When I was stepping down as editor of 2000AD - in the summer of 2000- I wrote a bluffer's guide to running the weekly. Andy Diggle was succeeding me, but he was getting a new assistant and I thought a little background might be helpful. [That person proved to be Matt Smith, who's run the comic since 2002 - an epic stint.]
Just for fun, here is a lightly edited version of that guide. Advances in comics creation and publishing mean much of the content is out of date, even quaint by 2017 standards, and some of what's included is verging on the arcane that will fascinate only the most obsessive [people like me, frankly]. But it might be of interest to some, so let the editorial burbling commence...
1.
Who
does what for the Galaxy’s greatest comic
2000 AD is currently put together by a dedicated
editorial team of 1.8 people. That breaks down to one full-time editor (David
Bishop – DB hereafter), a part-time assistant editor (Andy Diggle – AD
hereafter) and a part-time designer (Steve Cook – SC here after).
• DB has resigned as editor of 2000 AD and finishes
on June 29, 2000.
He will be replaced by AD as editor, effective June
30, 2000.
• AD is currently editor of the Judge Dredd
Megazine (40% of his time, editor of Sonic the Comic (20%) and assistant editor
of 2000 AD (40%).
(From July, Sonic the Comic will pass to another editor at Egmont
Fleetway. The Megazine will be edited by DB on a freelance, out-of-house basis
from July, leaving Andy to work solely on 2000 AD.)
• SC designs 2000 AD on a part-time contract with
Egmont Fleetway, two days a week. His official title is Art Editor of 2000 AD.
(N.B. Egmont Fleetway is currently advertising for
an Editorial Assistant to work on 2000 AD full-time. It is hoped to have this
person in place before DB’s departure from Egmont Fleetway.)
Other people at Egmont Fleetway whose work
contributes to 2000 AD:-
• Managing Editor Steve MacManus – a former editor
of 2000 AD, he offers editorial support if needed for holiday or sickness
cover. He has little day to day input on the title.
• Product Manager Jess Manu and Marketing Assistant
Jane Ballard – responsible for all promotions, cover-mounts and subscriptions.
• Marketing Manager Jon Rissik – effectively the
publisher of 2000 AD, responsible for managing the title including budget
control, circulation management, all marketing and promotions activities.
• Production Manager Sarah Colley – responsible for
all production processes between editorial and distribution i.e. repro,
printing, paper buying, contract negotiation of all elements of production
process.
• Accounts Department – responsible for payroll,
bought ledger (i.e. payments to contributors, contractors), royalties, budget
monitoring.
• Syndication Manager Martin Morgan – responsible
for all aspects of international publishing syndication of 2000 AD content; for
control and storage of the 2000 AD archive of back issues, films and CDs; and
for sending international courier packages.
• Executive Editor Gil Page – responsible for
negotiating all licensing and merchandising deals e.g. action figures, video
games etc.
2.
The
Commissioning Process
All 2000 AD stories, artwork and cover images are
created by self-employed freelancers who work from their own premises. They are
commissioned by the editorial team – usually the editor, although there is
flexibility about who deals with whom on a daily basis.
Covers:
these are commissioned at any time up to a week before they are needed to go to
repro. Ideally key cover art should be available four months in advance of
publication, so it can be supplied to Diamond Comic Distributors for
promotional purposes in the crucial Previews catalogue. Some covers are fully
painted but most are either fully rendered on computer by the artist, or else
drawn in black and white by an artist and then given to a colourist to fully
render on computer.
Artists are required to submit a sketch first for
our approval before being verbally given the go-ahead. Sometimes we pre-design
covers to show artists the sort of thing we want, but we still require a sketch
from them to confirm mutual comprehension of the concept.
Scripts:
these are commissioned from freelance writers by the editorial team. Some
stories are driven by ideas from the team, sometimes ideas are suggested as
springboards for stories, but most are the creation of the writer. Generally
writers are required to submit a plot synopsis first for approval before they
are commissioned to script it.
