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A lot of you have been emailing me about the comment glitch wherein the previous commenters information is still in the commenting box, and some bogus posting has resulted. Unfortunately, I've had to disable comments until we can figure out what's going on.
Mo’ money, mo’ stats: Comics printing costs
Re the current discussion following the actual creative costs quoted by Glenn Hauman in a recent post ,Todd Allen reminded me of a piece he wrote for PW COmics Week a while ago breaking down printing costs vs profits. Here's an excerpt ( but the whole piece is very long and should be read in its entirety.)
Money makes the world go ’round 2: Khepri’s tough times
Khepri Comics is a web-based comics seller that's been around for over a decade, offering a lot of indie books but specializing in work by Brian Wood, Cliff Chiang, Becky Cloonan, and other "new mainstream" creators. Over the years, owner Brian Scot Johnson has built a strong relationship with these creators by promoting their work via special sales and so on. By partnering with Khepri these creators -- who, in addition to their distinctive work, have well-defined fanbases which they maintain via web interaction -- would be able to, say, offer a blog preview of their small press work with a link to Khepri and know that consumers would be able to purchase a copy.
Money makes the world go ’round: The bottom line of comics creation
Over Labor Day, Glenn Hauman at ComicMix had a fine post about the actual cost of comics which I'm quoting at length because it's so true:
That's about how much it costs for an average page of comic book art, in terms of labor. Figure $100 for the writer, $150 for the penciller, $130 for the inker, $90 for the colorist, and $30 for the letterer. Those numbers go up and down depending on talent and publishers, but that's a nice round number for us to work with.
TOON Books goes with Candlewick Press
TOON Books, Françoise Mouly's imprint of comics for beginning readers, has announced a partnership with Candlewick Press. Previously a standalone line distributed by Diamond...
Yadro joins Dark Horse
Kari Yadro has joined Dark Horse at the new job of events and community manager, a position which will oversee both convention appearances and events and social networking channels. Yadro was formerly at Barnes & Noble. PR below:
Two from Warren Ellis
A couple of quotes from Warren Ellis were making the Twitter rounds this weekend. This one, from 2000 (!), is from Ellis' column for CBR, and concerns the fine art of writing a comic book pitch:
Scream (awards) nominees announced
The 2010 Screams for the best in loud, blood-letting, gun-thumping entertainment were announced this week; however the comics nominees include things like ASTERIOS POLYP,...
Borders struggles to readjust
Earlier this week the Borders bookstore chain announced its earnings for the quarter ending July 31 and the results were weak, as expected. Sales fell 11.5%, to $526.1 million, with a $51.6 million loss.
Pekar legacy under dispute
When Harvey Pekar died on July 12th, he was revealed in death to be a figure more influential and revered than he would ever...
2010 Harvey Award winners
From Baltimore last night, the winners -- ASTERIOS POLYP, David Mazzucchelli and The Rocketeer took home three, CHEW, and THE WALKING DEAD two each in various combinations. Despite ongoing controversy over the nominations, the winners were strong selections, very close to this year's Eisner winners, at least on first glance.
Harvey Awards night turns into Waid/Aragones copyright/left free for all
If you were following our live tweets of the Harveys last night, (and those from ComixMix and JahFurry) you saw portions of Mark Waid's keynote speech transcribed. While claiming it was a "vodka-fueled rant," Waid delivered a heartfelt, if off-the-cuff, talk on the importance of the idea and the supremacy of comics as a medium of ideas. He started off with remarks on the history of copyright, stating it was a means to allow ideas to go into the public domain where they could remain powerful. "No one would say we'd be better off if Shakespeare plays weren't allowed to be read and performed in high schools," he used as an example. While not advocating piracy, his main argument seemed to be that it's already done, the genie is out of the bottle, and struggling to keep ideas protected isn't as important as finding a way to profit from those ideas.
