Attorney, Author, and Business Consultant for the Comic Book Industry

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The Five-Step Process for Breaking into Comics

Added on February 10, 2024 by Gamal Hennessy.

I work on the business side of comics and one of the most consistent questions I get from aspiring creators is “How Do I Break into Comics?”

I attended MegaCon a couple of weeks ago and the question came up again at the Comics to Hollywood panel I was listening to.

It’s a logical and reasonable question, especially since the comic book industry doesn’t have entry paths like film or television, formal requirements like doctors and lawyers, or “regular” application processes like sales or service industries.

The quick and dirty answer is “You break into comics by making comics.” While that is accurate and brief, the explanation deserves some elaboration. In my experience as an author, attorney, and business consultant who has worked in and around comics for more than twenty-five years, there is a five-step process that anyone can use to break into comics.

1. Understand why you want to be in comics: Many comic book readers have, at some point, imagined creating a comic of their own. The realization that you want to be a comic creator can be an epiphany, but understanding your motivation will help you navigate the deep waters of page rates, creator-owned deals, and final order cutoff deadlines. Your “why” will be personal and might include expressing your creativity, joining a community, owning intellectual property, or any other reason you want (See Why Do You Want to Make Comics?). The point here isn’t to fit into some prescribed label. Understanding why you want to work in comics can help guide all the decisions you make about the opportunities that present themselves during your career.

2. Figure out what you want to do in comics: There are more than a dozen different types of roles that go into making any comic (See video What Is the Business of Comics?). Most people think of the artist and the writer, but there are several other creative positions and just as many traditional business roles required to help make a book successful. Beyond the creation of the actual stories, there are many other indirect jobs built on comics, from licensing to media coverage to retail sales. You can have more than one job at the same time depending on the books you’re working on and your skill set. For your first book, you’ll probably have several jobs that you’ll have to juggle, but the key here is to understand that you can break into comics even if you can’t draw.

3. Decide where you want to fit: The comic book industry is not a single monolithic business, and all comic book jobs are not created equal. Comic book creators need to understand their relationship to the stories they create (creator-owned, freelance, or independent) and everyone needs to wrap their heads around the different types of companies that publish comics (See What Types of Companies Publish Comics?) If you already have an understanding of what you want to accomplish in the industry and what roles you can fill, it can be easier to focus your time and energy on projects and partners that fit into your career plans.

4. Publish a comic: This is where the quick and dirty answer fits into the process, but it still requires some elaboration. To break into comics, you need to publish comics, not just make them. Making comics means overcoming all the artistic and creative challenges that come with narrative sequential art. Publishing comics means subjecting what you made and yourself to the demands of the market. This means marketing, distributing, and selling your comic to the public. When you are breaking in, you’re not necessarily trying to make money from your comics (although that would be nice). Your goals here are to get a hands-on education on how the industry works, prove that you can finish a project, meet other people in the business who you can work for and with later, and figure out if you really want a career in comics. As I stated earlier, a lot of people think about and talk about being in comic books, but you can’t talk your way into the industry. Sooner or later, you need to do something.

5. Repeat steps 1-4: If you have just one story to tell, or if your goal is to see your book on the shelf next to your favorite titles in a comic shop or bookstore, then one book might be all you need. But if you plan to have a career in comics, your first book is just the beginning. In the same way, it’s difficult for an athlete or musician to reach the Hall of Fame with one great game or one great song. You can’t define a career with a single book. One industry veteran posted something along the lines of “If you want to break into comics, keep making comics until people realize they can’t get rid of you.” An insider at Marvel once told me “Breaking into comics is hard, but staying in comics is a lot harder.”

The first four steps can help you break into comics, but the last step is the most important for having a career in comics. Your first book probably won’t be your best book, unless it is your only book.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

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PLEASE NOTE: THIS BLOG POST IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL ADVICE. IF YOU HAVE A LICENSING OR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ISSUE, DISCUSS IT WITH YOUR LEGAL ADVISOR OR CONTACT C3 FOR A FREE CONSULTATION.

Are You A Freelancer or an Employee?

Added on May 6, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It is designed to help you understand the difference between being a freelancer for a client and being an employee. While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help you avoid tax issues in the future.

Your professional standing in comics is defined by your relationship with your clients. Depending on the way you work, you can be considered either an employee or a freelancer. According to the IRS, an independent contractor is “a worker who is not classified as an employee for tax and other legal purposes.” While you and your client may be very clear about your role, the reality is that you don’t get to make that determination. The IRS and other government agencies have to power to determine your status after your work has started.