Most scripts are now submitted via email. The bulk
of 2000 AD is written by a handful of scribes. Longer serials are generally
written with a specific artist in mind, as this helps build teamwork between
the creators. Most 2000 AD writers work for more than one employer. They also
tend to be writing more than one series for 2000 AD at any given time. Once a
synopsis has been agreed, the story is verbally commissioned and terms agreed.
All stories for 2000 AD are commissioned on the
basis that we acquire all rights in the material, in exchange for paying the
creators a royalty and acknowledging them as the creators wherever possible.
Contracts are only issued when a new series is being created for 2000 AD, to
establish precedent. Thereafter all subsequent commissions for that series are
made on the same terms as the initial contract. We currently issue a publishing
contract and a separate audio/visual rights contract, which are prepared by the
editor based on templates from our lawyers.
Artwork:
this is commissioned from freelance artists by the editorial team. We send the
artist a full script for each episode they are to draw, having agreed terms and
a timetable for delivery. In some cases artists are issued with a written
timetable, particularly if a job is time sensitive or the artist wants time
keeping guidance.
Some artists are required to submit thumbnails or
breakdowns of their work at an early stage. This is used to watch for any
potential problems with story-telling, style and the art size – particularly
with new artists being nurtured.
Some artists only pencil their pages, some deliver
fully inked black and white art, some fully paint their jobs, others computer
render their work. They are generally commissioned to do whatever they do best.
The only exception is where artists are only asked to do part of a job (e.g.
just the B&W art) because it enhances productivity if the colouring is done
by someone else while the artist works on the next episode.
Like writers, artists who create new series are
issued with publishing and audio/visual rights contracts. Unlike most writers,
artists can require more attention to get their best work from them in a timely
fashion. 2000 AD draws from a stable of about 40 artists, although only a dozen
are in perpetual work for us.
We are moving towards having artists scan their
mono art and supply that digitally to us – either on disc, via email or on
“blind” pages on their own websites. This has already been done successfully as
a pilot scheme with artist Simon Fraser, who lives in Vienna. It cuts down on
courier and postage costs and speeds the editorial process.
Colouring:
About half the strips in 2000 AD are coloured by specialists, rather than by
the original artist. All specialist colouring is now done on computer and
supplied on disc, which has dramatically cut the cost and time required for the
production processes. Colouring is commissioned verbally with the colourist
sent a copy of the script along with the physical art to work on.
Colourists get between £50 and £60 per page for
their work. This may seem high in comparison to writers’ rates (between £35 and
£80 a page, the average is £50), but colourists receive no royalties or
secondary income from their work.
Lettering:
All the strips in 2000 AD are lettering by self-employed freelancers on
computer. We use four letterers on five strips – Tom Frame (Judge Dredd), Ellie
De Ville (Sinister Dexter and others), Annie Parkhouse (Nikolai Dante and
others), Steve Potter (whatever’s left). All the letterers have developed unique fonts, based on their own hand lettering style. Letterers are paid
£20 per page.
Lettering could be done in-house, but it is quite
time consuming. Our freelance letterers have invested heavily - and at their
own expense - to go fully digital, so the work should remain with them. Lettering
costs 2000 AD about £28,000 in fees per year.
3.
The
Editorial Budget
Page
Rates: These are set by a combination of historical
precedent, budgetary constraints and quality. 2000 AD’s base rates have hardly
shifted in the past 10 years. Base rate for new writers is £35 per page; for
artists it is £120 for mono art and £180 for colour art. Lately we have been
having more pencil and ink art splits, where base rates are £70 and £40 per page respectively. Base rate for
colouring is £50.
Rates vary depending upon length of service – stay
in work long enough for 2000 AD, your rate will creep up. Quality of output is
another major factor, as is its importance to the comic – that’s why John
Wagner gets more for Dredd than for writing other strips. Generally, colour art
is set at mono page rate plus 50%.
As a rule of thumb, pages rates are set at the
following levels for budgetary reasons: script costs should average £50 per
page across an issue; art costs (including colouring) should average £200 per
page; and lettering is uniformly £20 per page. Cover art usually costs £350. Where
a strip is being published in black and white, we expect to pay up to £150 to
get the best quality mono art.
