The official J Scott Campbell Appreciation/Discussion Thread 12 12

[combiner1]

2 hours ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

I think you may be on to something. They have word of mouth, but need that buzz to increase or keep demand. I just started to look at his site maybe early last year and it didn't seem like he did his own covers that often as now. Definitely a light bulb went on!

If they have word of mouth, I would have suspected them advertising the covers on a longer term. 

[ADAMANTIUM]

59 minutes ago, combiner1 said:

If they have word of mouth, I would have suspected them advertising the covers on a longer term. 

Nothing about his site makes sense to me  they have the word going out for the VIP list to receive emails prior to sales and limited quantities. All sounds good but I still feel he's leaving money on the table. I stopped buying them after MJ IRON SPIDER. That was a 2 cover deal, then it went to 3 covers and now 4. I guess people are buying for different reasons, I'm thinking the 4 unsigned sell out first for those that want a blue or yellow label. I guess he's not hurting via sales as he still offers signed coa.... but I don't see the point of those, but those are the money on the table deal for me...why not a offer a cgc service? Idk...

[Tnexus]

Here's what I figured on the Black Cat listing. There's some generalizing here, but it's probably pretty close.

I don't know exactly what it costs him per issue to print, but I remember somewhere someone saying it's Cover Price. So he printed total 9,650 copies of all variants. That's $38,600 in costs to print.

For the A-D unsigned set it was $113 after 15% off. That comes out to 5,400 issues. (I realize not all D issues were sold online, but for the sake of the argument that they'll be the same price at Cons, go with me here.) D only has 1,350 issues, so just in A, B, C, D set sales alone, that's $152,550.

For the remaining A-C sets, that's 2,430 issues, or 810 sets at $78 each. That comes out to $63,180.

A+B sets come out to $27,000

Remaining A set comes out $7,650

That comes out to $250,380 for the sales of all the issues. This doesn't include the additional funds from signing the issues or any sales he sells at full price. If we average he signs half the books at $5 markup a pop, that's an additional $20,000.

Shipping is $7, so postage and cardboard are covered there. Obviously there's costs to pay people to package stuff up and he has to pay his colorists. But even at $5,000 a color times 4 issues, and let's say an additional $10,000 in shipping labor, he's still pulling in $201,000 for that one issue.

 

[Jaydogrules]

45 minutes ago, Tnexus said:

Here's what I figured on the Black Cat listing. There's some generalizing here, but it's probably pretty close.

I don't know exactly what it costs him per issue to print, but I remember somewhere someone saying it's Cover Price. So he printed total 9,650 copies of all variants. That's $38,600 in costs to print.

For the A-D unsigned set it was $113 after 15% off. That comes out to 5,400 issues. (I realize not all D issues were sold online, but for the sake of the argument that they'll be the same price at Cons, go with me here.) D only has 1,350 issues, so just in A, B, C, D set sales alone, that's $152,550.

For the remaining A-C sets, that's 2,430 issues, or 810 sets at $78 each. That comes out to $63,180.

A+B sets come out to $27,000

Remaining A set comes out $7,650

That comes out to $250,380 for the sales of all the issues. This doesn't include the additional funds from signing the issues or any sales he sells at full price. If we average he signs half the books at $5 markup a pop, that's an additional $20,000.

Shipping is $7, so postage and cardboard are covered there. Obviously there's costs to pay people to package stuff up and he has to pay his colorists. But even at $5,000 a color times 4 issues, and let's say an additional $10,000 in shipping labor, he's still pulling in $201,000 for that one issue.

 

What about Marvel's cut? The colorist?  Web hosting?  Transaction expenses? Etc. 

If he was actually clearing that kind of money per cover he wouldn't have to pump out so many.  I'd be surprised if his take home per cover was significantly greater than $25k after all was said and done.  Still not bad at all.  

-J.

Edited September 24, 2017 by Jaydogrules

[Tnexus]

1 hour ago, Jaydogrules said:

What about Marvel's cut? The colorist?  Web hosting?  Transaction expenses? Etc. 

If he was actually clearing that kind of money per cover he wouldn't have to pump out so many.  I'd be surprised if his take home per cover was significantly greater than $25k after all was said and done.  Still not bad at all.  

-J.

Well as I stated, if Marvel charges him cover price per issue, then they still get close to $40,000. Also stated was factoring into my numbers was paying his colorist $5,000 per issue for four issues. 

You do make a good observation about transaction fees though. That would knock 10-15 grand off the final number. Web hosting divided up between exclusives is probably not more than a few hundred per release tops.

As for your last bit, why would JSC stop if he was clearing that much money? He realizes there's a demand and he capitalizes on it. He gets to do what he loves and can make a ton of money off it. From a fan POV it's frustrating, but from a business POV I'd probably do the same thing.

[Jaydogrules]

33 minutes ago, Tnexus said:

Well as I stated, if Marvel charges him cover price per issue, then they still get close to $40,000. Also stated was factoring into my numbers was paying his colorist $5,000 per issue for four issues. 

You do make a good observation about transaction fees though. That would knock 10-15 grand off the final number. Web hosting divided up between exclusives is probably not more than a few hundred per release tops.

As for your last bit, why would JSC stop if he was clearing that much money? He realizes there's a demand and he capitalizes on it. He gets to do what he loves and can make a ton of money off it. From a fan POV it's frustrating, but from a business POV I'd probably do the same thing.

What the printer charges for creating the product and what Marvel charges for publishing it are two different things- it is their intellectual property that he is capitalizing on after all- I guarantee you their cut is probably in the 70% range, AT LEAST.

-j.

