Nix Comics: 2025 so far! (A Semi Annual Update)

Phew! It's been a busy first half of 2025! (Well A little more than a half, I'm including everything that has happened up to and including the Columbus Public Library's Book Festival this weekend.) For those of you who are new to Nix Comics, or have stumbled on blog post through some quirky malfunction of a search engine or social media algorithm, my name is Ken Eppstein and my publishing imprint is named Nix Rock 'n Roll Comics. The themes in my comics are all tied to my years of being a record collector, comics reader, and sometimes retailer of both. I try to bring a lot of the lessons I've learned working in the nonprofit sector for three decades to the "business" of Nix Comics. This post, for example, is one of my ongoing efforts in transparency. What exactly is it like to run a small press imprint? How much does it cost? Do I make any money? (TLDR answers: Fun but busy, usually a few grand a year, and it depends.)

Anyways... Here's a few updates on publications that I've released recently, events I've vended my wares at in 2025, and a break down of Nix Comics revenue and expenses so far this year.

Publications:

Nix Comics released three new publications earlier this year (Sketchbook Picture Sleeves Volume 3 and Tales from the Crate Issues 8 and 9.) and the trade paperbacks released at the end of 2024 (Undead Ballads, The Sheriff and the Gunsel, and Living With Explosions) have gone or are going into second printing. With that, I've wrapped up most of what I had considered to be left undone from the previous three or so years. Onward to new stuff.

I had wanted to prepare a limited edition publication for the Book Festival. Sort of a chap book, but more of a pilot for a longer memoir project featuring abstract digital art based on scans of defects in my record collection. (So it's called Very Good Minus: Test pressing.) I just ran short on time and head-space for it before the show. Watch for it before the end of the year!

Shows: This year has already been a relatively social one for me. I've done one comic show (SPACE, Natch!), one record show (Stanley's Records' Brew Dog swap), and the aforementioned Columbus Public Library Book Festival. All three were successful, at least doubling my table fee investment and connecting me with new interesting people. The three shows have done a good job refilling the Nix Coffers as I anticipate a new subscription slate for 2026. (Nix Comics' 15th birthday!)

Hey Speaking of Birthdays... I'm warning you in advance that I'm going to be really obnoxious about SPACE being on mine next year.

I'm not sure if I'll sign up for anything else this year. Maybe a couple record shows. Maybe run something myself along the lines of my old "Arcane Media Fair" if I can get my act together. I dunno. Events and shows can be fun, but they can also be physically and emotionally exhausting.

SHOW	ENTRY FEE	SALES
S.P.A.C.E.	$110 (Two Tables)	$376
Brewdog Record Fair	$70 (One Table)	$164
Columbus Book Festival	$500 (Publisher/Author Tent)	$1,036

Money: So... The shows were "good" but how is Nix Comics doing so far this year? Running about $700 in the red. This deficit is mostly due to the second run of the Nix TPBs... which in retrospect I should maybe have had a better plan for selling.

Below are the specific expenses and revenue for the year-to-date. Not reflected is the "balance." A lot of these expenses are paid out of pocket, essential subsidized by my day job at Columbus State, and I'm actually sitting on the cash from the hugely successful book fair. I have to decide now what my plans are for the second half of the year: Do I want to invest my money in an effort to make Nix Comics profitable? Or do I want to start spending on next year's slate of publications and events, conceding a probable loss on the year? (This is the first year in many where I haven't had a personal mandate to make all my projects at least break even... So I'm leaning towards the latter.)

Expenses
Website & Email	$266.07
Events: Table Fees and Supplies	$737.39
Shipping: Postage and Supplies	$166.55
Printing	$1,840.08
Transaction Fees	$61.37
Total	$3,071.35

Website & Email: For a few years there I had myself in a jam where it was necessary to run two nix comics sites. One was attached to my email account and the other was attached to my preferred shopping cart. Nowadays, it's just nixcomics.com for everything, though now I have a monthly google charge for email.

