Comic Book Self Publishing - The Costs of Being an Indie Comic Book Publisher

To give you an idea of the kind of money you can make creating and publishing your own comics, look through the example. Let's say you have a comic book series called Viper Woman. After talking to a distributor, you settle on the cover price of $2.95.

The distributor who makes your work available to retailers will usually purchase it at a 60% discount. Typically, the distributor keeps 10-15% of this and then sells it to the retailer (who sells your comic book in their store) at 45 - 55 percent of the listed price. Retailers usually get a keystone markup or 100%.

So if Viper Woman has a cover price of $2.95:

• The customer buys it for 2.95.
• The distributor earns 29.5 cents to 44 cents per copy.
• The store owner makes $1.33 - $1.63 per sale.
• The comic book self publishing company makes the difference.

Since the comic book self publishing company bears the burden of other costs, such as pre-press costs, printing, shipping and advertising, you must subtract these in order to determine the profit margin which ain't much. Still, if this is something you love doing, then your sense of passion will give you deep and lasting satisfaction.

One option, at least in the beginning is to do the printing and binding yourself. Here is a fast, easy method of comic book binding that allows you to bind pages together in a minute or so. Once you've built a good following, then you can get quotes from color printers.

Like book publishing, this is a numbers game. If your comic book series takes off, you could make a good amount of money if you sell enough comics. Otherwise, you better love what you are doing because as in any other artistic endeavor, only a select few make it big.

To make your indie comic book publishing endeavor as lucrative as possible, either print and bind comic books yourself or take the time to select a good printer that can produce a four-color process for as cheaply as possible while still creating a quality product. Also, if possible, establish minimum quantities for your distributors to buy with no minimums on re-orders.

Most of all, have fun and enjoy the process of creating, producing and self publishing your own comic books.

Our favorite comic book publishing software works on both the PC and the Mac.

For the Mac	For the PC