How much should writer royalties be?

[euphreana]

I'm working on a contract to partner with a writer to create a single-issue comic. (I'm the artist.) This is mostly portfolio work, so neither of us is getting paid except for potential profits made on sales at cons, which I'm not expecting to be much. The question is, how much of a cut should we each get? (At least in my experience,) a majority of the time working on a comic is spent doing the artwork, so I feel I should get a higher percentage of the profits. At the same time, I want to be fair. Thoughts?

[skicoak]

Oh hell...

Here we go! Prepare to unleash hell!!

You're likely about to see a lot of opinions ...soon.... but if you follow the rough pay ratio from comic companies ... Artist (including colorist and lettering) 70% and Writer is 30%.

[snowy]

I'll second that. Always thought that made sense.

[joannekwan]

70/30 is a good place to start, but then to negotiate further, consider how much input either party puts into the story. Did the writer or artist do all the outlining or character design (in so far as dictating what each character looks like?)? Is it a particularly wordy comic? If the writer laid everything out panel by panel, provided refs from the ground up, did the lettering, or other such tasks, perhaps cede another 10% to them.

[Snickerdoodles]

I'm gonna agree with what others have said so far. If you're both unknown and coming into this with equal skill levels it really comes down to man-hours. 30% is fine for a script that doesn't have to be polished to the level of a prose novel.

[rajillustration]

Who's selling them at the con? Because that's also a big deciding factor. If one person is doing all the post-production stuff, that's not nothing.

But generally artists make more profit on comics because of time, resources, and because drawing art is a form of writing--you do a lot of writing and storytelling when you draw a comic.

[skicoak]

This has been entirely too civil so far...

[euphreana]

I'd be the one selling them at the con, so yeah. Thanks!

[euphreana]

70-30 sounds great! Thanks everyone for the input!

[thedude3445]

Is comic writing really that cheap for 70-30? Geez that feels pretty low but I guess the art is more important generally. If that's the standard though then yeah that's OK.

[WisdomChimp]

For now that seems fair. But remember that if your work starts to get popular, you're gonna have to consider the possibility that the writing is just too good (or at least as a factor). Re-negotiations might be in order at that point. But until that happens...