Advice: Royalties/Proceeds?

[vellacraptor.livejournal.com]

A friend, whom we will call K, recently wanted to hire me for a comic book. I told him if he gives me a portion of the profits, I'd sell it for 8$ per page, and if not then I'd sell it for 20$ per page. The pages are pre-layed out (though I'd probably have to do tweaking), and it'd only be inks. From what I understand I'd be fairly simple and around 28 pages. I figured since I wasn't getting the profits or anything after except my name on it if it went big, 20$ was a fair price considering most people charge 50$ per page at the low end of the pool.

He thought it was too expensive, said he could find someone cheaper, then after researching found what I told him about 50$ per page to be true. Still, since he'd be playing publisher, he wanted to try and get a cheaper price.

So my question is (considering he'd be selling the comics at around 2$ per book I believe) how much of the profits should I request? I think 10-20% of the profits is the average, but he's charging so low, I'm afraid I'll hardly get anything? Should I just stick to my higher price and not have to worry about calculating every book sold? Also, if I do decide to do the percentages, how long should it last?

Thanks!

UPDATE: We talked about it more...apparently he'd be taking the comic to comic con and selling it there, which would get lots of sales easily, and also selling it to a distributer. HOWEVER, with your advice and the fact that even with my limited knowledge I can tell K has no clue with what he's doing (and recent-past has made him somewhat on the bitter level as a friend, and showed his dislike/limited to no knowledge for legalities/professionalism), I am steering way clear of this project.

Thank you guys for all the help!

Comments

[ocelotish]

What I'd do is stick to your per page price of $20 and if he'd rather do royalties, figure out what would be reasonable and how you'd get that amount. For example, let's say that he'll be selling them for $2, with a $1 cost per book. If he sells 200, that's a profit of $200. If you get half, that would be $100 for you, which is good if you're only doing about 8 pages (100/(20-8) = 8.33).

However, keep in mind that you'll only get royalties like that if it ever goes to print, and them odds aren't good.

What I always say is that if these people are confident that their project will make a bunch of money, they'll jump at the chance to get the pages done at a flat rate, not with royalties. If you really want to do something with royalties, just use this formula to figure out if it's worth your while.

Number of copies sold x (cost of magazine - cost of production) x royalty percentage x chance that comic will go to print ≥ (Base Rate per Page - Rate per Page with Royalties) x Number of pages

Just fill in the numbers with estimates, and see what you get. See if you can make it greater than or equal to.