The answer, strangely enough, presented itself immediately, and it turns out, ironically, to be about $10. A little over $9, specifically.

Let’s say that a person buys a newspaper solely for the comics. Given a bulk rate discount, the person can get a newspaper for about fifty cents a day, on average, or about $182 a year. In that newspaper, he or she gets about 20-30 comics. We’ll say he or she reads 20 of them. $182/20 = $9.1, which is the price that a person buying a newspaper just for the comics is paying per year, per comic.

So, it may have been an arbitrarily chosen number, but as it works out, $10/year/reader is… not that arbitrary.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Of course… that price also presumes a daily comic. For a lot of webcomics, artists only produce a comic three times a week, or once a week, or only on weekdays, and as such, the $10 mark becomes less appropriate. One could consider a baseline price of 2 1/2 cents per strip, compounded by the number of strips the artist produces. For weekly strips, $1.30/year. For 3/week, $3.90 - and so on.

It’s something to think on, anyway.