While this may seem like a technicality, there is a substantial difference between the two titles. This sudden shift in your legal situation can have several negative consequences.

If your client is suddenly forced to pay for your employee benefits or alter your compensation, they may reduce your rate to cover the taxes they have to pay on your behalf, or they could stop working with you altogether.
You could lose all of your self-employment deductions, and you may have to file a completely new tax return.
This change can create confusion and uncertainty around intellectual property rights for the work you completed for your client.

This legal status minefield is further complicated by the fact that the tests to determine whether or not you are an employee or a freelancer are often confusing and subjective, so there are no magic words you can use or silver bullet you can employ to ensure your freelance status. Your best option is to stack the deck in your favor in terms of your behavior towards your client, your financial situation, and your day-to-day working connection with your client.

Behavior: You are more likely to be considered a freelancer if you offer your services to the public and not a single client. This includes only taking project-based work and not an ongoing engagement, signing explicit work-for-hire agreements, and refusing to sign any non-compete contracts.
Finances: You are more likely to be considered a freelancer if you operate your business as a separate entity from your employer. This means paying your own expenses and showing profit and losses from multiple clients if possible.
Connection: You are more likely to be considered a freelancer if you have an independent business existence from your client. This means that you and not your client controls how, when, and where your work is done. It also means working for multiple clients and setting up a legal business entity apart from your clients, which means forming some type of company.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

What is a Story Pitch?

Added on April 8, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It is designed to help you understand how to build a story pitch for a publisher. While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help structure a story for characters you don’t own.

Artists, colorists, and letterers can use finished comic book pages to show their ability to transform a script into a professional comic. But before any of that can be done, the script needs to be produced. Which scripts get produced and which stories get told is determined by the publisher.

Many publishers in the emerging, independent, and creator-owned sectors of the industry know what stories they want to tell. In many instances, they are writers who are trying to transform their scripts into comics. At the conglomerate level, publishers hold the rights to valuable IP, but look to freelance writers to create compelling stories for them. This is where you need to be able to present a story pitch to the potential client.

For our purposes, a pitch is a story proposal for an existing IP. There are various types of verbal pitches in the entertainment world, from elevator or convention pitches, and high concept pitches, but the story pitch is a more formal document a writer can use to secure work with a conglomerate publisher.

Dan DiDio, writer, editor, and publisher for both DC Comics and Frank Miller Presents, advocates the following structure for a story pitch:

Logline: A one or two-sentence summary of the story that hooks the potential client and describes the central conflict of the story.
Synopsis: A summary of the entire story, including the premise, the inciting incident, progressing complications, climax, and resolution of the story.
Character Breakdown: A list of the protagonist and all the other supporting characters in their satellite relationship to the protagonist in the story.
Situation and Location: A description of where and when the story takes place.
Springboard: Other storylines that can follow from this story
Art Samples: Capture the look and style of the story. This doesn’t need to be the actual art or original art. It merely needs to convey the proper mood.

Story pitches for established IP often have to balance the existing perception of the characters among readers, corporate plans for the character in other media, and the writer’s unique vision. For a historical perspective, some writers try to deal with these factors by reading up to fifty comics about the character before developing their pitch. Others, like DiDio, suggest that the writer only needs to be familiar with the character’s origin story and their last appearance and avoid being swamped by the “endless middle”. The corporate plans for a character are harder to prepare for because the information is often confidential, but networking and staying informed about film, TV, and game projects surrounding the character can mitigate this issue.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you’d like to learn more about freelance comic book publishing, subscribe to the Comics Connection newsletter for blog updates and information about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

If you have questions about the business or legal aspects of your comic book publishing and you'd like a free consultation, please contact me and we can set something up that fits in with your schedule.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS BLOG POST IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL ADVICE. IF YOU HAVE AN ISSUE WITH YOUR COMIC PROPERTY, DISCUSS IT WITH A QUALIFIED CONTRACT ATTORNEY OR CONTACT C3 FOR A FREE CONSULTATION

What is a Portfolio Review?

Added on March 26, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It is designed to help you understand the structure and purpose of professional portfolio reviews. While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help reduce the stress of having your work criticized in a professional context.

