How to sell your comic book at comic cons (part 3)

10. Create intriguing cover art

Let’s be real: People recognize existing IPs quickly and fanart does interest people. But I’ve learned that if your art is too similar to the real thing, it can be mistaken for a bootleg copy. It might not be clear to the everyman that you drew this stuff by yourself.

Referencing a big franchise like GTA gave me mixed results. It is super well known, even more than I had realized. Some were excited about the prospect of a GTA-themed comic, while others dismissed it entirely. Of course, you can’t please everybody and you shouldn’t try to. Just be aware that your cover art shouldn’t match your main inspiration exactly.

Make sure you’re showing your own unique twist, a combination of genres, your appealing characters and/or your own art style. A picture communicates so much and the art of good comic book covers is a whole topic on its own. But in essence, your key art should communicate to the viewer:

• What type of type of story is this? What can you expect in it?
• What genre(s) is it?
• Is it for children, teenagers or adults?

Ultimately, you’re trying to draw the right people in, the ones who are interested in your kind of story. Think of it like this: What would get you interested to take a closer look?

11. Offer some choices

Look at this table setup. What do you think the problem is?

Everything looks the same! There is really only one visual to be seen: The book cover is displayed four times, plus some snippets of it. As a viewer, once you’ve looked at this artwork once, you’ve seen the whole selection of products. There’s nothing more to discover and people will probably quickly move on quickly. Seems basic, I didn’t realize this, until it was thankfully explained to me 😅

This is an easy to trap to fall into: If you’re just starting out and your latest and greatest artwork (which you’ve spent half an eternity on) is offered as a book cover, small print, large print, postcard, sticker etc.

The solution: Introduce more variety! Give visitors a reason to stay. Just make more art. Print a reading sample, in a smaller size, with less pages. Or collect a bunch of your existing sketches and print them on postcards or collected in a little art book. It doesn’t all need to be super polished! Which leads me to…

12. Show your process

Events are great opportunities to get feedback and reactions to your work. You’ll see that you’ll get a lot of questions like “how did you make this?”

Remember, not everyone is an artist. To many people, you might as well be a magician. It’s good to talk about your process, but it’s better to show it. And even better yet: Make it discoverable…

I like to bring a portfolio with drawings and have it lying open on a laptop stand. Those drawings are not originals, but rather copies, wrapped in plastic foil (makes it all a bit more hygienic, if they can easily be wiped with sanitizer). Inside, you can find comic pages in various stages: Sketches, inked pages, sometimes side by side. Concept drawings, warmup sketches, etc. It’s very cool to see this stuff evolve!

I’ve found that quite often, sketches get more reactions than actual finished artwork. They are perhaps more accessible, easier to wrap your head around as a non-artist. They also act as proof that a human made this, not an AI. If you’re feeling up to it, you can even draw live and allow requests for some quick commissions.

When someone has flipped through a lot of pages, it’s a good conversation starter:

“These sketches actually show the making of this new comic book I’ve just gotten printed.”

These interactive items do a great job of keeping potential customers engaged. Some artists like to have a tombola on their table for the same reason, but I personally don’t like to offer something very close to gambling.

13. Decide on a price for your comic book

This is a hard one, because it’s leads you down a path of “what is it worth” and inevitably: “What are you worth?” You’re probably going to undervalue yourself.

But let’s take a step back: What kind of price do your customers expect? It’s helpful to look how others are doing it. Let’s say you’ve made a comic book with 32 pages in a standard format, say 6.625 x 10.25 inches or DIN A4. Now let’s do some research and find some prices at a store or fellow artist’s shops. When you’ve found an average price, divide it by the number of pages:

15€ / 60 pages = 0,25€ per page
32 pages * 0,25€ = 8€ is your target price

But can you afford to do the same?

It’s simple economics. Let’s break this down: Sum up all your costs involving the making of your book: Anyone you’ve paid for their contribution, like colorists, flatters, editors, letterers etc. If you’ve done everything yourself, that’s easy: You either think of what you’d like to make in total, or how much you’d like to make for each copy sold and remember that for later. The biggest cost will likely involve printing the actual book.

Let’s go with 50 copies for this simple calculation:

200€ printer (50 copies)
220€ flatting services from Fiverr
= 420€ total costs w/o tax

420€ / 50 copies
= 8,40€ cost per copy w/o tax

So now you know what one book is going to cost you to produce. But the result exceeds your target price of 8€. And you haven’t even added payment for yourself (profit margin) or taxes yet!

Here’s how to do it. Something interesting happens if you print more copies: Your printer will charge you less per copy. It’s called economy of scale.

360€ printer (100 copies)
220€ flatting services from Fiverr
= 580€ total costs w/o tax

580€ / 100 copies
= 5,80€ cost per copy w/o tax

Much better! Let’s add 1€ for your own profit (hey, you aren’t going to get rich this way, but at least you’ll be competitive and make more than your costs back). Depending on your business type and country of origin, you might have to charge taxes. In Austria, the tax rate is 10% for books.

5,80€ costs
1€ profit
= 6,80€ * 1,1 (taxes) = 7,48€

Would you look at that, it’s actually less than 8€ now! Better round that price up for a nice even number. 8€ it is! Keep in mind, there might be card transaction costs for your sales, you might get some misprints and sometimes you’ll want to give discounts. So it’s not greed, but rather a safety margin for all those hidden costs.

Quick tip: If you want to print multiple versions of the same book, for example a variant cover or in a second language, include all variations in the same order. That way, you’ll get the reduced price for the total number of copies.