I’ve had several people approach me over the last few months and ask me that most fateful of questions:

“It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to get into the comic book industry. So, how can I do it?”

It’s a big question. And unfortunately, I don’t have a straightforward answer to it for most people, because it really depends on what you’re trying to do. But what I can offer are some general guidelines that should help those who have this question burning in their brains to start finding some answers.

Let’s start out with the obvious point: there is no one “way” into the comic book industry. Everyone’s path is different. Most ways in require a large amount of patience and persistence, but some people do get lucky.

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It’s an oft-asked question in the comic book industry, but it’s an important one:

How much should a publisher spend on the production of a comic book?

Believe it or not, there’s no standard answer in the industry, and the fees that writers, artists, letterers and editors are paid varies widely between companies. Obviously, Marvel and DC pay the best, and they tend to attract the topmost talent as a result. Other established publishers, like Image and Dark Horse, also pay fairly well. Indy publishers can’t generally afford those rates, and they have to budget for lower costs… which generally means lower quality.

With that said, there are ways to keep costs down, and there are always top-notch artists who are willing to work at a lower rate in exchange for more creative control and/or profit-sharing. But let’s begin by looking at my estimates of the rates artists are getting in the industry today…

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In my previous article, “5 Reasons Comic Books Must Change or Die,” I offered several elements that are contributing to the death of the comic book industry. But today, I’m going to outline some ways that comics can change for the better… and cheat death to live on in the digital era.

But first, let’s take a moment to gain some perspective. According to CBGXtra.com, In May, 2008, 7.08 million copies of the top 300 comic books were sold, with the top ten accounting for 15% of the entire market. ICv2’s analysis says that both comic book and graphic novel sales are slowing down, and that the quarter overall has been weak. I should add that these numbers are not representative of what fans are buying; these are repesentative of what retailers are ordering. Many of the retailers I’ve spoken to claim to only sell around 50-60% of all of the books they order in the first month. That means that sales to readers are closer to the 3-4 million range.

There’s no question that these numbers are better than the numbers 10 years ago, when 6.99 million copies were sold in May, or the numbers from 5 years ago, when 5.63 million copies were sold in May. (Comparing actual dollar sales is not a fair analysis since books have gone up 33% in price over 10 years.) But that’s nowhere near the 11 million copies that sold in September, 1996, when Diamond first took over distribution to the direct market. And, for what it’s worth, 1996 was one of the years when the industry was in a sharp decline.

In other words, the comic book industry managed to turn itself around from extinction, but ultimately, the industry is stagnating. That means earnings will level off, investments will dry up, and retailers will go bust. The industry may have righted itself for the short term, but in the face of a declining economy, it may have simply delayed its demise.

Fortunately, there are ways that the comic book industry can plant new seeds for growth. But what I need to make clear here is that the current industry, with its overemphasis on superheroes and collectibles, may prove hostile and infertile to these new ideas. The next generation of comic book creators will need to look outside the established direct market, and they will likely have to carve out a new niche of their own. The next generation of comics may simply be a larger part of the publishing industry as a whole, fragmented into different genres and scattered around bookstores with their respective topics. And as digital options become more and more available, it’s quite likely that successful indy books will start out online, and not in print, in the near future.

But a lot of this will come at the expense of the next generation of creators separating themselves from the icons of the industry. So, with that said, let’s look at my own vision for changes the medium can use for growth over the next ten years:

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A friend recently told me that comic books are going through a renaissance lately, and that they’re on their way back to becoming mainstream.

“Really?” I asked. This was news to me — from what I have seen over the last decade, sales in the comic book industry are growing marginally at best, and they’re nowhere near the points they reached in the 1990s.

But my friend argued that the success of movies like Iron Man, Hellboy II and The Dark Knight this summer indicate that comics are back at the forefront of popular culture, and that the upcoming Watchmen film is only going to improve comic books’ position. I’ve read similar arguments on websites and in entertainment columns lately. But the idea that comics are making a comeback because comic book characters are showing up in other forms of media is both naive and misguided.

Now, personally, I would love for comics to make a comeback — I’m a big fan of the medium, and I think it has a lot of untapped potential. But the problem is that comics, as they’re currently produced, are not attractive to consumers for a number of reasons, and unless the industry is willing to change, what we know as comics today will likely disappear down the road. It’s a sad thing to say, but it’s true. And there are many reasons behind it.

