Art Licensing: The Real Money In Cartooning
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.
Here is the way it works (and there are various ways but these are a few examples). An artist has an idea for a piece of art to put on a company’s product. The company likes the art and negotiates a royalty deal in which the artist receives a percentage of all products sold. This can be done from business to business as well. For instance Coca Cola allowing a lunch box maker to put their logo on the lunch boxes. Coke receives a percentage.
When an artist is in negotiation with a manufacturer, it is usually through a licensing agency. They have their own association called LIMA.
A lot of times the artist is a cartoonist. This is a hard sell for licensing but occasionally works and is done in reverse. Let’s say Disney or Hanna-Barbara has an image like Mickey Mouse or Barney Rubble. A tote bag maker wants the exclusive rights to manufacture and market those images on their totes. In this case, they pay Disney or HB a royalty of sales.
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.
As time went by, I found more manufacturers who made different products than my first ones and was able to make deals with them, using the same contract template.
The old-school tradition of cartooning was dictated by the big syndication firms. First you become syndicated, then you get to sell your products and create wealth. Those days are gone thanks to the Internet. One can enter the field in the way one feels comfortable. I am yet to be officially syndicated though my cartoons appear worldwide on a daily basis.
The Internet has opened all kinds of doors for the new and even veteran cartoonist who wants to be published with Ezines, blogs, and thousands of commercial websites that want a humor section on their site to attract customers. It takes a lot of legwork and it doesn’t happen overnight. But it is worth the trouble.
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.
Did I pay a price? Sure. Anyone does who sets his or her goal high. Was it worth it? I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