A portfolio review is a professional analysis of samples of your comic book work. Many comic conventions (cons) have time set aside for this type of evaluation. Artists, editors, and publishers use this process as a way to discover and develop talent. Building a portfolio is a story for another time, but there are seven important things to remember in a portfolio review:

The point here is not to stroke your ego, hire you on the spot, or even to encourage your career in comics. The main goal of a portfolio review is to identify the weaknesses in your craft and what might prevent you from finding work. Many prominent FCC have horror stories about the brutal nature of portfolio reviews that ultimately improved their work and their careers.
Most of the time, the person conducting the review has dozens (if not hundreds) of people they have to evaluate in a very short period of time. This means they probably will not have time to hold your hand and walk you through each flaw they find in your technique. The interaction may be very brief, so don’t be offended if they spend five minutes tearing down work that you spent five months putting together.
You might have to have your portfolio reviewed multiple times by the same editor over several cons over several years before they think you’re ready to work for their publisher. This is a part of building the marketing relationship, so don’t expect an immediate offer at the review table.
The reviewers are people who are ultimately providing a service to you by offering their professional opinion of your work. While you might not agree with their evaluation, understand that their perspective is subjective without being defensive or belligerent, even if they are less than polite. It will be more difficult to find work when you start verbally attacking your potential employers.
Portfolio reviews are essentially auditions, but the goal isn’t instant recognition or flattery. You are trying to build relationships with people who can enhance your business over the long term.
If you have done work for clients and you want to include that work in your portfolio, make sure that you have those rights clearly stated in your contract to avoid any claims of copyright infringement, breach of contract, or breach of confidentiality claims.
If you can’t make it to a convention portfolio review, you could submit your portfolio directly to publishers online. The benefit of this is that you can submit to multiple publishers at very low cost. The downside is that you might never get any response to your submission, even after multiple tries.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you’d like to learn more about freelance comic book publishing, subscribe to the Comics Connection newsletter for blog updates and information about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

What Do Your Clients Want?

Added on March 11, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It is designed to help you understand the motivation of your potential clients. While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help you find the right customer for your services.

What is Marketing?

Marketing is the business process of creating satisfying relationships with customers. It is talking to the right people, at the right time, with the right message. As a freelance comic creator (FCC) this means that when a potential client decides that they need someone who does what you do, your name should pop into their mind first. This is a subtle activity, but marketing isn’t magic, and it doesn’t need to be deceptive or sleazy. It does, however, need to tap into collective aspects of human consumption if your brand is going to reach the right client.

What Does Your Potential Client Want?

The most basic thing about marketing is the understanding that your potential client does not want you.

They do not want your services, or your skill, or anything else. This isn’t personal, and it isn’t inherently negative. This is the universal condition for anything we buy or consume. When you reduce human motivation to its philosophical core, you realize that people want the results that their various purchases and products can provide for them. They want the feelings that these intermediate goods and services generate, not the things themselves.

For example, if you are hungry, it is difficult for you to relive that hunger without the intermediate process of eating something. As a meta example, you didn’t click on this post just because you like reading. You want a career in comics. You thought that reading this post might be an intermediate step you need to take to accomplish your goal.

By the same token, your client wants successful comics. Their definition of successful might revolve around their ideals of quality about the product, sales of the book, or critical reception of the story, but no matter what they are looking for, they need to see you as the vehicle that will get them where they want to go if they are going to hire you.

What is Your Marketing Message?

Once you understand the real motivation of your potential client, you’ll be able to craft the right message for the right people. It will be easier for you to avoid the trap of talking about why a particular gig is important for you or how important and impressive you are. All of those things may be true, but they are irrelevant to your potential client. It is more relevant and more helpful for everyone if your messaging articulates why your work can make your clients successful.

It is important to understand that your marketing message will have two concurrent effects, no matter what your message is or how you convey it. The direct effect will be to attract the right clients for your brand. Your message will express not only the type of work that you do, but the kind of clients you work for and, on a professional level, the things that are important to you from a political and social dimension. This is true to some extent for all marketing messages, but it is particularly significant in creative work due to the political nature of art. Since comics are art and all art is political, your work and your messaging should reflect this reality.

And that reality will alienate the wrong clients. This is the second concurrent effect. It means that in most circumstances they will not hire you regardless of your skill, talent, or professionalism. By definition, this will reduce your pool of potential clients and the amount of hypothetical revenue. But it will also go a long way in filtering out the clients who don’t make sense for you. If you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll probably wind up appealing to no one. It makes much more sense to figure out where you fit in the market and focus your efforts there.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you’d like to learn more about freelance comic book publishing, subscribe to the Comics Connection newsletter for blog updates and information about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

How Do You Find Clients as a Freelance Creator?

