Making Money In Cartooning: It’s Not The Newspapers
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Many think cartoonists become wealthy from newspaper syndication. They don’t. Newspapers only pay a few dollars per cartoon and the cartoonist splits that with the syndication firm. Not only that, of the hundreds of thousands of cartoons that are out there trying to make their way to newspaper print, only about .000000001% make it. One has a better chance of winning the lottery.
Cartoon money is made with hard goods such as mousepads and coasters and aprson, not newspapers. Sure there are a few bucks in newspapers but not a lot. It is noted that the late great Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame made about 80 million dollars in art licensing to every million he made in newspaper syndication. This is about the average. A lunch box deal is worth a lot more than the L.A. Times in the crazy business of cartooning.
Licensing works like any other business. It is basically a trade for money. The artist approaches a manufacturer with a piece of art that he or she thinks would help enhance a product and the manufacturer and firm makes a decision. If it is positive, a licensing deal is made. Businesses also license to each other. Like a beer company logo to Nascar (or vice versa).
When an artist is in negotiation with a manufacturer, it is usually through a licensing agency. They have their own association called LIMA.
But what if the artist is not traditional. Maybe he/she is a cartoonist. Sometimes deals are done the opposite way in this situation. A manufacturer of, say collectible clocks or lunch boxes will approach Disney and ask for the exclusive licensing deal on that product for a certain image or series of images.
I started out a very unknown. Even in my own region so trying t conquer the world was out of the question. I decided to contact some regional peroidicals that were in dire need of quality comics with their articles and sold them for what I could. I slowly built a portfolio and finally was able to take it to a manufacturer/drop-shipper who was willing to take a chance and make the products with a royalty split. I did not have a licensing agent so my attorney handled the contract for me. It is always a good idea, if your strength is in art and not numbers to have a professional in another area (like an attorney or agent) do that part of the job.
Within a few years, I found other manufacturers who made different products than the once I was currently licensing, and was able to negotiate with them using a similar contract.
Though my cartoons have now been published numerous times in newspapers and magazines worldwide, I am yet to be syndicated, yet the traditional old way (before the Internet) was to become syndicated first, then manufactured for licensing. The days of old are over.
If you are new to cartooning, or even a veteran looking for new outlets, the Internet offers many. It does not happen overnight. It took me a decade. But it will happen if one is persistent.
A decade ago, I launched my business in a broken down tinl warehouse and had less than a hundred cartoons up on a free domain (I couldn’t afford a www domain). Now I have 8 websites, 7 e-stores withclose to 80,000 products in about 100 different categories, from tshirts to clocks to aprons, and the most visited offbeat cartoon site on the Internet, Londons Times Cartoons with over 8500 original images and almost 9 million visitors. That’s not so bad for ten year’s work, at least not for me.
One might say I paid a heavy price to get this off the ground. But there are a million stories like mine out there. Mine is but just one. Anything worth having takes hard work. Just enjoy the ride and you’ll see that the benefits are worth more than the pain.
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