In general, the comic book industry lacks business sense. This is almost universally true with comic shop owners, comic book publishers and comic creators. Just because you have a lot of comic books in your collection does not mean you have the ability to start and run a comic book store. And, just because you can write or draw does not mean you should publish your own books. Well, let me rephrase that, you can give it a try but odds are you are going to fail. I know as an indy publisher I’m supposed to be all warm and fuzzy when it comes to talking about creating comic books and the industry. However, while comic books are my first and one-true love, I love running a successful business almost as much and am not by any means a hobby publisher. If you’re a hobby publisher then this post is not for you. If you are interested in trying to take your business to the next level, then read on!
The truth is, 99.9% of all comic book publishers fail to become commercially successful (or even successful enough to support their creators as a fulltime business). This has nothing to do with talent or skill in putting a comic book together…that’s actually one of the least important factors involved in having a money-making comic. What it takes, and what most people in the industry lack, is the afforementioned business sense. They think “because I make it, they will come.” Not true as the hundreds (thousands?) of POD publishers can attest.
Now, I’m not saying comic book publishers are innately stupid. What I am saying is most lack the business knowledge or even the initiative to get that knowledge. Most do not run their publishing “companies” like businesses. They don’t have business plans, they don’t have business goals and they, usually, don’t have the resources to even run a business at all.
What I’m going to do over the next few articles is to detail some of what I’ve learned over the past few years of publishing my books as Nifty Comics…during that time I’ve sold well over 150,000 comics all without the benefit of Diamond as a distributor (we have the printing bills to prove it!). I’ve run our titles through bookstores, school book fairs, niche stores, various festivals (Celtic/Scottish and Art), at comic conventions, wrestling shows and more. It’s taken a lot of work and a definitely cash investment, but now we can count on around 8500 in presales for each comic book issue we produce and have been able to sell as many as 25,000 copies of a book over the course of a year. Sure, we’re not Marvel or DC, but we do pretty good and make a nice little bit of cash in the process.
What I’m not here to do is make any friends. I’m going to write things (like my opening statement) that will annoy or even piss people off. This is my website and my article, so I can write whatever I want. It’s one of the benefits of not having an editor watch over me. But, if you keep reading then you may just find some very useful information on how to keep yourself from being one of the many failures this industry produces every day.
-Mat N.
http://www.niftycomics.com
On Facebook
On Twitter
On YouTube
On Linked In
On IMDB