What Is a Comic Book Writer's Salary?
Comic book writers can make a wide range of salaries, depending on their talent, popularity and output. Despite many variables, quite a few comic book artists earning a comfortable living writing the scripts that are the basis for comic books and graphic novels.
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Fresh Faces
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Writers who are just breaking into the business almost never are able to make more than $40,000 per year. Base salaries are usually around $20,000. Writers are paid per script, and some writers can produce up to six scripts each month.
Star Writers
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Comic writers like Brian Michael Bendis, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis have the potential to earn millions of dollars due to a combination of star power, movie deals and other writing projects like novels.
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Creator-owned characters
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As with artists, writers who have creative control over characters that they create stand to make more money if the comic is optioned for film, video games, TV or action figures. Image Comics is a publisher founded on the idea of creator-owned properties.
Other income sources
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Comic book writers can earn money from writing comic book scripts each month. Comic book writers may often write novels (Ellis, Gaiman), TV scripts (Brian K. Vaughan) or may earn money from other work.
Breaking In
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New talent will need to establish a reputation as a good writer before being invited to work for a publisher that pays really well, like Marvel. If you are starting out, expect to take many low-paying jobs (or jobs that pay nothing) just to get your name out there.
Publishers
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Generally speaking, Marvel, DC and Image are considered the big three U.S. publishers and can afford to pay more per script due to their size. Smaller publishers pay less but are easier to get access to.
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