Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Fantagraphics | Tagged: Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing is Monsters

Fantagraphics Reports Emil Ferris Made Half A Million In Royalties

Court filings against My Favorite Thing Is Monsters' creator Emil Ferris revealed Fantagraphics paid her over $450,000 in royalties.

Recently, Mark Millar made an appeal that comic book publishers, specifically Marvel and DC Comics, restructure their royalty payments to give a major incentive to big-name creators to return to their respective superhero universes. This ahead of his own plan to return to DC Comics in 2025 after his Netflix contract is up. It was unashamedly shameless, but it didn't mean he was wrong. But it may have underplayed the appeal of working on comic books for other publishers who already pay well in terms of royalties.

Take Fantagraphics. No one would expect to get too rich working for the Seattle-based independent publisher that once used to publish pornographic comics in order that they were able to keep the lights on. But they have had very healthy sales on all manner of books over the years.

And recent court filings over the lawsuit against My Favorite Thing Is Monsters' creator Emil Ferris revealed one intriguing nugget: the first volume of the book "generated for Ferris more than $450,000 in royalties and other income and concomitant profits to Fantagraphics."

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters had a $40 cover price, the expected royalty a creator may be expected to receive might be somewhere around $4 to $5 a copy, given printing, publishing, retail, warehousing, distributing and marketing. This suggests that maybe My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Vol 1 sold around a hundred thousand copies, with a total net revenue of around four million dollars, depending on discounts and the like. Back of an envelope figures, I admit, but it should be around that.

Given that kind of performance on what is a relatively esoteric if award-winning title, is there really that much of a financial appeal to write X-Men again? When you could just put out an award-winning graphic novel in biro? My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two is scheduled for April 2024 release.

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