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Thinking about publishing comic books? You might want to think again after you read this article. Comic books have a long and interesting history, and the format we read today is a result of many different choices that were made along the road.

Believe it or not, the format we use for comics today happened as much by accident as anything else. Prior to the 1930s, comics came in many different sizes, such as 7″ x 9″, 10″ x 13″, and the tabloid-sized 11″ x 17″.  But the current size, 6 ?” × 10 ¼”, traces its history back to a comic called Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics. Though this book is often erroneously called the first comic book (it’s not), it’s probably the first comic book that modern readers would recognize as such.

One story behind it is that a printing company called Eastern Color, Inc. was trying to find ways to keep the presses rolling during the Great Depression, and a sales manager named Harry I. Wildenberg was idly folding a newspaper broadsheet. He folded it once into the tabloid size, and then folded it again. It occurred to him that this produced a tidy little book in which newspaper strips could be printed. Another story attributes this idea to Maxwell “Charlie” Gaines, who is generally credited as the creator of the modern comic book format. Gaines happened upon some old newspapers in his mother’s attic, and started reading through the comics pages. As the story goes, he realized that people would be interested in reading reprints of these old strips, and he pitched the idea to Eastern, who’d published tabloid-sized books in the past. Gaines suggested that they fold the tabloid books in half and use a saddle-stitching binding to create a small book.

Whichever way it happened, the size of the book was a little bit larger than the modern format (reduction to the current size occurred years later), but the benefits were obvious: a smaller book allowed the publisher to cram more comics inside, and it was just as easy to produce a 64-page comic book as it was to produce a 32 page tabloid-sized book. Thus the modern comic was born. (Interestingly enough, this format an American convention; in Britain, comic books have traditionally been printed in full-size magazines.)

But the size of comic books isn’t the only thing that has its roots in industry history…

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Have you ever thought about creating your own comic book?

If my experiences in the industry reflect the population as a whole, I’d guess that hundreds of thousands of people have. And many of them have actually attempted to do it, whether they’ve created an amateur book to print at Kinko’s or gone through the process of putting together a professional-quality series. Every time I go to conventions, I’m struck by how many new faces I see… and how many people I don’t see again because they’ve quietly exited the industry.

I’ve devoted quite a bit of this blog to talking about the creative side of comics through my Comic Book Writer’s Guide. But I’ve noticed that there’s a real lack of advice out there pertaining to the business side of comics. That’s partially due to the fact that most of the companies who do succeed are tight-lipped about their best practices for fear of helping out future competitors. I get that. But it’s mostly due to the fact that most comic book publishers aren’t run like businesses at all; they’re run like hobbies. Thus, there’s a lot of bad advice out there from people who really don’t know what they’re talking about.

In my 6 years in the industry, I’ve been exposed to some of the worst practices, and I’ve learned quite a bit about how not to run a comic book company. And so today, I’m going to offer a quick survey of the business side of the comic book industry… and some tips on how emerging publishers can actually survive amidst all the problems they’re going to face.

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I’m a marketing guy, but I’m also a creative guy, as anyone who’s had to sit and listen to one of my “no, really, this is my greatest idea ever!” outpourings can attest. I’m great at coming up with new ideas, but I also have a sensibility about whether those ideas are actually worth developing. It gives me a little bit of internal friction as the right side and the left side of my brain work things out, but I’m generally satisfied with the end result.

Unfortunately, a lot of creative people don’t have a good business sense, and a lot of business types don’t have a clue about creativity…
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In recent years, there have been several major shifts in the comic book as a product. Traditionally, comic books were produced inexpensively on newsprint with a limited color range. They were also supported by advertising. Since the 1990s, however, comic books have become increasingly more sophisticated, with high quality glossy pages, a broad range of colors, and eye-popping artwork that isn’t restricted to its panels. Many comics also run few, if any, ads, and instead rely on circulation sales to make them money…

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Read for some in-depth reading? I’ve spent all afternoon prepping this beauty, which will take you on a roundabout tour of how to market a comic book… and how not to. I’ve even got examples of companies who’ve failed, and an explanation as to why they failed.

Hey, don’t let this description hold you up…

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If you’re like many comic book creators out there, you’ve got a great idea for a book, but no idea how to turn it into a comic book! Today, I’m going to tell you how to do it. But be prepared for hard work and financial setback — it’s not cheap or easy to put together a professional-quality comic book!
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