2026 Nix Comics Pre-Order Campaign Report

It's the middle of June and the dust has finally settled from the 2026 Pre-Order Campaign and I have myself together enough to report out to the "inside small-press" type fans. Overall, it was a success despite some fairly significant set backs. My specific goals were:

1) Avoid what I hate about third party crowd-funder platforms but duplicate results

2) Pay Artists a Decent Rate despite "spec" arrangement.

3) Use Sponsorship Packages to both fund and distribute comics.

GOAL 1: Avoid what I hate about third party crowd-funder platforms but duplicate results

That's a two part goal, really. The first being divesting myself of the crowd-funding platforms and the second being about successfully selling comics.

As to that first part, I feel like I've defined what I hate about Kickstarter and like platforms before, but to give a TLDR summation: I don't like my artistic aspirations being treated as a commodity by businesses, I don't like the high-drama driven engine that these platforms use, and I don't trust these businesses to use the cut they take in a socially responsible way. I would say that part of this 2026 goal was achieved very successful in that sense. I enjoyed running the pre-order campaign, didn't have to resort to any desperation tactics. Some of the money still went to dubious corporate leeches, paypal, facebook, et. al., but I haven't figured out how to live clean of these and still get comics out to people... yet....

The second part requires a bit of comparison and perspective, of course. I feel like there are two valid ways to make the comparison: Total money received and total number of "Backers." In this case, I'm counting individual customers and sponsors as backers. I've calculated that as number of in person and website pre-orders, number of sponsorships, and purchasers at the release party held at Clintonville Books.

I'll confess that I was a little surprised that measured against the average and median results from my previous use of crowd-funding platforms, especially given that those old numbers skew high thanks to two campaigns that were significantly more successful than the others. I'll take it as evidence of reaching the second part of goal one!

In terms of revenue, this DIY effort beat 11 of 13 past crowd-funding campaigns. Couple of things that are worth noting about that:

• The cover price of the two books offered ($10 and $15) were higher than previous individual comic issues, which I offered at a cover price between $3 and $10.

• The two campaigns that I didn't even come close to involved operating as a "micro-publisher" and offering pre-orders on artist I was publishing. If the additional offering of a collected "Rockin' Bones" hadn't been unexpected removed form the campaign, 2026 pre-orders would maybe have approached those two campaigns.

In terms of backers, I again beat the median of past crowd-funding campaigns, but not the average; though again, that average skews high. Median may well be the number to beat, and I did that! I'll consider this more evidence of meeting my goal!

GOAL TWO: Pay Artists a Decent Rate Despite "Spec" Arrangement.

I've not kept up with research enough to know if there has been a decent and recent survey conducted comic artist pay rates. There were a few efforts five or six years ago, but if I'm being honest, they all had questionable methodology. Despite that, one thing I knew going into this year's efforts was that I was not only unlikely to match professional comic rates, but I was unlikely to match the rates that I myself have previously paid artists. The pie I'm divvying up is just too small to try to match a big company. Worse, I no longer have the spare income to partially fill that void.

The best I could do was offer artists work on speculation of print runs and sales. (Mostly that was the deal. I paid Michael Neno and Pat Redding Scanlon $300 for their cover art last year.) For Flipside of Love I offered artists 60 cents per copy printed plus 90 cents per copy pre-ordered. For the longer stories in Undead Ballads I offered 90 cents for per copy printed and $1.20 per copy pre-ordered. In both cases I considered copies paid for by sponsorships and copies that I owed Nix Life Time subscribers as pre-ordered. I guaranteed that I would print at least 100 copies of each comic. the results of these spec deals were as follows:

So did I achieve my goal of paying a "decent" wage for this work? I don't feel like I did. Back when my pockets were more full I would probably have offered $300 for each of the Flipside of Love stories and $600 for the Undead Ballad. My cover rate was $300 back then, so I at least matched that. It's hard to say how I match up with a decent sized professional comic company. I would hope they pay a lot more. Here's to hoping I sell out of the remaining copies quickly and can come up with a new deal to pay artists for a second print run!

If there's a more generous perspective on "decent" pay, by percentage art was what I spent the most money on. In total I spent (roughly) $3,900 on the whole campaign from preparation to fulfillment, and $1734 of that went to the artists. So did I pay a decent rate? I regret not, but I do feel I did the best that I could.

(Note "Admin" is a short hand for costs of running the pre-order campaign including transaction fees and promotion. Tabled breakdowns of revenue and expenses are provided at the bottom of this post.)

GOAL 3: Use Sponsorship Packages to both fund and distribute comics. I wasn't sure how this would work, but I had a crazy idea to create a way to crack two problems with one solutions. Problem one: I knew I needed help reaching the print run guarantees I made to the artists. There was only so much I am able to go out of pocket these days. Problem two: I like having Nix Comics in stores, but printing costs are prohibitive to selling comics at a decent wholesale rate. Rates of 40-55% off cover price is pretty standard, but in the best of situations that means making pennies distributing books to stores. Worst case is that providing a wholesale rate is a money losing proposition. My proposed solution: sponsorship packages that combine a print ad and wholesale credit.

Admittedly, sponsorships are based on a shaky proposition: the good old fashioned print ad. Print Ads aren't considered a great value in the internet age: They reach a nice audience and require a lot of extra "ifs" in terms of a pathway to sales. (If someone buys a Nix Comics, if that person takes time to read the ads, if the person finds the ad engaging enough to visit a store/website, then the ad might result in a sale.) To make the sponsorships appealing (and to get my comics into their business places) I offered wholesale credits to anyone taking out an ad. In theory, they can sell enough Nix Comics to pay for their ad plus a little scratch. (OR someone in a band or podcast could get an ad and a bunch of deeply discounted Nix books. I was fine with that idea too!)

I honestly wasn't sure what the results of this offering would be, so its hard to throw out a metric on what my expectations were. Mug and Brush Barbershop and Lost Weekend Records had already reached out to me about ads before I fully developed or pitched anyone sponsorships, so I knew that I would have my usual base. I just wasn't sure if anyone else would be as supportive as my biggest boosters. In the end, I ended up with eight sponsors, 5 of which supported both books. That has led to being in Nix being in four conventional retail shops, both record and comic shops. I'm going to call that goal "achieved" with an asterisk that reads "requires more thought" in terms of what makes a sponsorship program successful for me and for the Sponsor.

Overall Results of the Campaign:

Random Thoughts on the Pre-Order Campaign As A Whole:

• It's tempting to look at that negative net balance as a bum deal. Thing is, there was a fourth goal for the pre-order campaign that was so basic I didn't even both pontificating on it here: Make enough money that the comics aren't a burden on me. (As opposed to breaking even or making a profit.) That I achieved.

• It's also tempting to speculate on what this would look like if Rockin' Bones had happened on schedule... But it didn't, so I won't.

• My promotion Budget is high... I took out print ads of my own, one in the Columbus Scribbler and one in the program for SPACE. That was more of a support my pals sorta investment than an actual attempt at finding customers.

• The only real bummer was printing costs. My original budget was based on a quote I got from my printer's on-line form, which in the past has been super reliable. Thing is that quote was before gas prices went through the roof, making everything more expensive. By the time I was ready to print, prices had gone up 50%! Thanks Donnie...