Art, be it literary, graphical or pillow box cosy’s doesn’t pay. The disposable society of shiny barbarism beats down the creative’s within it, under the premise that great art can only be produced by those who suffer and sustaining any kind of lifestyle on creative output is next to impossible for around 99% of writers and artists. Indeed, subsistence level, cheese on toast six days a week funded by art would be a major achievement for most artists of any kind.
Which always makes me wonder, just how much really fabulous art/writing has never happened because the artist/writer needed to earn enough money to eat/ pay rent/ pay bills etc. first…
Which is why I am a great supporter of Patreon as a concept (unfortunately as I need to eat etc. I can’t fund ever patreon I would like to. I can, however, do this and spread the word a little)
It’s not all hopeless after all…
Let’s start with some technical details. It takes about six months of Tom working full time to draw a Hopeless Maine graphic novel. On top of this, I do about 2 hours of work on each page, plus the writing time, so let’s call that 200 hours on each book at least. Now consider how much you think a person needs to earn in a six month period.
If a comic print run is 2000 books, at £10 a pop, the entire run is worth £20,000. Half of this will disappear into the hands of distributors, and bookshops. In the case of direct sales at events, those also have costs. So let’s say that half the money does indeed make it back to the publisher – that’s 10k. The publisher has to pay for the printing, the warehouse storage and the other costs of being a publisher. What remains, pays…
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The Passing Place 