month or $2,880,000 a year off of that title alone, and that’s only what they sell in the first month it’s on the shelf. There will be residual sales, second printings, etc. $2.88mm doesn’t sound like much for a big company but what are they paying their talent? Not much of that, I bet. Add in ad revenue, merchandising, tons of hugely recognizable characters, and it’s feasible that they could be a solid company without their movies.
And a lot of publishers are making money off of trade paperbacks now. It’s the comic book’s way back into stores that aren’t comic book stores (i.e. book stores and general retail stores.) I can only imagine what Dark Horse makes off of Star Wars alone, not to mention Sin City, Conan, et al.
What the comic book industry is failing to do is attract kids. I worked in a comic book shop part-time briefly (I thought it would be fun. It wasn’t.) and tons of kids came in, but NONE of them bought comics. I probably never saw a kid younger than 15 even show interest in the comic books. What the kids want now are the toys, the movies, the posters, and most of all the card games. They love the characters but they don’t dream of reading about them when they can just watch the Fantastic Four cartoon or play the Hulk video game.
It seems like it could be possible to get kids interested in comics again, but I don’t really know how and neither do the comic book publishers. They’re making comics aimed at kids, but the funny (sad?) thing is that only adults are reading them.
I’ve gotta ask, astro, are you thinking of making a comic book? If you’re smart enough about it you can set yourself up to have not much to lose (except time) and a lot to gain (personal satisfaction, recognition, possibly some money.)
Ahhh, I low-balled on purpose but I should’ve checked the numbers. In July of this year, Marvel sold 290,700 copies of Civil War. Kind of just reinforces my point, though.
That number may not be big enough to call the book mainstream, but it’s nothing at all to scoff at.
For books, normal wholesale is 40% off list, with major chains getting 50% off.
I’d be very surprised if these percentages didn’t also hold for the comics field. A retailer couldn’t get by with only 20% of the gross.
The point of being a publisher is exactly that you get a percentage of all the streams of income. In comics especially, merchandising, gaming, movies, and other ancillary revenue are most certainly huge profit centers. Creators’ royalties are distributed to hundreds of individuals; owners’ royalties are conglomerated.
The numbers are a couple of years old, but look at the publishing vs. licensing figures on this site. Licensing is growing faster and supplies most of the profits.
I’d consider almost $200 million in operating profits to be making money. Even the mere $37 million from publishing alone ain’t hay.
No offense, Cisco, but you’re basing your figures on the best-selling title of the most profitable company in the business. How about an example that’s a little more typical? For example, if I’m following the figures in Exapno’s link correctly, Marvel published 70 titles in 2004 for a combined profit of just under $49,000,000 - that breaks down to the average title making a profit of $700,000 a year (or about a quarter of your figure for the number one title). Now considering how many slices have to be served, $700,000 is not that big a pie - if there are twenty people working on this title, they’re making an average of $35,000 a year. And keep in mind this is an average title - some of the weaker titles must be making only a third or a quarter of that.
What’s more Exapno’s link says that Marvel’s entire publishing income for 2004 was just under $86,000,000 - that’s the total kitty, ignoring the cost of creating, printing, distribution, basic overhead, etc. That’s how much money the big boss at Marvel could have taken home if he had somehow convinced everyone to work on the tab for an entire year and then stiffed them all and pocketed everything (and keep in mind Marvel is one of the two giants in the business). Sure, it’s a nice amount but compared to the money in movies, sports, music, or television, it’s spare change. If the head of ABC or Sony Records or the New England Patriots were told their total income for the year was only $86,000,000 they’d have a heart attack.
Exapno’s link does make a good point - Marvel and DC make the majority of their money in licensing not publishing. But once again, that figure does not reflect the “average” comic book. 90% of the titles out there will never get a licensing deal bigger than an occasional t-shirt sale. Getting a character like the Tick or Hellboy or Men in Black licensed for a movie or TV show is the equivalent of winning the lottery.
Which is exactly the figure I threw out in post #4. In my most recent post I was just demonstrating that it could be done and it is being done.
I never claimed that it is a great venture for the financial-minded. See my first post in this thread wherein I state that nobody gets into this business for the money.
We know what the publishers are reporting. That doesn’t mean we know what they’re making.
My apologies. You’re right. I read your post and Exapno’s and got the two mixed together. I was responding to claims you never made.
True, but the bottom line is the bottom line. It is better to be in an industry in which the operating profits are an amazing 50% of your gross rather than one in which they are a pitiful fraction.
It’s very hard to find comparable numbers for those other industries, but some searching found the following:
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blogs/cooper/archives/free-tv.pdf
http://cbs4boston.com/patriots/local_story_244124854.html
IOW, operating profits for the Patriots not given but must be under $56.9 million for 2005-6.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N55/long455.55w.html
300 million yen is about $2.5 million.
Operating profit of $37 million from selling items at three bucks a pop is amazingly good. Total profits of $189 million puts them into the world of major players.
It’s all about the bottom line. Forget total sales. You can lose your shirt while selling billions. It’s what you can put in your pocket at the end of the year that counts. By that measure Marvel alone is big time.
I can’t find DC numbers as they’re a part of the Time-Warner publishing group and aren’t broken out separately.
The publishers, owners and CEOs of popular, established characters’ companies are making good money. If you want to grow up to own Marvel/DC Comics, (a) I wouldn’t know how to tell you where to start, and (b) the owners of these companies are not, strictly speaking, “in comics.” DC is part of the AOL/Time-Warner stew of properties, and Marvel is publicly traded. Among comics creators, yes, there are some big name writers from other fields getting in on the fun, but comics account for a small portion of Joss Whedon’s income, or (currently) Neil Gaiman’s. Stephen King and Clive Barker are or have been involved with comics, though not as “writers” as the term is commonly used; more accurately, their names, likenesses, and some degree of input of their ideas. Again, a small portion of their incomes. Allan Heinberg and Brad Meltzer likewise are “big names” dabbling in a medium they love, but don’t count on for their livelihood. Some comics pros get successful in other fields (Frank Miller, Gerry Conway). When you separate what they make in comics from what they make in film or television, that comics money just doesn’t look very impressive.
I make a distinction between people who work in comics for a living and people already successful in other fields who do it for kicks. When Thurston Howell III wins fifty bucks at bingo, I don’t consider him a bingo professional. Among comics creators, the crowd of guys just getting by buoys the handful of millionaires.