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When a potential reader is interested in your comic, one of their first logical questions will be “how much does this cost?” Your answer to that question involves a delicate balance of conditions that is more art than science. While you could sell your comic for any price you want, some prices may prove more beneficial than others depending on your situation.
 

How Are Prices Determined?

Price theory is an economic concept that states the optimal market price, or equilibrium, is the point at which the total number of products available for sale can be reasonably consumed by potential customers. As an independent comic book publisher, your equilibrium price is...

There are several ways to turn your comic into revenue. As we saw last week, you can use indirect monetization in the form of advertising or affiliate marketing. Next month, we’ll start to look at the crowdfunding phenomenon in comics. Today, we’ll look at the basic concept of trading your comic for cash. Specifically, I want to discuss how sales funnels allow you to take advantage of your marketing and maximize the financial potential of your book.
 

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is a theoretical, multi-step process that transforms prospective browsers into long-term buyers. As a comic publisher, your sales funnel can transform ideal readers into true...

It might seem counterintuitive to try making money from your comic by giving it away. If you spent a lot of time and investment dollars to bring your book to market, why would you offer it for free? The answer is monetization, or turning a non-revenue generating asset into cash.

Traditional broadcast television in America makes money from selling the eyeballs of their viewers to advertisers. People don’t have to pay money to watch networks like NBC, but they do have to deal with commercials, one way or another. One of YouTube’s business models is similar, where short ads are placed in front of or inside videos to generate revenue. Many mobile apps use the same...

Most comic creators want to sell as many copies as possible of their work, but they might not know when or if their book is profitable or not. To answer this important business question, it helps to understand the financial condition of your book before and after it goes on sale.

The three basic economic questions you need to answer for each of your comics are:

1. How many copies do you need to sell to make back the money you put into it?
2. How do you know if your comic is profitable?
3. How can you keep track of your comic’s financial performance?

Answering each of these questions involves understanding a few basic definitions and formulas that I’ll try to walk...



Last month, we started talking about creating a budget for your comic book publishing (See How to Create a Budget for Your Comics). Now that we’ve taken a few weeks to look at the different financing options, I’d like to expand on that discussion a little bit here by highlighting the different types of things an aspiring comic book publisher needs to consider when allocating limited resources.

Publishing comics requires more than just paying for page rates and printing. There are at least seven different categories of expenses, each with smaller subcategories.

Initial Costs:  Getting your business off the ground

• Company registration
• Intellectual...

As part of the lead up to our free financing webinar on October 29th, I’d like to explore the fundamentals of creating business management as it pertains to your aspiring comic book company.
 

What is Business Management?

Management is the organization and coordination of business activities to achieve defined objectives. As an independent publisher, this means finding the best ways to use your time, energy, and resources to achieve the milestones and goals for your comic.

Now, as a creative individual, you might consider business management a subject to avoid. If your goal is to make comics, then dealing with budgets, contracts, and schedules might be the...

After you figure out how much you can invest in your comic (See my earlier posts on self-financing), you may find that you don’t have enough to fully fund your publishing based on your initial budget. That’s when it’s time to go out into the world and find more money.

Before we go into details about getting investors and the different types of investment, we should understand that in many cases, it is very difficult to convince anyone to invest money in an untested comic book idea. The three economic realities of comic publishing we discussed earlier reduce the risk tolerance of most potential investors to the point where your offer isn’t attractive to them....

So far this month, we’ve taken a look at the three economic realities of comic book publishing and the basics for creating a comic book budget. Now that you have an idea of how much money your comic needs before the idea can become a reality, the next logical question is “where will the money come from?”

In general, there are two sources of money: your money and someone else’s money. Let’s look at your potential as an investment source first, before we go reaching into someone else’s pocket.

What Are the Advantages of Investing Your Money to Make a Comic?

It is not unusual for an independent publisher to dip into their own pockets to publish...

Before you sell your house, beg your grandmother for money, or rob a bank to publish your comic, it helps to know how much money you need in the first place. It doesn’t make any sense to spend a lot of time stressing about cash when you don’t have a clear idea of the costs you’re trying to cover. Of course, prices change and unexpected expenses are more common than you think, but if you have a basic idea of your costs, it will help you focus your revenue collection efforts.

In general, there are seven types of costs you need to consider when you decide to publish your first comic:

1. Initial Costs: This is the money to get off the ground. It includes the costs...

Now that the summer is over, we’re going to shift gears away from marketing and discuss another facet of comic book publishing that doesn’t get much attention. We’re going to spend the next few weeks discussing how you can pay to get your comic out into the world. But any discussion about financing comic book publishing has to begin with a disclaimer:

What you are going to read in the next few weeks isn’t financial advice and or legal advice. These are concepts you can consider when deciding if and how to fund your project, but before you do anything concerning money, consult your financial advisor. You should also speak to anyone in your life who might be...