Added on March 4, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It looks at the basis of forming good business relationships with your clients. While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help you find the right customer for your services.

Who is the Right Client for Your Work?

A client is defined as anyone who receives a service from a professional in return for payment. As a freelance comic creator (FCC), your client could be anyone from a parent who wants a commission of their child’s favorite character to an international conglomerate who hires you to develop the next phase of a billion-dollar franchise.

When you consider all the potential emerging, independent, creator-driven, and conglomerate clients you can see there is a lot of work available. But there may be tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other FCC around the world trying to secure work, with more freelancers joining the competition every year. Competition is fierce. The FCC who excels at finding clients can thrive. The ones that don’t will struggle.

One of the keys to finding clients is understanding the difference between the right client for your services and the wrong one. You only have a limited amount of time and energy to find clients, so you have to be efficient and intentional. It does you no good to spend weeks, months or years chasing down a prospect only to discover that they are not the right client for you. The best thing you can do for you and your clients is to focus on the right group and ignore everyone else.

But who is the right client for your services? You can figure this out by matching your brand identity to the profile of your potential client. This post will help you define your brand identity, understand your potential client and offer some suggestions for identifying the right opportunities for your business.

What is Your Brand Identity?

As an FCC, you are selling yourself in the form of time, skill, and creative vision. When a client hires you, they will have certain expectations about what you offer and what the experience will be like working with you. For our purposes, your brand identity is the proposal or promise that you make to your clients about your work with them. This is more than your logo or your slogan. It is the message behind your logo designed to trigger the positive associations that can lead to being hired. It is a summary of the qualities that make you an asset to a publisher.

There are desirable universal and personal qualities you can strive to include in your brand identity. Universal qualities that almost every FCC client is looking for include creativity, flexibility, punctuality, and professionalism. Your personal qualities will be individual to you and the services you offer. For example, a writer who specializes in comedy stories will probably include wit and humor into their brand. An editor who manages projects from start to finish might add an extensive roster of creative talent and time management to their brand.

What is the Profile of Your Potential Client?

The more clients you have the more money you can potentially make, but that doesn’t mean your long-term goal should be to work with every client who crosses your path. Every potential client is not the right client for you. Not everyone wants the services you offer. Not everyone can pay your rate. Not everyone will work well with you on a creative level. Your ability to decline offers from the wrong clients is just as important as your ability to find clients.

How Do You Match Your Brand with the Right Client?

Once you know what your brand offers and what type of clients make sense for you, the process of filtering clients becomes easier to manage. As you review postings on job boards, proposals from publishers, and develop your marketing, you’ll be able to differentiate who will probably work and who won’t.

In the beginning, you might not have the luxury of rejecting every poor fit because you need to build your skills, experience and reputation as an FCC. You might need to trade micromanaging bosses of your day job for micromanaging clients. The situation will shift if and when you gain mastery of your craft and your reputation as a professional. As comic icon, Neal Adams once said “You can gain more leverage and power when your work is so good that it can’t be rejected.”

Identifying the right client isn’t an exact science. There will be times when a promising client turns out to be a nightmare once the work begins. There is also a chance that a questionable client turns into a great working relationship. In order to hedge your bets against a mismatch, it is often useful to begin your relationship with a small or short-term engagement, so both sides can feel each other out without a long-term commitment up front.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you’d like to learn more about freelance comic book publishing, subscribe to the Comics Connection newsletter for blog updates and information about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

How Do You Manage Time as a Freelance Comic Creator?

Added on February 25, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It examines time management and work-life balance for comic creators. While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help make the most of one of your most limited resources.

As a freelance comic creator (FCC), you offer services to your clients to produce the comics they want. Your skills, reputation, professionalism, and creative vision are intangible assets that you have in an almost unlimited supply. But you are also selling your time, which is one resource which is both limited and subject to other demands.

This means your time has to be balanced effectively if you’re going to survive as an FCC. This balance needs to occur not just between your work inside and outside of comics. You also need to manage your freelance time to account for all the demands of an FCC.

What are the Elements of Time Management?

