While we can’t answer that question, one creator, Michael Jasper has been making his percentage of sales available for IN MAPS AND LEGENDS, a fantasy comic with touches of steampunk and SF. It got its start as a Zuda competition winner but has since returned to the creators and they’ve been selling it digitally everywhere. Since IN MAPS AND LEGENDS is available on every platform, and is in a universally popular genre, it’s an interesting chart:
The sales number listed below are go back from when we started back in September 2010. The numbers cover issues 1-6 of IN MAPS & LEGENDS, our combo ebook that bundles issues 1-4, and our Formatting Comics ebook.
1. B&N’s Nookbook Store: 44%
2. Comixology: 30%
3. Amazon’s Kindle Store: 13%
4. DriveThruComics: 7%
5. Graphic.ly: 5%
6. Amazon’s Kindle Store in the UK: .5%
7. Wowio: .5%
8. MyDigitalComics: 0%
9. Robot Comics: 0%
10. LongBox: 0%
11. XinXii: 0%
12. Myebook: 0%
While this is the first chart of its kind we’ve seen and doesn’t in and of itself give all that much data, it would be interesting to compare and contrast. Anyone else out there was to share their shares?
To those self-publishing e-book graphic novels (not digital comics, which require an app):
The big guys, both in comics (Marvel, DC, Dark Horse…) and book publishing (Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins), have released very few graphic novel titles in ebook form. (BN.com shows 3381 titles under “Graphic Novels & Comic Books”, and that includes tangential titles such as erotica and classic literature.)
That means a title such as the one pictured above can be very visible to one searching online. I noticed it, but didn’t make the Zuda connection (and the publisher does not, either, in the commentary).
The only publishers who “get” e-books right now seems to be Seven Seas Publishing, Digital Manga Publishing, and Devil’s Due Digital.
And it’s important to remember, Kindle is REALLY not friendly to graphics-intensive eBooks like comics if you’re going through the self-service agreement.
Thanks for running this info, but the chart you listed above is for 2010 only. The chart from my site with the more recent numbers, for 2010 AND 2011 thru the end of June is this one:
List of distributors and their percentage of sales, September 2010 to June 2011:
B&N’s Nookbook Store: 42%
Amazon’s Kindle Store: 26%
Comixology: 16% (estimated)
DriveThruComics: 4%
Amazon’s Kindle Store in Germany: 4%
Graphicly: 3% (not up to date)
Amazon’s Kindle Store in the UK: 2%
The Illustrated Section: 2%
SmashWords: .5%
MyDigitalComics: .5%
Just wanted to set the record straight. Thanks!
Michael, does Nook charge the same kinds of transfer rates that Kindle is charging? Not a big deal for my prose books, but makes me pretty wary of dealing with them for OGNs.
Matt — No, Nook doesn’t charge the “Delivery” fee that Kindle does, which is a good thing. For small files, it’s not an issue, but for files over 5 MB, you’re going to incur that Delivery fee from the Kindle system. That’s why our bundled version of issue 1-4 for the Kindle is 50 cents more — to cover that fee for us.
About the Kindle delivery fee– if your book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99, I think the delivery fee comes into play no matter the size. You get 70% minus $.15 per MB.
So we have to take that into account for our 1-4 combo, but on our individual $.99 issues, size doesn’t matter, because they’re in the flat 35% royalty bracket.
(And for formatting, I’ve found it’s not actually that difficult– you just put the images in a folder with a pretty simple .html file, zip, and upload! I get formatting for all our distributors done in about an afternoon.)
In the past year I’ve done three graphic novels/comics on CD only, no paper and selling them in Sheffield at a couple of retailers, sold about 100 so far, got myself on the local radio and paper.
The fourth Football Crazy will be out next week.
Any comment/critic about either of my websites [email protected] or [email protected], or my new blog cdgraphicnovels.blogspot.com, would be interesting.
I’m new to this method of getting work out there…
cheers
Craig
So basically that means that iOS users don’t really read comics… Or it’s not counted here?
JM – no, that’s not what the numbers in the chart are saying, actually. The chart lists sales by distributor. But you could be using an app on the iPad or iPhone to read a digital comic bought from Amazon or the Nook Store, or you could be using the Comixology app on your ios device.
What about Marvel Comics purchased through the Marvel iPad app? Even though Marvel uses the ComiXology template, Marvel doesn’t play along with ComiXology so any of their free or purchased digital comics obtained from the Marvel app do NOT show up in your ComiXology library along with your DC, Image and Dynamite comics. So are Marvel’s digital comics still factored in with the ComiXology percentage?