Events: In the past, this has been just "table fees" but this year it also involved event specific supplies. This year I started using paper table clothes instead of cloth, basically because I wanted to make fun punk rock scribbles on my tables. I also felt like I needed a banner for the Book Festival. I haven't used a standing or hanging banner for years because I feel like people at comic and record shows are looking at the table as they browse, not the artist/publisher name. On the other hand, at an outdoor festival, you need everything you can to catch the eye of passerby.

Shipping: Yeesh! Postage and supplies are both outta control! Basically I've been resigned to take a hit on shipping, though that may have to change if I decide that I want to end the year in the plus.

Printing: Got hit with a tariff-related price increase on books. Not an insignificant one, either! This has resulted in a price bump on 2nd print runs of Undead Ballads and Sheriff and Gunsels. Bright Spot 1: Because its mostly B&W, I didn't have to bump Living with Explosions. I can just eat the increase on those. Bright Spot 2: I'm a dope! Not normally a bright spot, but in this case, I somehow misplaced a whole box of first print Undead Ballads. That means I can still offer a few at the original $25 price.

Transaction Fees: Ah... y'know... Paypal and Square. They gotta have their cut...

Revenue
Website	$651.00
Events	$1576.00
Wholesale	$40.00
Shipping Fees	$89.00
Total:	$2,356.00
Net:	($715.35)

Website Sales: There have been a couple of random sales, but this total is mostly reflective of the subscription drive I conducted in March and April. Ideally I'd like this to be about even with event sales totals. Clearly it wasn't. I think that I could have done better with that if I had applied all of the lessons I had learned last year with the "Not A Kickstarter" drive. I didn't take the time plan in same way and it showed in results.

Events: I don't want to beat this to death in this post. Good year for shows and events so far this year. Not sure if I'll do anything more.

Wholesale: Ah! The forgotten income source. (Probably because its never been a big part of what i do.) At this point, I don't do much hustling to stores. Blame slim margins. The benefit just doesn't outweigh the work. I'll still work with shops like Lost Weekend Records when they ask for stuff.

Shipping Fees: The more I think about it, the more I think it's likely that I'll have to bump the flat shipping rate in the US up to $8. Groan.

What People Bought:

So what are types of things are people buying from Nix Comics? I always knew that it was a mix of Publications, Art, and (for lack of a better term) Miscellaneous Crap, but this year I'm taking a little bit of a deep dive into it. I don't know that it really matters that much as I have a pretty firm grasp of my own priorities: Make comics and support the making of comics by the selling art and miscellaneous crap.... But curiosity has gotten the better of me. So here's the skinny:

Type of Merchandise: Publications: At 63% of sales in terms of money, trade paperbacks, comics, and zines are the number one seller. This category also leads in terms of sheer number of items at 183. Most of those totals come from the Book Festival. Prior to the Book Festival, it was more like 50% of sales and 50 individual items. The number of items at the Book Fest really took off thanks to the discount bundles of back issues that I sold at the festival.

Art: Playing a valuable support role, pieces of my original art make up 32% of total sales. Most of these are Sketchbook Picture Sleeves. Miscellaneous: Y'know... Records and stickers mostly. I kind of miss doing records via mail order. It was actual a pretty vital part getting individual issues of Nix Comics into people's hands. (I'd just slide one into each record order.) while I don't anticipate actually going back into that business, for the Brewdog show I broke out some used records left over from the those good old days.

New vs. Backstock

After 14 years of publishing comics, I'm left swimming in backstock. I think this is true of most independent artists who go into "mass" production of their work. Its pretty impossible to predict what might sell well. This year I'm tracking the rate at which I sell older things. (I'm counting anything that was published more than a year ago as "backstock.") This is another example of the Book Festival being a real boon: I met a lot of new fans who had never seen Nix Comics before and so picked up the older stuff!

So What!?

I have to say... I feel pretty good about this year so far. I'm productive in terms of putting out new publications and I'm getting those publications into a lot of new hands at events. It's within my reach to make a little money this year if that's my goal. If my goal instead is to have a great 15th anniversary next, then I have a good spring board thanks to success at SPACE, the record show, and the book festival. (It's not necessarily an either-or proposition, but I think it makes the most to look at it that way. Trying to achieve both goals is greedy!)