Having addressed the cost breakdown of print comics last week, Skullkickers‘ Jim Zub now turns his attentions to digital comics:
A lot of people have talked about the need for cheaper digital comic prices to drive impulse buying in casual/new readers. Right now most of the digital comics available are selling at a similar price to their print counterparts. Outside of sales and special promotions, a $2.99 print comic is selling for $2.99 digitally. People assume that digital content should be much cheaper because it has no physical component, but there are development and infrastructure costs that go into creating and maintaining a digital platform. It’s hard to say whether they’re equivalent, but right now the pricing is relatively equal.
Overall, he estimates, creative teams get somewhere between 17 and 23% of the digital pie – which is far better than their percentage of print profit, but as he points out, “the creative team gets more of the pie with a digital sale, but it’s a smaller sized pie right now.”
January 14th, 2013 at 7:58 am
I can tell you what I earned so far after spending 1000 dollars on marketing for _my_ new digital comic: (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ilostmyjob): 1 Dollar.
The economy is toast, which is also the subject of the comic BTW, and that means earnings are going to be poor no matter how you look at it.