The Price is Right

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I’ve made it my policy to keep the Komikero Komiks Anthology at Php 50.00 for as long as possible so that more people will be able to afford it and read our comic books. Thankfully, the comics is selling well enough to cover the next issue’s printing and to rent tables at a few local comic book conventions that happens during the year but just barely.

A lot of people have expressed wonder at how we’re able to keep an 88-page monster like the Komikero Komiks Anthology at Php 50.00. Well, mostly it’s because of cheap photocopying (we’ve found a photocopying shop here in Makati that charges only 75 cents per page). We can actually bring down the price a bit more but that would mean we’ll need a bigger capital to print en masse so we can lower the per unit price.

Money’s kinda hard to come by especially for indie comic book producers which is why most follow a print on demand business model. Print on demand is a relatively inexpensive way of a small number comics using digital printing and photocopying technology. Printing with a limited number of copies, your supply is often equal to the demand which great especially for unknown and newbie comic book creators.

If you run out of copies, it’s no problem because producing more is fast and easy. You’ll only need a Php 1,000.00 - 2,000.00 initial capital to print 25-50 copies of your comics depending on the number of pages it has.

The per unit cost of producing a copy goes up however with this type of printing which means you’re not going to get a very wide profit margin…if there’s one at all. Striking a balance is something that most comic book creators struggle with so I came up with a table which you can use to help you determine your indie comic book’s selling price.

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