In talking to the same friend that inspired the last post, for fun, he challenged me to see how I’d go about contracting out the pages of a graphic novel on a tight budget. I’ve never done that before. I have no idea how the graphic novel industry works, or even the exact processes, so this is all pure guesswork as to the specifics.

BUT! This is a good opportunity to demonstrate how I negotiate with my artists. I’ve become pretty good at getting them to agree to lower rates than most people could ever get out of them, while still paying fairly and ensuring them a high volume of very satisfying work.

Remember — negotiation isn’t about screwing the other guy, it’s about getting the best possible deal for everybody. I want my artists to be happy! Happy artists make better work.

So, since my friend threw down this little gauntlet, and partly for the hell of it, I came up with a little scenario to show how I negotiate low rates with my artists.

Step 1) Find a hungry artist.

First of all, some of my favorite artists to find when I have a low budget to work with are students and young kids looking for a break. They’re smart, they’re talented, but they’re very green, they need a break, and they’re willing to work for cheap to get the experience they need.

That’s great! I get what I need, they get what they need. And they’re often willing to work harder than some professionals because they have so much more to prove. They’re also more of a blank slate so I can help mold them into more effective artists and I won’t collide with any inconvenient preconceptions that older artists may be saddled with.

I find people like this on art forums like CGTalk and polycount more often than not. It takes a bit of digging and it’s pretty hard to find the really good ones sometimes, but it’s always worth it when you snag a good one. :)

Step 2) Give him a nibble, and a hint of more.

Second, I never tackle a big ol’ massive project all at once… I take it in stages. I could commission the art for a graphic novel including the cover, the roughs, the inking, the coloring and the lettering all for one big price, or a bunch of small ones, but why do that when you can do it in stages?

The more discrete stages you break it into, the easier it is to whittle down the price to its optimal level at each stage. You can do it that way in a way that’s practically impossible if you look at it as a large, irreducible whole. Break it down!

Note: These numbers are totally fictional, although I’m pretty sure I could get them if I tried. :)

A graphic novel is a book. The first piece I can think of to break down would be a cover. Simple. Covers are pretty complex, generally, to be as eye-catching as possible. This will be fairly expensive.

Let’s say we’ll find a contract artist and find out his basic rates. He asks for $400. You explain the work as being something closer to a $300 piece, present compelling evidence and verbally minimize the amount of work it’ll be to him and maximize the amount of fun it is. You present a good case, he agrees and you convince him. So he lowers his price.

As far as he knows, this is a one-off, with a vague notion of more work, but nothing explicitly stated and no promises. It all hinges on the quality of his work and how well you two get along. He’ll be willing to go down in price a little if he thinks he may win more work from you. After all, what’s it matter if he gives up $100 now for thousands later?

Once the cover is done and you’re happy with it (and you weren’t a dick of a client), you’re totally excited. You have a cover. You know you need the rest of the book, but he may only be dimly aware. Now’s the time to give him more.

Step 3) Give him another bite that openly implies even more.

So you start talking to him a bit about the graphic novel and how you’d like to send him more work, since he did such a good job. He earned it. He did very well, he proved himself to you, and you’d like to give him more fun work like that, and more money!

So this next bit of work is simpler: the initial pages of the novel. And hey, he’s a young aspiring artist, and maybe he’s always WANTED to do a graphic novel. Look at what you’re doing for him! Giving him a chance, paying him for his work, and letting him work on something you already got him excited about. Who wouldn’t want that?

You COULD charge a flat rate per page, but why do that? Break it down some more. A page is not just a page. A page starts with a rough layout, a storyboard of sorts. It shows where characters are, how big what panels are and where, leaves room for the dialog boxes, and sets the basic staging area.

This is somewhat more cerebral work and less of a craftsman’s skill, so pay him accordingly. Don’t drop your offered rate so low from the cover price that it doesn’t seem like it’s worth his while. Let’s explain the nature of the work in such a way that it sounds like he’s doing less than $100 worth of work, then offer him $100 for it. Then you two will talk over the work once it’s done and see where you can cut some costs, based on how simple or difficult he found the work to complete.

The important part here is that the $100 is TENTATIVE. You’re offering him a slightly padded but nonetheless generous initial rate for some spec work. Once it’s done, you guys will talk it over and negotiate the rate that’s fair for everybody. He’ll have the incentive to bring the costs down a little to show you that he’s being fair so you’ll keep sending him work!

Step 4) Break down each stage to find cost efficiencies.

Once he finishes a few of those pages at $100 per, take a look at them. If you’re in a typical graphic novel, for example, you’ll have periods of action, and periods of dialogue. The action sequences will most likely be more difficult to draw and stage, whereas the dialogue is just a bunch of talking heads over and over.

Thinking about it further, you could actually even copy and paste heads from panel to panel and change them just slightly, so you can save time and money. Suggest that to him as a way to save his time and your money. Fair is fair, right? Less work for him, less cost to you. Who wouldn’t want to be fair when the suggestion of a high volume of work is in play?

Once you two agree that, yes, you could do that to save time and money, that breaks down your average page into two types of page: Action Pages and Dialogue Pages. That sounds like a reason to charge two different rates, no?

Let’s assume that for every one Action Page, there are three Dialogue Pages. Since the Action Pages are even simpler than he thought they were to do, you can drop the rate on those down to $75 per page, and the Dialogue Pages are so heavily copy-pasted that you COULD drop those down to about $25, but in the interest of generosity, you’ll pad that up to $37.50.

Sure, it’s a little more money, and it’s a rational number because it’s half of $75. Why is it rational? Because (to you) it seems like half the work. It may be even less than half of the work. That doesn’t matter. It’s practically impossible to fairly divide something into fractions of effort, because effort can’t be measured.