You only have so many hours in a day to get things done. You only have a finite amount of energy to devote to any task. The key is getting the most done in the most efficient way. Time management is defined as the organizing and planning of how to divide your available time. Like the crime-fighter who practices law during the day and patrols the streets of Hell’s Kitchen at night, you’re going to need a plan if you want to get both jobs done. Business journalist Mario Peshev created a useful framework in an article for Entrepreneur Magazine.

Create a long-term roadmap: Start with where you are, figure out where you want to be, and then determine your path.
Manage Priorities: Accept the reality that you can’t do it all. Your personal life may have to suffer if you want to work in comics. Storenvy CEO Jon Crawford put it succinctly: “Work, sleep, family, fitness, or friends—pick three.”
Break down every task into simple problems: Instead of trying to handle all aspects of your business at once, figure out what needs to be done in what order to make sure you’re not wasting time.
Start with a simple task: It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the different aspects of being an FCC. Start your roadmap with a manageable first step and you won’t sabotage yourself before beginning.
Adapt to Changing Circumstances: No plan survives contact with reality. Things will change in the industry and your life during your career. Adjust your time management as you move through the process and adjust the balance between your work and your life.

How Do You Balance Your Work and Your Life?

From my perspective, time management starts with the understanding that your time and energy are limited resources. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, and there is only so much energy and sanity one person can utilize in that day. It is unrealistic and counter-productive to work under the premise that you don’t need sleep, food, or time away from work.

Burnout leads to several negative outcomes, including physical and emotional exhaustion, reduced accomplishment, loss of personal identity, and depression. This type of burnout can affect any type of worker, even someone working in a field they love like comics. According to Indeed, up to 52% of workers experienced burnout in 2020.

Once you understand your time is a finite resource, you can resist the urge to try and offer time you don’t have or trying to fill every hour of every day with activity. This means learning to allocate sufficient time to the aspects of your life that are important to you in addition to taking time to sleep, socialize and step away from work. It may sound contradictory, but a completely full schedule isn’t a viable long-term solution. Developing an FCC business takes time and often can’t be done all at once, no matter how many all-nighters you pull. Trying to do too much too soon will reduce the quality of both your life and your work. It could also lead you to a place where you are too overwhelmed to work at all. Knowing that you can’t work all the time will help you make a realistic assessment of how much your time is worth and how you charge your clients.

Time management also means being in control of the time that you do devote to work. In this area, the FCC has an advantage because they are not tied to the rigid schedules of most employees. This allows them to reject unprofitable work, avoid unnecessary meetings, and politely decline any activity that doesn’t fit with your goals but chews up valuable time.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you’d like to learn more about freelance comic book publishing, subscribe to the Comics Connection newsletter for blog updates and information about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

Why Should Freelance Comic Creators Form Companies?

Added on February 18, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It examines the utility of forming a company for your freelance work. While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help you decide if and why you might want to incorporate your business.

The clients of a freelance comic creator are often well-known companies. Archie, DC, Marvel, Penguin Random House and hundreds of other companies often use freelance talent to produce comics. But you can also be a company, even if you are working alone.

The advantage of this relationship goes beyond optics. The business and legal relationship with your clients, the amount of taxes you pay, your protection from legal attacks and your perception in the market can all be influenced by your decision to establish a company for your freelance business.

What is a Company?

A company is an artificial person, established by the laws of a specific state or country, formed to operate a business enterprise. A company does not require a building, an office, a logo, or any of the outward symbols of modern corporations. It does require compliance with the laws of the state where the company was formed in terms of its creation and its ongoing business. There are several different types of companies available in most states of America, and even if the corporate form that you are looking for isn’t available in your state, in many instances, you can live and do business in one state and form your company in another state.

Why Should You Form a Company?

There are three major legal and financial benefits of forming a company. The specific impact of each of these benefits will be based on the type of company you choose to form, but in general, companies have the following main advantages:

Liability Protection: is designed to protect your personal assets if your business runs into debt. For example, if you order a large print run on behalf of your client and then you fail to pay the printer on time because your client didn’t pay you, the printer can sue to recover the unpaid fees. Depending on what kind of company you form and how closely you conform to the rules of your state, the printer could only come after the assets owned by your business and not your bank account, car, or house.
Tax Advantages: Some types of companies can claim tax deductions for certain business expenses. A tax deduction reduces a person’s taxable income, which can reduce the amount of tax they have to pay. For example, let’s say you make $50,000 a year. You attend a convention and pay $2,000 for flights, hotel, meals, and other related costs. As an individual, you wouldn’t get any benefit from spending that money beyond the pleasure of being at the con. Depending on the company you create, some or all of that $2,000 could be deducted from your income which could lead to more money coming your way at tax time.
Legal status: Your professional standing is defined by your relationship with your client. Depending on the way you work, you can be considered either an employee or a freelancer. There is a substantial difference between the two titles. While you and your client may be very clear about your role, the reality is that you don’t get to make that determination. The IRS and other government agencies have to power to determine your status relative to your employer after your work has started.

