Posted in: Comics | Tagged: james tynion iv, substack

James Tynion IV Is Only No 2 In Comics Substack, So He Tries Harder

Published Mon, 08 Aug 2022 13:27:10 -0500

In comic book writer James Tynion IV's most recent Substack newsletter, he looks back over a year of quitting DC Comics for Substack, and what he learned and achieved along the way. And in the process dropped a few factoids or data point that we like to collect and draw occasional graphs with when we think no one is looking.

He was indeed offered a six-figure sum by Substack to write a hundred posts over a year. Which means, yes, a four-figure sum for each newsletter. How big a sum, well that will remain his secret, but Rob Liefeld once stated the annual sum was half a million dollars.
James Tynion IV is the second biggest of the Substack Comics channels, the first being Jonathan Hickman, Mike Del Mundo and Mike Huddleston's 3 Worlds 3 Moons. He doesn't say but I understand that Scott Snyder's comic creator education channel is the third.
He has now established an online website Shop Tiny Onion, fulfilled by Third Eye Comics. he has a collectables club in The Onion Club. And he has a very big mailing list.
He has 1000 members of his premium Onion Club, on $250 a year. He has another 1o00 standard memberships on $75-$84 a year. And another 13,000 free mailing list subscribers. So that's a revenue stream for the first year of around $330,000 before you add in the shop sales.

And he's been able to create a number of comics, which would not have existed otherwise, and sold at unexpectedly high levels as well, with The Closet #1, previously released digitally on Substack, laucching with 75,000 copies in print. James Tynion IV writes "I did find it telling how people talked to me about the book at conventions. Subscribers to my Substack were happy to have gotten an early look at the comic before it's publication, but the publication itself is the moment it became real to all of them. They had gotten early access to a thing, but didn't think of the comics' release online as the release of the comic itself. And honestly, neither did I."

James Tynion IV Makes A Bid To Keep His $250 Subscribers For Year Two

And as for things to come in Year Two, as the Substack grant stops in favour of 90% of the subscription value? Which would, in current sub levels, hit $300,000 a year?

Paid Subscribers will continue to get the incredible comics we've been cooking here on the site. We've got Season Two of BLUE BOOK by me and Michael Avon Oeming launching later this month, and that will be running at 10 pages a month through the next year. We've got a lot of TRUE WEIRD shorts coming your way from a whole host of incredibly talented writers and artists, with us releasing one 10 page chapter chapter per month. DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH: WILD FICTIONS will continue through the end of this year, and we're talking about an equivalent feature in a similar format to start running in early 2023. And additionally, paid and unpaid subscribers alike will be able to follow the rest of the first book of THE ODDLY PEDESTRIAN LIFE OF CHRISTOPHER CHAOS, which will continue to release every other month until the first book's conclusion with Issue #5.

COMICS OFF SUBSTACK That said, my next round of original comic series will be debuting in print. I have two original creator owned comics launching in 2023. I think both of them have the ingredients to be big hits in the direct market, and I am going to be banging the drum to make that happen.

And another chance to remind potential Onion Club that they have a week to get in on the $250 level at the old terms. Oh and also "The crazy thing about the long gestational period in comics is that I spent my time in San Diego meeting with publishers about my 2024 plans." He's like Marvel's presentation in Hall H, isn't he?

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