Many of us make comics for fun. The same is true of writing books. Academics write for prestige – they hardly get an advance and royalties are woeful. Writers of novels tend to have (more than average paid) jobs. Publishers rely on superstar names, autobiographies and when lightning strikes the odd sensation to pay for everything else. Well known novelists tend to have one successful character or a handful of books during a lifetime. To be in the Sunday Times Best Selling List you can sell only 400 books to be in the Top 20!

Recently the Comics Cultural Impact Collective produced a report which suggested some people need advice about aspects of publishing and self publishing comics. Hopefully this short guide will help with an aspect of that. I am happy to be corrected on figures that you may have experienced. Please add to comments below.

Stref, or Stephen White, is a artist who has also worked for comic companies and been published before. A big fan of Tintin his Tara Togs book is his homage to Herge (who said there should be no more Tintin books after his death) which he wrote and eventually drew as a lockdown project. It was a labour of love that took five years to produce in total (Herge, on occasion, took the same amount of time ( if not more) with a team of people).

I met Stref over a work commission and, after seeing his ‘in progress’ work on Tara, I commissioned a short story for ComicScene Magazine. I have to admit I don’t see the Tintin influence at the time – just great drawing in a European style that I am fond of. He had the option to serialise Tara in David Lloyds ‘Aces Weekly’ but David felt he should look for a publisher as the work was so good. I suggested self publishing together. If nothing else what we might do is generate the interest of a professional publisher later on.

‘Creative Scotland’ has supported the colouring and lettering of the book. That was in the region of £4000. For the art Stref should expect from a publisher around £2000 to £10,000 advance payment for both writing and art (short around £4000 that you would expect to be paid per page from a lower end comic publisher). As a new author Stef should expect a commission of 5 to 15% on each sale of the book (minus his advance). You would get paid 5% for the first 5000 copies, 10% for the next 5000 copies and 15% for subsequent copies. Alice Osman, for example, sold 60,000 copies of HeartStopper in the first three days of publishing and 8 million books worldwide (her book was more pages, but less panels per page as the Herge style Tara). So sales can be very good.

For the Tara Togs Kickstarter we set a goal of £2100 to start. This would ensure we could print 100 copies. £300 of that covers Kickstarter fees and extra rewards. £500 of that postage fees. £500 printing (the unit cost going down the more we print). Leaving £800 for Stref for every 100 copies sold. So from self publishing Stref gets roughly 40% rather than 5% from a publisher.

You have to keep your eye on postage costs and printing costs. ComicScene, for example, had to scrap a Saturday Comics idea when printing and postage costs escalated. Postage costs have gone up dramatically with shipping issues, particularly on large packages, caused by Brexit. You may not make a lot of money for the work you do, if any at all, but you don’t want to lose money unless you are happy to invest in your ideas (you can use any of the names from our defunct project below by the way – although there are being used already!)

This is why your support of kickstarters are so important. The return to the creator is far higher if they promote and sell their book direct to you.

Taking bookshop sales in consideration Stref and ComicScene would need to sell, via Kickstarter, approximately 1250 books for Stref to get the £10,000 maximum advance he would have got from a publisher rather than sales of 10,000 books through bookshops.

On our Kickstarter we sold 385 books and raised almost £10,000. So following our model Stref has earned £2400 of the £10,000. But we are short of a decent payday. What other options do we have?

Thanks to adding extra incentives on the Kickstarter we can actually print 3000 copies of the book (the unit costs for each book go down the more you print). That would leave us with about 2400 books to sell at the £14.99 retail price (the Kickstarter offered it cheaper).

Selling Direct

If we continue to sell through our own online store we make more on each sale.

ComicCons

We can attend local and National ComicCons. Again we make more money per sale but we have to take into consideration our costs of table, credit card sale charge, travel and accommodation.

Comic Shops

Through Diamond we’d make roughly 50% of the sale. However this is based on pre orders, the risk falling to the comic shop, so payment is fairly immediate.

Bookshops

Through bookshops we’d make roughly 10% of the sale, using a distributor.

Newsagent

So let’s presume I use the funds provided to me to print 1500 copies for newsagent distribution. This opens a new market of casual observers. Let’s assume we sell 600 copies (most well known comic sell anywhere from 750 to 3500 copies in newsagents and supermarkets). At a 30% return (after costs) selling about 40% of the stock we would make about £2900. As it is a one off book and can be on the shelves longer than two months or can be ordered at any newsagent across the country this may turn out to be more. Unsold copies are usually junked but you can pay a fee to get them back (and help the environment!)

Amazon POD

Through Amazon POD Stref would make £4 a copy. Some of you know more about possible comic sales through this medium.

Digital Sales

Having experimented with digital sites and seen the difficulty Digital Dandy had (13 issues), Comixology, Madefire and Comichaus in the U.K. this service is still in its infancy and the returns are low. The US have embraced this more, particularly on kickstarters were postage have been prohibitive. Again someone out there may have more experience than I on this.

Let’s touch on Marketing

Tara is a all ages comic. Although a homage to Herge it is very much a different story set in present day Scotland with mobile phone and PC computers. There is a female lead with a Private Detective sidekick – Heggy. It is a new character with no built in audience. It’s not written by a superstar writer. Its not a book about mental well being, human emotions, diversity or full of sex and violence. It’s not a book about learning to draw. It’s not an anthology with several writers and artists able to promote it. It’s not a licensed property, manga or has a built in audience. It’s just a great story by an accomplished and skilful writer/artist. A pretty hard sell! So we had to create interest via the Tara Togs Facebook group Stref set up, his followers and ComicScene online readers (50,000), magazine readers, social media followers and other comic sites and comic friends sharing the Kickstarter pre launch page to create interest.

ComicScene ran the first Tara Togs strip – it wasn’t our intention at the time to publish the book. ComicScene do promote quite heavily (it’s SO annoying!) but all in, and this is on the strength of the U.K. work, we are looking at moving 1000+ copies of the book over a period of time. A great comic will always do well.

The Kickstarter offered the book for a little less than the RRP of £14.99 for the softback cover.

So can you self publish comics for fun and profit?

Producing comics are always a lot of fun. If you can produce a page a day at a decent page rate you can make a reasonable career for a little while. You may make a great book and live off it for many years to come. It may be a self published book like Tara Togs!

I think Tara Togs is a great book. The work speaks for itself and I would love to see us taking more about great work and supporting such comics. We are working on the Comics Industry Directory for 2025 which will provide you with the opportunities we gave Tara Togs and some solutions to getting into getting comics out there – join the pre launch page here!

Thanks to everyone who has supported Tara Togs so far and I hope you have a greater understanding of why supporting your favourite kickstarters is quite important and benefits the creator. I hope it also shows how working with other ‘hobbyists’ like ComicScene can be a strength. The Comic Industry Directory will provide you the opportunity to do that directly – from pros to indie creators.

We are not unusual in this approach, it’s just we have never done it before, as we have to truly believe in the title getting a wider audience, and Tara Togs tickled our fancy!

Tintin eventually sold in his millions so this is the start of the journey…

The Comic Industry Directory is coming to Kickstarter soon. Join the pre launch page here.