(originally published March 19, 2007)

I like to ramble on in this space from time to time about my experiences as an independent comic book publisher. Recently I wrote about some of the things I do to expand the sales and reach for the comics I publisher under the Nifty Comics banner. I also talked about how our initial orders (meaning upfront orders that come in either before printing or right as the comics are released in the first week afterwards) have started to hit the 8000 mark.

Now, I’m going to tell you why getting 8000 in sales can be a bad thing if you’re not ready for them, using Nifty Comics as a case study.

Ok, you’re a small publisher (like Nifty) and you’ve done insane things to get advertise and market your new comic book, the Ex-Men. You’ve gone out to all the big box retail outlets (Borders, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, etc.) and gotten them to agree to carry your new on-going series. The orders start to roll in and you quickly discover your order totals are far beyond anything you could have imagined. You’ve just sold 8000 copies of the Ex-Men #1. Holy crap! You are a comic god.

Now, you head over to the printer you have set up who is giving you a per unit cost of 60 cents a book. Awesome…or is it? Holy Crap turns in to Oh, Crap as you realize you are now in debt $4800 (plus shipping) to get the books printed and out to your sales channels (the stores). You stop yourself from hyperventilating and remember that you’ll be paid 35-40% of the $3.50 cover price which will more than pay for the printing and shipping. Quick calculation gives you this: 8000x$3.50 (cover price)/.35 (your cut) – $5500 ($4800 plus shipping)=$4300. That’s not too bad (from there you still have to calculated expenses and royaties, but that is a topic for another day).

Unfortunately, you missed a very important detail: your buyers won’t be paying you before the printing bill comes in…or even in time for release. Most of your buyers will be on terms of some sort. Some may be on 10 day terms, others on 30. The killer is when you find out the big boxes won’t actually be paying you for as long as 6 months from delivery of a book. That’s right. So what that means is you will be in debt for $4800+shipping (figure $5500 total) right out of the starting gate.

That’s a lot of cabbage.

It gets more painful than that if you’re doing an ongoing title. That’s right, if you’re doing a bi-monthly book (like Nifty does), you’re going to find yourself in even more debt because you’ll have put out 3 issues and have to pay their printing costs before your distribution outlets will have paid for the first issue. In otherwords, $5500×3=$16500.

I don’t even want to think about what the total would be like for a monthly book ($33,000!!).

Luckily, Nifty Comics built up to its sales fairly slow — we started out under 1000 copies on issue one and built up orders every issue. However, our current levels of sales actually mean we’re having to run our overhead a bit tighter than when we first started! On paper we’re doing pretty well, but that’s not the kind of paper you need to pay the bills!

If you’re looking to move your comic publishing business to the next level make sure to be prepared for “success” to make your life more difficult and give you even less money than you had at lower sales levels.

Be warned…success can hurt as much as failure!

Mat Nastos
http://www.ComicBookMarketing.com

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