Editorial
Budget: From July 2000, the weekly will have 27 pages of
strip, of which five pages will be mono art. This means the average editorial
cost of each prog will be as follows:-
27 pages script @ £50 = £1350
22 pages colour art @ £200 = £4400
05 pages mono art @ £150 = £750
27 pages lettering @ £20 = £540
01 page cover art @ £350 = £350
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total average cost = £7400
Each year 2000 AD publishes 49 standard 32-page
progs, plus an end-of-year 100-page special issue which features 67 pages of
strip. So the editorial budget for 2001 using the current format and page rates
would be about £382,000. (It’s worth noting the 1996 editorial budget was over
£500k – this has been slashed through editorial prudence.)
4.
The
Backwards Extrapolation Art of Scheduling
2000 AD is an anthology title that usually runs
five different strips in each issue. Judge Dredd appears in every prog over six
pages. The final strip in each prog is also six pages long, while the three
middle stories are five page episodes. Stories can run to any length, from
one-off completes like Tharg’s Future Shocks to 26-part mega-epics. Over a year
2000 AD publishes nearly 1400 pages of new strip by dozens of different
creators all working at different speeds in different locations.
As you can imagine, scheduling stories in 2000 AD
can be a tad tricky.
A few simple rules have been developed to make
easier the process of keeping this almost infinite assortment of plates
spinning successfully. Never start running a multi-part serial until you have
at least 70% of the artwork in hand. Choose your artists very carefully and
monitor their time-keeping rigorously. Most crucially, use the art of backwards
extrapolation when doing forward planning.
When trying to estimate when a new serial will be
available for publication, we always calculate when the final episode should be
completed and work backwards from that date. No artist works fast enough to
produce an episode a week these days, so we have to stockpile artwork in
advance to make sure we don’t run out halfway through a serial.
Here’s an example. In mid July John Burns will be
available to begin painting Book IV of Nikolai Dante’s Tsar Wars saga. Book IV
will be 12 episodes of six pages each. John Burns will produce one episode
every four weeks on average. That means it will take him about 48 weeks to
paint Book IV, not allowing time off for holidays or illness. So John Burns
should finish painting Book IV by mid June 2001. Allow a week for lettering and
the final part of Book IV should be ready to go to repro by the end of June,
2001.
2000 AD goes to repro about five weeks before it
appears in shops. So at the end of June 2001, we will be sending Prog 1254 off
to repro. That means Part 12 of Nikolai Dante: Tsar Wars Book IV could appear
in Prog 1254, which goes on sale August 8th 2001. By backwards
extrapolation, that means the serial could begin with Part 1 being published in
Prog 1243, due to repro April 16th, going on sale May 23rd,
2001.
In fact, we have scheduled this serial to begin
seven weeks later in Prog 1250 (due to repro June 4th, on sale July
11th). That issue will be the Summer relaunch with a line-up of new Thrills beginning inside. This also
allows an extra seven weeks safety margin. It’s worth noting that in this
example, John Burns will have completed 11 out of 12 episodes before his first
episode goes to repro.
Obviously, this stockpiling of work in progress
requires financial investment and careful planning. 2000 AD has about £150,000
tied up in stock (scripts and artwork for future publication) at any given
time. If you want great stories and art by top creators next year, you have to
get them working on that material now!
5.
Getting
the Prog Ready for Repro
Being a weekly, 2000 AD sends a new issue off to
repro every seven days, usually each Monday – this is called our “press day”.
It happens five weeks before the comic is due to go on sale. For example, Prog
1205 goes on sale August 9th, 2000.
It is due to repro on Monday, July 3rd.
Where we have painted colour artwork to appear in
the prog, we send this to repro ahead of the rest of the issue for advance
scanning. Our repro house supplies these hi-res scans to us on CD, from which
we create low resolution images for use by the letterers. At present, it is
rare for more than six pages in any prog to be painted art.