This sudden shift in your legal situation can have several negative consequences. First, if your client is suddenly forced to pay for your employee benefits or alter your compensation, they may reduce your rate to cover the taxes they have to pay on your behalf, or they could stop working with you altogether. Second, you could lose all of your self-employment deductions, and you may have to file a completely new tax return. Finally, this can create confusion and uncertainty around intellectual property rights for the work you completed for your client.

This legal status minefield is further complicated by the fact that the tests to determine whether or not you are an employee or a freelancer are often confusing and subjective, so there are no magic words you can use or silver bullet you can employ to ensure your freelance status. Your best option is to stack the deck in your favor in terms of your behavior towards your client, your financial situation, and your day-to-day working connection with your client.

Behavior: You are more likely to be considered a freelancer if you offer your services to the public and not a single client. This includes only taking project-based work and not an ongoing engagement, signing explicit work-for-hire agreements and refusing to sign any non-compete contracts.
Finances: You are more likely to be considered a freelancer if you operate your business as a separate entity from your employer. This means paying your own expenses and showing profit and losses from multiple clients if possible.
Connection: You are more likely to be considered a freelancer if you have an independent business existence from your client. This means that you and not your client controls how, when, and where your work is done. It also means working for multiple clients and setting up a legal business entity apart from your clients, which means forming some type of company.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you’d like to learn more about freelance comic book publishing, subscribe to the Comics Connection newsletter for blog updates and information about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

How Much Money Do You Need to Earn to Work Full-Time in Comics?

Added on February 4, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It explores the economic realities of working as a freelance comic creator (FCC). While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help you take a realistic look at your personal situation and adapt to inevitable downturns.

Different people have different life circumstances, which require different levels of income. Every city has a different cost of living, and since comics can be produced from anywhere in the world, FCC can take advantage of cheaper cities without losing the ability to find clients. A person trying to rent an apartment, pay off student loans, and raise a family in midtown Manhattan needs a different level of income than a person living debt-free on their own in Bangalore, India. Because every FCC will be in a unique economic position, there is no one income that can satisfy every situation. This means you need to understand your financial needs to help you understand what to charge your clients, where to set your monetary goals and allow you to track your performance over time.

The common challenge that all FCC share is managing regular expenses with irregular income. FCC don’t have the stability that comes with a regular paycheck coming in at a pre-determined interval. Sometimes there will be too much work. In other periods the work may dry up. But bills keep on coming no matter how much work you get. This post will help you figure out your personal level of expenses, tactics for dealing with slow periods of work, and help you understand if you can make a living as an FCC.

What Are Your Monthly Expenses?

The first step in figuring out how much you need to earn is understanding how much you spend. In the United States in 2021, the average monthly spending was more than $5,300 broken down into the following broad categories. The links are offered to show where these numbers came from.

Rent/ Mortgage: $1,462
Food: $350
Transportation $820
Utilities: $170
Healthcare: $430
Recreation: $240
Savings : $200
Taxes: $1,200
Student Loans: $460

These categories don’t include various types of insurance outside of healthcare, childcare payments, other existing debt, or the costs of running an FCC business, and again, these are national averages for the United States in 2021. Your situation will (and should) vary in one or more categories.

How Can You Survive Periods Without Work?

Despite your best efforts, there may be periods when the amount of revenue you generate as an FCC is less than your expenses for a given week or month. You may not be able to control the inherent instability of freelance work, but there are five steps you can take steps to reduce the negative impact it can have on your finances.

1. Diversified work: Two of the major benefits of freelance work are flexibility and the freedom to work in different industries. Taking advantage of these conditions can help you offset slow periods in your comic book work. Many of the creative and business services you offer to comic book publishers have value for other types of clients and businesses. By searching for clients inside and outside of comics, you can protect yourself from a lack of work in any one sector.