This appearance of rationality is extremely important. If the price directly reflects the perceived workload (half the work, half the pay) it makes more sense. If he thinks it’s even LESS than half the work, he’ll be even more inclined to accept that rate. As long as he doesn’t feel like he’s fleecing you, he won’t call that to attention. Let it go, and don’t let him feel like you’re nickel and diming him to death.

So! At those rates, whereas four pages would have cost $400 for roughs, now they’ll cost $187.50. You just saved $212.50 because you broke it down and are smart. You’re getting a better deal, and he feels that not only has he been fair and done a good job negotiating with you, but he feels like you’re being generous with the amount of work it’s taking him. Good job!

Step 5) Treat each stage as its own unique process with its own unique rates.

Once a page is roughed out, it needs to be inked. Do the same thing again here. Make it clear that you don’t want an excessive amount of inking and that you’d like to stick fairly close to the roughs without getting too crazy overboard. Pad the price back up again and stay away from relating to the other numbers you negotiated down.

Why? Because inking is a totally different process than roughing it out and it should be priced uniquely!

Don’t immediately start a trend of driving him down, or reminding him of similar levels of difficult work that will carry over to this new stage. It is a brand new stage, different from the last, and the initial rate you’re offering is based on a generous estimation of the amount of work involved, and NOT the lower rate you negotiated before. Offer $100 per inked page, and don’t differentiate (yet) between Action Pages and Dialogue Pages.

Once he’s done with that, you find out that inking Action Pages is actually easier than Dialogue Pages because since everything on an Action Page is so fast, the details can be more blocky. However, on Dialogue Pages, since everyone’s sitting still, capturing the subtleties of facial features is more important, so THAT’S the real time sink at the inking stage. Pay him $70 per Dialogue Page and $50 per Action Page. (Don’t drop the price by too great a percentage or he’ll feel like he’s getting squeezed too hard.)

At this stage, inking four pages (one Action, three Dialogue) would have cost $400 at your initial, un-negotiated rates. Now it’ll only cost $260, for a savings of $140.

Step 6) Respect and understand the hardest part of the process, and offer to make it easier.

Let’s say the next stage is the coloring. Coloring is going to be pretty tricky and time-consuming, so be nice and bump up the price to $150 per page. But make it clear that you’d like to be somewhat minimalist on the colors where possible, to make it easier on him, and because you’re not terribly picky. Be nice and understanding and easy to work with.

After all, you’re working together, having fun and doing cool stuff. You’re not trying to bleed him dry and pay him peanuts. That’s not a good working relationship! Work together and trust each other to be fair to the other.

So colors are done. Coloring ends up being pretty time-consuming, but that idea you had about being minimal on the colors really saved him a lot of time, so a reasonable rate for that would be a round $100. There’s no real difference between coloring an Action Page or a Dialogue Page, so those pages’ prices are the same.

Four pages at $150 per page is $600, but at your specially negotiated coloring rates, it’s only $400, for a savings of $200! Good job!

Step 7) Spread the cost around to avoid rate increases.

Finally, we get to lettering. Think about it and explain it as being a very simple but necessary thing, and be willing to pay a low (but not insulting) amount of money for it. After all, YOU wrote the book, and he’s simply placing what you wrote. Nothing overly complicated! Should be a snap. Let’s say $50 per page, and see how it goes.

Dialogue Pages are obvious heavy on lettering, and the lettering can really be a bitch. But Action Pages are (obviously) extremely light on dialogue. Some pages are so heavy on dialogue that they may even drive the price upwards to $75 per page. But here, it’s vitally important to explain that you understand that increased workload, BUT with the amount of Action Pages that are in it that he doesn’t have to work on, the $50 per page rate is a pretty reasonable rate since it all evens out in the end. He’ll get a few really easy ones, and a few tricky ones. That’s fair, right?

Doing lettering for four pages at $50 is $200, and by cleverly negotiating a way to ‘even out’ the workload, you saved yourself from a $25 per page rate bump, for a savings of $100!

At the end of the day, if you hadn’t been smart, four pages would have been $1700!! But, since you negotiated smartly, made him a part of the process, and came to understand it better yourself, the two of you worked out a very fair and equitable deal. Now you get four pages for $1047.50, for a total savings of $652.50.

If you broke it down to a per-page average, each page would be $261.87 instead of $425. :)

If your graphic novel was 200 pages long, you’d be paying $52,374 for it instead of $85,000, for a total savings of $32,626. Finding little ways to save on contractors can save you an incredible amount of money in the long run. It’s worth the time it takes to do it, and you develop a better relationship with your contractors by being patient, fair and understanding. On that count alone, it’s worth every second it takes.

And that brings me to the final step.

Step 8) Over time, lock it back into a flat rate.

One final thing I often do that also saves money and prevents resentment toward perceived nickel-and-diming is that, once they’ve completed a portion of the work at the extremely specific rates you set up, re-lump those sums together into one flat rate. Offer him $260 per page for X number of pages.

I do this for many reasons. First, it’s FAR easier to itemize on a contract. Second, he KNOWS where those numbers came from, because he worked with me to negotiate them! Third, it provides for a very reasonable balance of leeway for extremely easy pages and extremely difficult pages without requiring even more extensive cost breakdowns and renegotiation of rates.

The way I see it is that you shouldn’t have to keep breaking everything down endlessly for a long-term contract if it’s all really more or less the same in the end. Just lock down the numbers once you break the rates down to reach the low level you want, and enjoy the long-term contract. :)

So, that’s how I generally do it, and it’s served me well. Any questions? :)