Ideally, all the colour artwork is ready a week
before it is due to repro. The editorial team sub-edits the scripts and artwork
for the episodes which will appear in that prog, to create the best version of
the script for telling the story in harmony with the finished artwork.
Low resolution (72dpi) versions of the art for each
page are positioned into a Quark Xpress document, along with the standard
series logo, story title, part number and credit card EPS. A hard copy of this
document is printed out for reference, while the low res art and Quark file are
loaded onto a zip disc. This disc and the subbed script are given to the
relevant freelance letterer, who has a week to letter the story and return it
to the editorial team.
Three of the four letterers working for 2000 AD
(Tom Frame, Steve Potter and Ellie De Ville) letter their strips in Quark,
using unique fonts they have developed for the job. The other letterer, Annie
Parkhouse, does her work in Illustrator and supplies EPSs of each page of
lettering. Again, this is done in her own, unique font.
The lettering process has recently been
stream-lined to go all-digital, but there are further improvements to be made.
For example, most scripts are now supplied via email, so the subbed scripts
could be supplied to the letterers on disc. Equally, the judicious use of ISDN
for trafficking lettering files would also speed delivery. (Why not use email,
you ask? Emailing 5MB files can be time consuming…)
By press day, we should have in hand all the colour
strip artwork, already lettered and pretty much ready to go – from Prog 1200
that will constitute 27 pages of each 32 page prog. The other five pages are
editorial content – the front cover; Nerve Centre (our contents page); a house
ad page for the Megazine, subscriptions or relevant merchandise offers; Input
(our letters page); and the Next Prog page.
These five pages are written by the editorial team
and designed by Art Editor Steve Cook. Steve also designs all the DTP elements
on the strip pages, usually just on the first and last pages of each episode.
Steve Cook works two days a week designing 2000 AD, on a part-time contract.
With the stream-lining of the lettering process, the amount of time required to
design a standard issue of 2000 AD is decreasing. But it does require more design
work by the permanent editorial team.
6.
The
Production Process
Once a week a new issue of 2000 AD is sent to
repro. At present, our repro house is Elements in Leeds (formerly Pre Press
Services). They take all our digital files and run these through a rip,
bringing all the elements of each page together as a single digital file.
Elements outputs a set of digital proofs for each page and sends these to 2000
AD for checking and approval. Where alteration or correction is required, these
changes are communicated to Elements.
Once the editorial team is happy with the final
version, the proofs are sent back to Elements. The repro house then creates
PDFs (portable document formats) of the issue and supplies these on disc to the
printers (at present this is Goodhead in Bicester).
2000 AD used to be printed conventionally using
four colour films. But the shift to digital lettering made it possible to shift
to film-less printing. Previously the printers created photographic plates from
the four colour films, now they make laser-etched plates from the digital
instruction on the disc supplied by the repro house.
The printers create running sheet proofs from the
PDFs for final checking by the editorial team, to ensure no elements have been
lost during the repro process. Once these are approved, the issue is printed,
bound, trimmed and bundled for collection by TNT.
Elements are allowed a week to do the repro work on
2000 AD – it takes nine days in the schedule because the job travels overnight
between London and Leeds.
It’s worth noting that the change to all digital
repro has brought substantial savings. At the start of this year the cost of
repro was cut from £40 per page to £32 per page, in recognition of the
increasingly digital nature of the material supplied. The official repro budget
for 2000 AD this year is £51,916 in total, which equals £1018 per prog.
Now that 2000 AD’s lettering is all-digital,
Elements has agreed to a split differential for repro. Pages with painted art
requiring scanning now cost £30 per page, while the all digital pages cost £22
per page. This brings the average repro cost of an issue down to £752, saving
more than £250 per week (about £13,000 per year).
It may be possible to eliminate using a repro house
for most of the process, but this would requiring employing someone to create
the PDFs – a time consuming and mind-numbing process. This could shave nearly
£30,000 off the repro budget – but money would instead have to be spent on
staff and equipment.
7.