[Tnexus]

4 hours ago, Jaydogrules said:

What the printer charges for creating the product and what Marvel charges for publishing it are two different things- it is their intellectual property that he is capitalizing on after all- I guarantee you their cut is probably in the 70% range, AT LEAST.

-j.

If that was correct, if they took 70% of a $50 comic, that'd leave the seller with $15 profit before printing costs, artist costs, inker costs, shipping costs, and marketing. A $20 comic would be just a little over $6. There is no way their cut would be anywhere near that. There's zero profit there. Marvel has tons of incentive for making this a lucrative business for store owners. It's free money, free publicity, and an easy way to artificially inflate their numbers.

[Jaydogrules]

1 hour ago, Tnexus said:

If that was correct, if they took 70% of a $50 comic, that'd leave the seller with $15 profit before printing costs, artist costs, inker costs, shipping costs, and marketing. A $20 comic would be just a little over $6. There is no way their cut would be anywhere near that. There's zero profit there. Marvel has tons of incentive for making this a lucrative business for store owners. It's free money, free publicity, and an easy way to artificially inflate their numbers.

I don't claim to know the ins and outs of how it all works or comes together, and how all the money breaks down, but based on my limited knowledge of the printing industry, the greater likliehood is that Marvel handles the printing and publishing rights aspects after Campbell submits the proposed work to them for their approval and they approve it. Campbell then receives the case packs with his books in them, much like a retailer does from Diamond. He then is responsible for sending them out himself.  I'm sure Campbell pays a very hefty royalty/split to Marvel (which is Disney, access to any of their intellectual property is extremely expensive), he needs them more than they need him. There is no way Campbell is "clearing" $200k for each one of these little doodles that he is pooping out. Seriously, it is more realistically in the  $20k-$25k range, which is still great money for what he does no doubt, but let's not get crazy here, Marvel/Disney is not giving away the farm to this dude to let him run his little internet business.  

-J.

[combiner1]

This makes me wonder.... who color these covers??? Is it true colourist only gets $5,000 per cover?? That's cheap change.....

i always thought that with photoshop and all the photo software out there, Campbell would have been colouring it himself.....

 

[Tnexus]

5 hours ago, combiner1 said:

This makes me wonder.... who color these covers??? Is it true colourist only gets $5,000 per cover?? That's cheap change.....

i always thought that with photoshop and all the photo software out there, Campbell would have been colouring it himself.....

 

He usually posts who does his colors. Nei Ruffino is one of his more common colorists. According to JSC's splash page, Sabine Rich did the Gwen's, and Ula Mos did the Black Cats. Also, the $5,000 was an educated guess. I've heard ballpark numbers of other artists going for around $10,000 for a cover, so $5,000 seemed in the realm of possibility. Could be more, could be less.

Edited September 24, 2017 by Tnexus

[Zacreth]

Well I would like to divulge in correct information but won't let the cat out of the hat...(is that how the saying goes?) But regardless, with the amount of books JSC sells, he clears a lot of dough. A colorist, Nei for example, only charged around $200-$400 per page. Not $5k...lol. If it's true that JSC sells 70% of this inventory for each book then it's well over $75k. I've ran numbers for the store exclusives costs and profits and it's pretty good if you can sell most of your inventory. 20% is usually the break even point depending on your price point for each issue you sell. Over that is usually gravy.

[jreezy]

On 9/23/2017 at 6:57 PM, Jaydogrules said:

What about Marvel's cut? The colorist?  Web hosting?  Transaction expenses? Etc. 

If he was actually clearing that kind of money per cover he wouldn't have to pump out so many.  I'd be surprised if his take home per cover was significantly greater than $25k after all was said and done.  Still not bad at all.  

-J.

He also sells his OA to the cover art as well and his prelims. Prelims are sold through his booth which command 1k+. OA nets him at least 7k+ depending on the cover?  

 

 

[divad]

On 9/25/2017 at 1:35 PM, Zacreth said:

but won't let the cat out of the hat...(is that how the saying goes?)

"Horse out of the barn"

[AnthonyTheAbyss]

Thanks to a fellow boardie (you know who you are) I was able to obtain this signed CGC 9.8 copy.  This is one of my favorite Campbell cover...

 

[Insanity]

yo peeps big bucks variant for Sheena

 

big spender

[Tnexus]

On 10/7/2017 at 3:09 PM, Insanity said:

yo peeps big bucks variant for Sheena

 

big spender

"Ultra limited", but no print run listed.

[Insanity]

On 10/8/2017 at 9:57 PM, Tnexus said:

"Ultra limited", but no print run listed.

450 run 

so i ordered this from midtown comics 

Edited October 14, 2017 by Insanity
sounds better

[Archaeon90]

Just got this......first graded comic i have of his tbh

[Flatliner1313]

For a while people were coming for him on twitter about the Black Cat variants selling out in like 2 mins.  Suggesting that he needs to find a different way to limit peoples' orders because they are all ending up in the hands of flippers and speculators. And Campbell was trying to be apologetic and saying he loves his fans and wants his real fans to get his books.

A couple days later he posts a link to a spec site popping off about how well those same books are doing on Ebay 

[ygogolak]

49 minutes ago, Flatliner1313 said:

For a while people were coming for him on twitter about the Black Cat variants selling out in like 2 mins.  Suggesting that he needs to find a different way to limit peoples' orders because they are all ending up in the hands of flippers and speculators. And Campbell was trying to be apologetic and saying he loves his fans and wants his real fans to get his books.

A couple days later he posts a link to a spec site popping off about how well those same books are doing on Ebay 

Yea, he's pumping his own books. He could care less who gets them. He just wants the sales.