Selling Comics Tips and Strategies
To print your comic is to put yourself in an immediate financial hole. Let’s face it, even if you have a decent-selling comic book, you’re still not going to make great money. Behind the scenes, a savvy business owner works hard to bring you joy while making money. Comic shop owners generate revenue by selling comics. They also make money from merchandise, events, and more.
Comic Book Valuation and Sales
Sell printed collections of your work. Most comics are worth cover price or less, some much more. Stores pay about $25 per long box. Auctions yield prices close to guide values. Lower-end comics are difficult to sell.
Making Money with Comics
Are comics hard to sell? As a “want”, not a “need”, comics are a non-fungible product. You priced the comic expecting the trend to continue. But as interest fades, so do sales volume and price. Depending on when you bought in, you might need to keep holding or sell at a loss. Selling online has risks. Sell in person when possible. Put signature confirmation on expensive shipments. The deck is stacked toward professional dealers with grading services.
Strategies to Make Money with Comics
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Create Your Own Comic: One way to make money with comics is to put your own comic book into production. This can be done as an independent venture. You can create your own comic book, design the art and writing yourself, and then publish it for sale either in print or digitally.
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Sales and Collections: Another option is to sell printed collections of your comic work. This allows fans to purchase physical copies of your comics to add to their collections.
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Building an Audience: Unfortunately, the vast majority of the ways you can make money drawing comics require you to have an audience. You could use social media sites to create buzz for your comic.
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Merchandise: If you have an audience, you should consider selling merch tied to your comic. Things like t-shirts, mugs, and posters are great ways to monetize your fanbase.
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Freelancing Opportunities: There may be opportunities to make money as a freelance comic artist or writer. Publishers sometimes hire freelancers to work on established properties.
Comic Industry Profits
Making money with comics is a great way to capitalize on your talents and creativity. While it’s easy to start making some extra money to supplement an existing income, it’s extremely rare for a beginning webcomic artist to make a lot of money quickly. However, despite these challenges, the industry is still profitable. Sales of comics and graphic novels reached $1.21 billion in 2019. So if you have the talent and dedication, money can be made creating comics.