Display
Advertising in 2000 AD
This appears so
infrequently in 2000 AD as to be invisible. According to the published budget,
the comic is supposed to generate £20,900 in ad revenue this year – only £400
per prog. In the first six months of the year, the comic has only had 2.25
pages of paid display advertising. It has had loose inserted flyers
for book clubs too, but efforts to sell ad space in the weekly have been
risible.
At present 2000 AD survives on its sales revenue
alone. Selling one page of advertising into each prog would generate £50,000
revenue a year – a substantial contribution to the financial health of the
weekly. This is an area where a little concerted effort, skill and enthusiasm
can make a major difference to 2000 AD.
8.
Distribution
and Circulation of 2000 AD
Here the editorial team has to plead ignorance.
Andy and I have a little working knowledge but this has been gleaned from
training courses and an induction day with our current distributors, Seymour.
To learn more about this part of publishing 2000 AD, you need true experts. I have enclosed the handout notes from a highly
recommended course run by the PPA in London – well worth attending. I would
also suggest attending a PPA course called How the Newstrade Works. Both these
courses are a half day each and convey essential information.
9.
2000
AD Subscriptions
2000 AD should have a much higher level of
subscriptions. The last readership survey in 1998 indicated that 92% of
respondents buy every prog. But only 7.5% subscribe to the Galaxy’s greatest
comic. At present we have about 1800 subscribers from an average weekly sale of
24,000 (including subs and export).
Subscriptions have been one of the few areas where
Fleetway has invested time and money, growing subs from 1500 last Christmas to
the current levels. Former marketing manager Douglas Pocock was responsible for
this focus on subs, because he believed 2000 AD should become a subscription
only title (or be sold off).
Logically, the comic should have a higher subscription
base – 23 out of 25 readers buy every issue every week, it’s cheaper to
subscribe than to buy at a newsagent (£1.25 versus £1.40), and subscribers get
their progs up to five days in advance of the comic appearing in shops.
However, British consumers expect to be able to buy
any title they want from their local newsagent. They are resistant to
subscribing because they prefer to retain their freedom of choice about whether
or not to purchase a particular issue. Overcoming this mindset in a major obstacle
to any attempt to take 2000 AD all-subscription.
Recent subs promotions have included:- a copy of
BATMAN/JUDGE DREDD: Die Laughing Collected Edition; a STAR WARS or INVISIBLES
graphic novel; a pewter Dredd keyring; mousemats; posters; t-shirts; and a variety
of price incentives. No data is currently available about which of these
promotions have been most successful.
10. 2000 AD Licensing
In the early 1990s Copyright Promotions Limited
(CPL hereafter) acted as Egmont Fleetway’s Licensing agency. After the failure
of the Stallone Dredd film, interest in licensing 2000 AD-related concepts died away and
CPL ceased being our agents. Since 1996 Egmont Fleetway has adopted a
passive attitude to licensing character universes from 2000 AD.
The company has fielded inquiries through Gil Page
and negotiated deals where possible, but it has not actively gone out hawking
these character universes to potential licensees such as computer games
developers and the like. The sole exception was Fleetway Film and Television (FFTV
hereafter), a company set up to find development deals for 2000 AD film and TV
projects (live action or animated).
FFTV was not a great success, only setting up deals
for Strontium Dog and Outlaw TV movies with Evolve Entertainment, to be sold on
to America’s Showtime cable channel. FFTV’s best success was starting to
address the black hole regarding the lack of paperwork proving Egmont
Fleetway’s ownership of the audio/visual rights in its own characters.
Otherwise FFTV just soaked up a lot of time and money for little return.
Current deals (not including syndicated publishing):-
Action figures - Re:Action Figures launches Wave II this
Autumn
Graphic novels -
Hamlyn is negotiating a new deal for 4 colour books
-
Titan Book is negotiating for several b&w books
CCG -
Round Table wants to expand the deal for its Judge
Dredd
collectible card game – but has real problems
Video Games -
Acclaim published a film-related Dredd game in ‘95
-
Gremlin published a non-film Dredd game in ‘97
11. Royalties
Egmont Fleetway prepares royalty statements once a
year, with the royalty period covering the 12 month period between the
preceding July and June (e.g. July 1999 – June 2000). The statements are
currently prepared by David Webb in the Egmont Fleetway accounts department,
based on information supplied to him from 2000 AD editorial, Martin Morgan in
syndication and external licensees.
