Report: Does Making Comics Make Sense?

Let me just say at the start, that of course, I will keep making comics. Enough people seem to like them, and send me nice comments and reviews for me to feel motivated. The artists that I work with seem to LOVE working on them with me, and they grow through it. In addition to that, I have your support here on my Patreon, so financially that covers all the artists expenses. But most importantly I LOVE making comics, and I feel, as insignificant it may be, we are adding a little bit of beauty and fun to this world. But! If anyone is interested in making comics, I would strongly recommend that they think twice, because IT IS A LOT of work... 6-12 months per comic from one side, but in general people are not very interested in comics. See for example my numbers on the photo I attached. Because the comics keep selling, those numbers change every day, and you will see that the older books have more sales in general than newer ones, so, the new ones will have those numbers in e.g. 6 months. But be as it may be I think they are pretty low, and I am always trying to find new readers. However, when I talk to other indie comics creators, those numbers are considered "pretty good" in indie space of comics! I was only able to get to these numbers because from the huge following on IG, I could find couple hundreds of people which are interested enough to check the comics out, and give me a chance. I even inserted myself as a main character, not because of vanity, but because I thought it would make people more likely to check the comic out. So, consider that without all that, getting even to those numbers, as low as they are, is impossible for 90% of creators. And then there are the finances... From each sale, I get around $2 , so that would mean that from all the sales so far, I got around $4000. Which might not sound bad, but consider that creating a single page of a comic is over $100 (even with the relatively low rates that I can pay the artists). So, only Mrs.G #5 with around 50 pages, took over $5000 to create. And, let me repeat, this is just enough to ensure living wages for the artists, because they work on each page for at least a day or two. So, comics are OBJECTIVELY expensive thing. So, I think to break even, you would need at least 10 times more sales than I have. So a comic would need to sell around 4000 copies. Now, what people do, instead, is they do kickstarters, and they sell the comics to fewer people but to much larger price. E.g. instead of $10, the comics of the size I make, would be offered for $25. And then, instead of $2, you would get $15 per comic. They also offer same comic with multiple covers, so even if they have e.g. 100 supporters, lot of them buy 2-3 covers, and on much higher price, in order to support creation of the comic. So, if you are interested in creating comics, that could be direction to go. For me, however, this Patreon has been the way my supporters (i.e. you guys :) ), allow me to continue work on the comics, while keeping to comic prices low, and not having to do gimmicks like multiple covers. So, for that, thank you so much!! In my name, and in the name of the artists that I work with! Hopefully, I'm making you a little proud too, with the final comics that we are producing! Anyway, hope you find this report interesting. We are continuing working on #6- Sherlock Holmes one, #7 - Cougar's Den and #5.5 - Pirates one. The Sherlock Holmes one is getting closer to finishing and it will be quite a big book, on the last count, it seems it will have around 90 pages of story! Patrick, I think for the last pages of the book is producing even better pencils than he usually is, but I can't share anything from the pages 70 and after, because it would reveal the killer :). I can't wait for it to be finished, so I can share with you!