2. Standard payments: There is a temptation as an FCC to spend big when the work is flowing and to live off ramen packets when times are hard. An alternative involves withdrawing the same amount from your business account every week, regardless of how much business you have in a given month. Let’s say you take out $1,000 per week from your business account. If you control your spending this way, it won’t make a difference if you make $10,000 in a month or $10. You’ll always have a steady flow of income to satisfy your debts.

3. Emergency funds/Savings: You may run into a situation where your FCC income runs out and there’s nothing to draw from in the business account. Before that happens, it helps to set aside some cash to pay the bills when work is scarce. The amount that you save for a rainy day has to be realistic for your present debt, but some experts suggest savings anywhere from 15-45% of your income to cover periods without work.

4. Reduced costs: If you reduce the amounts that you spend, then you reduce the amount you need to make to cover your expenses. This could be something minor, like lowering your recreational or food costs, to a major change like giving up your car or moving into a cheaper living arrangement. But while it makes sense to reduce costs to match your income, in many cases it is not realistic to instantly eliminate a cost that you need to pay in order to live.

5. Side hustle: An FCC with bills to pay may need to find work outside of comics as they build their business. Generating revenue as an FCC is not like working freelance with Uber or Task Rabbit and a long-term career as an FCC does not happen instantly. It may take months or years to build this business, and it be more prudent to work outside of comics until you can establish your client base and build up your safety net.

Can You Make a Living Just Making Comics?

Even if you get a handle on your expenses and develop strategies to have money when work is tight, you still might not make enough money from comics to survive.

According to the 2020 census, full-time American workers earned a median salary of $56,000. In 2017, the average comic book artist earns $36,500 per year, or about 33% less than the national average salary. If these numbers are accurate, and if the cost of living for both the comic book artist and the full-time worker are the same (about $63,000 per year), then the comic book artist has a consistent deficit of more than $27,000 per year. There have been stories of prominent creators working on conglomerate properties who made it very clear that they would not be able to sustain a career in comics without a supportive spouse or alternative source of income.

These facts should not discourage you from pursuing a career as an FCC. They are meant to show the importance of diversifying your work, charging realistic fees and reducing costs wherever possible.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you’d like to learn more about freelance comic book publishing, subscribe to the Comics Connection newsletter for blog updates and information about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

What Types of Companies Publish Comics?

Added on January 28, 2023 by Gamal Hennessy.

By Gamal Hennessy

This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It explores the different types of publishers you can work for as a freelancer. While this can’t be taken as legal advice, it can help you understand your options for finding work.

The comic book industry is not a single monolithic entity. Different publishers produce different types of comics with different goals in different production cycles. Understanding the differences between each general type of publisher can help you determine which publishers you want to work with and how to work with them effectively.

Conglomerate comics are published as part of a wider integrated media and merchandising plan. These publishers control IP that can be found in movies, on television, in video games, and in every type of consumer product. These comics function more as marketing and research and development for the more profitable business lines, so the consistent visibility of the characters is often more important than any single story. Publishers like DC and Marvel are examples of comic book conglomerates.
Creator-Driven comics are published as individual creative ventures. The IP for these comics is shared between the publisher and the creators (often the writer) and depending on the nature of that relationship, there may be opportunities for media crossovers or profits based purely on publishing. These comics often serve as proof of concept for the writer to show the potential of their story. Millarworld, Penguin Random House, Skybound are examples of creator-driven comic publishers.
Emerging comics are published as an entry into the industry, the development stage in a longer comic book career, or as a boutique publishing venture. The publisher often controls all of the rights to the IP for these stories and are often running their business without the assistance of any third party. Because of the limited time and investment money available to this class of publishers, production can be sporadic and variable. Crowdfunded comics and Webtoon comics are often emerging comics.
Independent comics are also published as individual creative ventures, but the rights are held almost exclusively by the publisher and not shared with the creator like in the creator-driven deals. If there is a spectrum between the emerging publisher and the conglomerate, then independents can be seen as between these two because they have a larger catalog and more consistent publishing schedules than an emerging publisher, and they may have some media deals outside of comics, but they may not have the corporate oversight of a Disney or a Warner Brothers. Companies like A Wave Blue World, Coffin Comics and Mad Cave Studios are examples of independent comic book publishers.

Have fun with your comic.

Gamal

If you’d like to learn more about freelance comic book publishing, subscribe to the Comics Connection newsletter for blog updates and information about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.