Once royalty statements are prepared, these are
passed to editorial for final checking before being sent out to the relevant
creators, along with a covering letter inviting them to invoice for the
appropriate amount. (An example of a typical set of royalties is enclosed with
this guide.) We do not send out statements if the amount involved is less than
£20. These are carried forward to the next royalty period, along with any
royalties which go unclaimed by any creators (total is usually £500).
CPL was Egmont Fleetway’s licensing agents for much
of the 1990s and still has involvement in certain contracts. The Judge Dredd
Megazine generates a reprint fee for the relevant writer
and artist (£7.50 and £15 per page respectively) for any 2000 AD story re-run in its pages.
Egmont Fleetway’s Martin Morgan syndicates 2000 AD
material around the world, regularly sending courtesy copies of the comic to
his contacts in various countries. He also responds to inquiries from potential
new syndication clients. Martin supplies data from these deals to accounts for
preparation of royalty statements, cross-checking allocation accuracy with the
2000 AD editorial team.
Express Newspapers’ Daily Star published a Judge
Dredd adventure strip for 17 years and continues to syndicate this material
around the world. However, detailed information is rarely supplied by Express
Newspapers, making it difficult to create a meaningful breakdown of which
creators should get what from the total – usually about £300.
Royalties come in from licensees who publish
graphic novels starring 2000 AD characters – Titan Books, Hamlyn (formerly
Octopus) and Dark Horse Comics. Royalties also arise from any and all other
merchandising, such as the Round Table Dredd card game, Gremlin Interactive’s
Judge Dredd Playstation game and others. Re:Action Figures will be declaring
royalties for the 2000 AD action figures soon.
Egmont Fleetway pays reprint fees for any material
it reprints in its own titles. These are almost always £7.50 per page for
writers and £15 per page for artists. If we reprint 48 pages or more of a
single story in a single publication, this is contractually classified as a
graphic novel and the creators get a royalty instead of a reprint fee.
If there is more
than one artist (e.g. a penciller and an inker), the reprint fee goes to the
penciller unless the artists have made a special arrangement and told us about
it.
Egmont Fleetway also pays royalties on any
merchandise which we create and sell ourselves. In the past year we have launched
a new range of 2000 AD merchandise, beginning with the Prog 2000 t-shirt. This
merchandise is being created for us via a company called Mediator Marketing,
which is handling fulfillment for a cut of the profits.
Here we pay creators an ex gratia payment of 10% of
our net revenue from sales of the merchandise. This is split equally – 5% to
the relevant writer, 5% to the relevant artist. However, if the item is drawn
by someone other than the original artist creator, the royalty split alters
because consumers are principally buying the specific imagery on the item. Then
we split the 5% art royalty 80/20 – the actual artist whose work is being sold
gets 4%, the character’s creator gets 1%.
In the case of the Prog 2000 t-shirt, this gets
even more complicated because it features five characters. The writer split is
fairly straight forward, going to Pat Mills (1% as creator of Nemesis), Robbie
Morrison (1% as creator of Nikolai Dante), Gerry Finley-Day (1% as creator of
Rogue Trooper), and John Wagner (2% as
creator of Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog).
But when it comes to the art split, the headaches
really begin. The actual t-shirt artist Brian Bolland will get 4% of our net
revenue. The other 1% of the art royalty is split between Kevin O’Neill (0.2%
as creator of Nemesis), Simon Fraser (0.2% as creator of Nikolai Dante), Dave
Gibbons (0.2% as creator of Nemesis), and Carlos Ezquerra (0.4% as creator of
Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog).
