A Simple Guide to Page Rates, Royalties and Other Work for Hire Compensation in Comics — C3

By Gamal Hennessy This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called Independent Comic Book Publishing . It’s designed to walk you through the basics how to pay the business and creative people who help create your comic. While this can’t be used as legal advice , I hope you’ll find it helpful. What Forms of Consideration Are Used in Work for Hire Agreements? Because creators who sign a work for hire agreement do not own a portion of the underlying property, the four major types of consideration they can get are different from collaborators (See a Simple Guide to Getting Paid in Collaboration Contracts ), based on the deal negotiated between the parties: Page rate : Different professions get paid according to different measurements. Most lawyers get paid by the hour. Sales people get paid based on commissions. Freelance comic book artists normally get paid a page rate . The basic idea is for every page you’re hired to work on, you get a set fee. So if you get $100 per page and the book is 32 pages, then you get $3,200. A page rate is a base number. It doesn’t take into account incentives like royalty pools, recoupment, back end participation or anything else that could muddy the waters. It’s a straight forward transaction; one page for one price. As long as you know what the price is, everything else is based on that. Credit : This is similar to collaborators, where work for hire creators can get their name on the book, as is customary in the industry (i.e. on the cover, in the advertising materials and on social media) Revenue sharing : As an additional financial incentive, some work for hire deals include a royalty in addition to, or in place of, a page rate. A royalty is defined in comics as a payment based on the revenue generated from a distribution source. For example, you might offer your artist 25% of the net profits from any poster or t-shirt sales that use their artwork. You can also allocate royalties into a royalty pool that pays all participants from a shared source of income, but those kinds of financial structures are utilized by larger companies and usually aren’t necessary for your initial project. Copies of the final product : If you are going to distribute your project in digital or print format, one form of consideration is a specific number of free copies of the book. You can also consider giving talent the opportunity to buy additional copies at a discount so they can either give them away as promotional items or sell them on their own. If you decide to use this form of consideration, just be sure to factor this into your print runs. If you have a large team or you offer a large number of copies to each person, you could be cutting too deep into your revenue. How Do You Determine the Right Page Rates? Page rates in the comic book industry are not standardized , since there are several factors that will go into what a freelance creator will command including: Their experience Their skill level Their established fan base. While these factors are subjective and based on what you can afford to pay, there are some baselines you should keep in mind. This unofficial snapshot of industry pages rates is based on information contained on the 2016 survey website Fair Page Rates : Writers: $25-$220 per page Cover Artist: $200-$750 per cover Pencils: $100-$250 per page Inks: $75-$200 per page Coloring: $35-$150 per page Flatting: $8-$20 per page Lettering: $10-$50 per page What Forms of Consideration Are Used in Business Work for Hire Agreements? Business professionals are just as important as creative professionals in publishing a successful comic (See You Need Two Teams to Publish an Independent Comic ). Business work for hire agreements differ from creative work for hire agreements in comics because the base line measurement of a page isn’t helpful as a calculation. In addition, each team member has to deliver something different, so you can’t use a single standard. Business and creative work for hire con