Nix Comics 2025 End of Year Update

2025 Objectives:

I really only had one firm objective for 2025, and that was to release issues #8 and #9 of Tales from the Crate and Volume #3 of Sketchbook Picture Sleeves. I got that done early in the year!

This opened up the rest of the year to... well... fuck around with things. Still a bit covid lagged, but also looking forward to 2026 as the 15th anniversary year of publishing, I needed that freedom. Time to assess how Nix has changed over the years, and maybe to reassess how I do things. I'm more than a little concerned that the "how" has replaced the "why." (Other than a good answer to "why am I a small press publisher/artist" is that I'm not sure what else I'd be. It's the only way I've found to express myself in what can be a stifling society.

Anyways... I achieved my main objective!

Revenue and Expenses: It's a tradition for me to share an annual statement of revenue and expenses for Nix Comics, though I'll confess that this year I considered unceremoniously end that tradition. I'm not sure how many read it. I'm less sure how much the financial realities of my publishing work apply to anyone else. Finally, I'm pretty sure that there are better ways to look at all this than an annual report. Project by project reports shared separately along with a breakdown of the overhead expenses that apply to all projects would make more sense. But as the military hero Captain Rut Procrastinance once famously said, "Fuck it. I'm too tired to try anything new." So, here are my Expenses and Revenue for 2025 with some thought on each category:

Expenses
Art	$600.00
Website and email	$741.45
Event Fees	$700.00
Postage	$215.50
Printing	$1,840.08
Transacation Fees	$87.63
Supplies: Event	$112.39
Total:	$4,297.05
Revenue
Sales at Events	$1,726.00
On-Line Sales	$1,087.00
Wholesale	$93.00
Shipping Fees	$143.00
Total:	$3,049.00
Net:	($1,248.05)

Expenses:

Art: It's actually been a while since art was a significant budget line item. This amount was for cover art for the coming 2026 pubs, Flipside of Love #1 and Undead Ballads #1, by Pat Redding Scanlon and Michael Neno, respectively. Basically I decided that it would be a good idea to get ahead of 2026 expenses while I could.

Website and Email: Kind of a similar "get ahead of future expenses" deal here. I paid in advance for three years of my site to get a discount. I'll still have to pay google for the ken@nixcomics.com address every month, but I'll be spared the big hosting chunk for a while.

Event Fees: I did four marketplace/sales events in 2025. The cheapest was a pop up at Two Tigers Coffee shop (which is at an address fans of Buck Slaughter will recognize) for no upfront cost. the most expensive was the Columbus Book Festival hosted by the Columbus Public Library at $500. Take a look below for thoughts on success.

Postage & Shipping Supplies: Once again I managed to spend more than I took in charged shipping fees. I think will always be the case to some degree, but I'll probably bite the bullet and adjust rates this year some how. I don't mind losing a little deal, but I wouldn't want it to be a 3 digit figure.

Printing: This number is higher than it needed to be. I did a second run of Undead Ballads in anticipation of book festival sales. It was probably too big a second run given that I didn't do much in the way of other big events. Notably, I've already seen an increase in printing costs due to tariffs. I use a local mom and pop shop, so the books themselves aren't imported, but I expect the supplies they need to keep business running are. Thanks, Donnie.

Transaction Fees: This is Paypal and Square's cut.

Supplies: When I signed up for the Book festival, I realized that I didn't have much in the way of big signage anymore, so I ran one off. Also, I've started using plain white paper table clothes at events, so Can write and drawn directly on them instead of doing table signs. I also had some fun with it, buying plain white bags to sketch on.

Revenue:

Sales at Events: In the past I've considered any event were I at least doubled my table cost a good show. It would be enough to pay for the cost of printing any books sold and include a little left over. This has lead me to thinking of success at events as a ratio of sales-to-cost as opposed to flat sales amounts. (So a "good" show would be a 2.0 or more.) By that metric, all of the events I did in 2025 were "good" though with increasing printing costs combined with stagnant pricing expectations, I feel like that number maybe should maybe pushed to 2.5 or 3.0. Anyways, here's a show by show breakdown, not including Two Tigers which defies because ratio there was no table fee.

On-Line Sales: If I thought of the website as one year long "event" and applied the same ratio based metric (Sales amount divided by website fees for 2025), it would land somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.5 to 4.0 depending on if you counted email costs too. I tend think of email and website costs as overhead for all Nix Comics stuff, but I could see showing the data either way.

Wholesale: I continued with my policy of only selling wholesale to businesses that ask me for books. This year that was only Lost Weekend Records. This number also includes $50 from Kent Grosswiler for the remaining back-stock copies of Beauty "Found In Darkness." There were only a half dozen left and I figured he is better positioned to get them into reader hands than I am.

Shipping Fees: These were set at a flat $6 US-Only for the website this year. For the coming year I will likely change it to be based on package weight and add some international options.

Net:

Along time ago I declared that Nix Comics was the worst idea that I've ever had. or biggest mistake. or something to that effect. It was from the perspective that I was likely to loose a lot of money like I had from my previous record/comic store ventures. That held out the first year when my net income from Nix was -$10K or so. from THAT perspective, a net of -$1,248.05 ain't so bad. That's just a smidge more that $100 a month, which I could just as easily blow on records and pizza.

Takeaways:

The actual biggest mistake I could make is to get distressed or bothered by not turning a profit. There will always be a part of me that thinks its possible that I could somehow make a living selling my weird little comics, but it's not a reasonable part of me. The reality is that its unlikely to happen unless there are some significant cultural shifts within the time-frame of me being able to work at it. Que Sera Sera as my buddy Doris once told me. Best to just count up the good things:

• I managed to get three new publications out early in the year. They were unfinished projects from 2024, which cleared the mental headspace to start new work. (That was my only clear objective this year. the following good things are what you might classify as "gravy.")

• I had a blast at both the record show and the book festival. Those events reminded me that the better chunk of my intended audience lives outside the realm of "comics-people." In fact, those events reminded that comics people are made through outreach, not sequestration.

• Moving away from crowdfunding sites works OK for me. I'm glad, because not only do I not trust what the Kickstart-A-Go-Go companies do with their cut, overall I don't trust a business model that is built on exploiting artistic aspiration. Next year I'll be running pre-orders and or subscriptions off this website again.

And Onward Through 2026!

I've booked Kafe Kerouac for a 15th anniversary party on Saturday, February 28th. I'm planning to have music, comics, games, and prizes. I'll also use that event to announce the slate of 2026 books and open up pre-orders. I'm very excited about the titles and artists I'm working with! So watch nixcomics.com and the various Nix social media platforms for updates!