N.B. Royalties from the Egmont Fleetway/DC Comics
co-publishing deals for Judgement on Gotham and Die Laughing are issued
separately from the main royalties to avoid confusion. Again, these statements
are prepared and issued by Egmont Fleetway accounts department, based on
information from our sales and from DC Comics. For convoluted historical
reasons, DC Comics prepares and issues royalty statements for Vendetta on
Gotham, The Ultimate Riddle and Dredd/Lobo.
12. 2000 AD’s Archives
The 2000 AD archive is a mess. Originally, as each
prog was published, the films were collected into a large brown envelope, labeled and stored at the archive. But then the problems began…
The best material was loaned to publishers around
the world for syndication and some of it never came back. Films were taken from
the original prog envelopes for use in Fleetway’s own reprint titles and then
stored in a fresh envelope, marked with the name of the reprint title (e.g. Best of 2000 AD).
Recently the entire film archive was shifted and
became completely jumbled as a result. Martin Morgan has begun a two-month
project to sort out this mammoth mess. Once completed, it would be best if all
2000 AD-related material was shifted to its own storage facility.
Consider this fact: there have been about 1200
issues of 2000 AD, each with at least 32 pages. That’s 38,400 pages in the
archive. About half those pages are made up of four individual films. That’s
about 86,000 pages of film. Then there’s all the reprint titles (nearly 200
issues in total), the Judge Dredd Megazine films (nearly 180 issues) and the
archive probably comprises more than 100,000 pieces of film.
Ideally, 2000 AD’s back catalogue would be stored
in a digital archive. However, transferring the archive to digital format is a
massive task that would take a lot of time and money. It’s worth noting that
2000 AD is now archived onto disc – this began circa Prog 1144 last May. It’s
also worth noting that 2000 AD is now published as an all-digital product –
there are no films created for current progs.
13. Exploiting 2000 AD’s back
catalogue
The Galaxy’s greatest comic has a stunning archive
of material by top creators. However, perhaps only 2000 pages of this (about
5%) is currently in print. That means the vast majority of the comic’s history
is out of print. At the time of writing [summer 2000], you can no longer buy the Ballad of Halo Jones, Judge Death
Lives, early ABC Warriors or anything starring Rogue Trooper, Robo Hunter,
Zenith and many other great characters in English. (Some are available
in other languages.)
Hamlyn Publishing and Titan Books for currently
negotiating for graphic novel reprint rights for several stories (in colour and
mono respectively), but both are currently out of contract. There is no
on-going programme of republishing 2000 AD’s classic comics material.
Earlier this year 2000 AD editorial began
investigating the possibilities of short run digital printing of our own line
of graphic novels. These would utilise the new digital archive to reprint
recent popular hit series like Glimmer Rats and Nemesis X: The Final Conflict.
These could be a nice little earner if the books
were sold off the page and carefully managed. For example, a collected edition
of the black and white series Nemesis X selling for £6.99 would only have to
sell 420 copies from a print run of 1000 to break even. If that print run sold
out, it would make £2820. Increase the print run to 2000 copies and the break
even rises to 540 copies. But a sell out would generate more than £7000 revenue after royalties have been paid to the creators!
Printing in colour is currently more expensive and pushes up
costs but could still be lucrative. For example, the colour series Glimmer Rats
selling at £7.50 would need 680 copies from a print run of 1000 to break even.
A sell out would make £1730. Take the print run up to 2000 and break even in
900 copies, with a sell out making nearly £6000.
Hamlyn is only interested in publishing graphic
novels featuring either Judge Dredd or Sláine, while Titan wants to reprint
books it has already published such as Halo Jones and DR & Quinch.
There is money to be made 2000 AD’s vast archive. It seems insane to spend all this money originating great new material which only goes on sale for seven days before disappearing forever. Would Madonna
spend a year preparing her new album then only have it available to buy for a
week? 2000 AD's back catalogue is a huge potential revenue stream – it should be exploited!
1 comment:
Not seen this before. Hugely interesting stuff. Such tight margins for the comic. Hoping sales have improved from 2000
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