Cost Considerations for Making a Comic Book
Table of contents for Dan Head Self Publishing
- Advice On Publishing Your Own Comic Book
- Benefits of Print-On-Demand for Your Comic Book
- Benefits of Publishing Small Comic Books First
- Comic Book Conventions as a Promotion Tool
- Comic Books As A Visual Medium
- Cost Considerations for Making a Comic Book
- Differences Between Comic Books & Movies
- Finding Collaborators for Your Comic Book
- How to Advertise Your Comic Book
This week’s installment of Dan Head’s Expert Village series about self-publishing comics. Dan covers more costs to producing your comic / graphic novel. When looking at costs think of it as an investment in your story, the better the quality in production the more likely you are to find success in sales. For those of you that want to skip ahead, visit him on Expert Village.
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About the author:
Dan Head is a veteran writer and small press comic publisher. He wrote and self-published his first graphic novel, Bronx Angel: Politics By Another Method, in 2005. It has since been picked up for a second printing by the Repercussion Comics Group. Dan has also worked professionally for Platinum Studios, has written and edited for the popular episodic webcomic Awesome Storm Justice 41, has finished writing and started production on a second graphic novel called Green Mountain Gunslinger, and has established himself as a noted columnist and comic reviewer at Paperbackreader.Com, where he is a full partner. Dan is currently at work on his first prose novel and runs the weekly Writing Exercises on the Awesome Storm Justice-41 forum.
Wow RON I admire you sharing your thoughts. You are indeed very helpful, I just don't know where to start. It does not help that I have all these ideas and little to know reliable resources of a number of books that I have written and want to take it to comic book phase. It seems everyone is out to take my money and little to no help where to go. Any ideas on who is hungry for new concepts that have not yet been explored like mine? I wish you well and keep up with giving back!
Thanks Byron, I’m glad you’re finding this info helpful. Like you I’m in the process of finding collaborators to help me with my comic properties and I too have met with some difficulty regarding production costs. In some regards, I’m mixed about it. Coming from my background in graphic design, I understand how certain things that look easy are actually time consuming. The old business idiom that time is money holds true especially in production.
For example, I recently had a discussion with a professional comic artist to gather an understanding of potential production time for one of my comics. This helps me to see where the value in the charge is coming from. I was told that a comic, typically about 24 pages, would require nearly a month’s worth of work full-time. My project involves graphic novels which are even larger than the average comic and averages about 140 pages. As you can see, depending on the artist’s rate the price tag is going to look a bit expensive. He gave me some ideas on how to cut costs however, and I’ll do some research and post what I find out as soon as I can.
As far as who may be hungry for new concepts: Depending on your content you can figure out a niche audience; with the advent of social media and social networking, finding out may be as simple as developing a strategy to engage targeted audiences on social networks and through a blog such as this one. I’m also in the process of researching and understanding the various tools that are available to make this possible, this opens the door for things that may also help you and others with production: crowdsourcing. It’s a web2.0 term referring to opening up an idea or concept to the public (or a private group) and having them help to cultivate it into the product they’d want to see.
In a way, I hope to have this blog develop a system like this so that all you or I would have to do is post a call to the people for input and work from there. There are places available that may help you immediately with your situation in the meantime. If you haven’t been to these sites already, check out: deviantART.com & zeros2heroes.com deviantArt has been around since 2000 and is full of talented artists of all kinds and once in a while you find that hungry artist willing to help out for the sake of experience. zeros2heroes has been around only since 2006 and is based out of Canada, they’re small but they have a group of helpful people that will give advice where possible, they have a classified system that allows you to post your needs for a project and a system called “The Pitch Doctor” which is an extremely helpful tool to help you with organization not only to complete your project but to have your information in order to approach studios for publishing possibilities. Not only that, but occasionally they hold competitions that will elevate the winners to a production deal and even the possibility of a grant to develop a screenplay.
You know, you’ve given me some new ideas for what to post come next update, thanks! Let me know if you need help organizing your properties, I’m in the midst of the process myself but I have gained quite a bit of ground since I’ve begun.
Thanks Byron, I'm glad you're finding this info helpful. Like you I'm in the process of finding collaborators to help me with my comic properties and I too have met with some difficulty regarding production costs. In some regards, I'm mixed about it. Coming from my background in graphic design, I understand how certain things that look easy are actually time consuming. The old business idiom that time is money holds true especially in production.
For example, I recently had a discussion with a professional comic artist to gather an understanding of potential production time for one of my comics. This helps me to see where the value in the charge is coming from. I was told that a comic, typically about 24 pages, would require nearly a month's worth of work full-time. My project involves graphic novels which are even larger than the average comic and averages about 140 pages. As you can see, depending on the artist's rate the price tag is going to look a bit expensive. He gave me some ideas on how to cut costs however, and I'll do some research and post what I find out as soon as I can.
As far as who may be hungry for new concepts: Depending on your content you can figure out a niche audience; with the advent of social media and social networking, finding out may be as simple as developing a strategy to engage targeted audiences on social networks and through a blog such as this one. I'm also in the process of researching and understanding the various tools that are available to make this possible, this opens the door for things that may also help you and others with production: crowdsourcing. It's a web2.0 term referring to opening up an idea or concept to the public (or a private group) and having them help to cultivate it into the product they'd want to see.
In a way, I hope to have this blog develop a system like this so that all you or I would have to do is post a call to the people for input and work from there. There are places available that may help you immediately with your situation in the meantime. If you haven't been to these sites already, check out: deviantART.com & zeros2heroes.com deviantArt has been around since 2000 and is full of talented artists of all kinds and once in a while you find that hungry artist willing to help out for the sake of experience. zeros2heroes has been around only since 2006 and is based out of Canada, they're small but they have a group of helpful people that will give advice where possible, they have a classified system that allows you to post your needs for a project and a system called "The Pitch Doctor" which is an extremely helpful tool to help you with organization not only to complete your project but to have your information in order to approach studios for publishing possibilities. Not only that, but occasionally they hold competitions that will elevate the winners to a production deal and even the possibility of a grant to develop a screenplay.
You know, you've given me some new ideas for what to post come next update, thanks! Let me know if you need help organizing your properties, I'm in the midst of the process myself but I have gained quite a bit of ground since I've begun.