This is primarily for all of those of you out there who have contributed to FQP over the years, and specifically all of those whose work is available via the comiXology platform (FQP Page on comiXology).
This may well get a bit ranty and/or technical so beware I may well offend and/or confuse.
ComiXology sell a comic. They pay an amount. That amount is divided down between the total page count of the comic to get a price per page. That is then divided equally between writer, artist and letterer. There are niggles around strips with multiple writers, artists and where the letterer was not Bolt-01 that are dealt with as they arise but that is the general gist of it. FQP do not get a share of this. Finally this price per page is multiplied by the number of pages in the strip and voila- I can broadly calculate the payments required to each contributor for an issue.
The next thing is for comiXology to do their part.
The horrible bit: comiXology does not like to communicate. That’s not to say they won’t communicate, but it is, in my personal experience, very frustrating to not be able to raise a query and get feedback on an issue within say- a week. And when you do hear back you have no idea if you are in touch with the same person.
You do get an email each quarter detailing the sales and the income generated from the comics which lets you know exactly what you are due. This email normally comes approx. 6 weeks after the end of each financial quarter (Jan-Mar sales are reported mid-May and so on).
In the terms of the deal- comiXology take 50% of cover. That’s all above board and you know that going in. They also only make a payment once the account hits 100 usd.
Next, you may or may not be liable to a 30% tax out of your share (and despite sending 2 hard copies of the completed form I still don’t know for sure if the form was completed correctly and whether I should be liable for the tax or even what the tax rate would be if I was exempt- see comments about communicating).
So for each 0.50 usd you are due you will only get 0.35 usd.
Eventually the funds mount up and a payment due email is received. It even has a number on it that matches the calculations made following each quarterly statement.
Then the funds hit the bank and you have to work out wtf happened to the exchange rate. The payment is not comparable to any exchange rate I have seen and so I now am trying to determine if there are any extra ‘fees’ I was not aware of (More communication- I feel like I am shouting into the void currently).
So, catching up there is now an actual sum of funds in the FQP account that is to be shared between the creators for all comics available on comiXology up to September 2017. It is not a vast sum, so please do not think you will be able to live a lavish lifestyle on the proceeds, but the funds are there.
Bolt-01 is currently due 0.74 gbp for work in the issues on sale.
Other creators are due more but to the best of my awareness there is not a single creator with a payment due of more than 3.00 gbp. If that amount approached 10.00 gbp I would seek that creator out in order to make a payment via Paypal.
If any of you reading want me to check what you are due, please get in touch and I will let you know what I owe you and we can take it from there.
When we get a further payment from comiXology I’ll post an updated version of this with a revised estimated payment so creators can decide if they want to contact me.
Thanks for reading all of this and I hope it made some sense to you.
As usual I’ll post links here to any reviews of the book I find out about. I’ll not post links to the news items, as you’ve seen everything from them, but thanks to John at the always wonderful Down The Tubes and Rich over at 2000 AD and Beyond for the publicity I’ve seen so far!
Rich has also posted his review as well!