Thanks again to everyone who is interested in these updates about my DIY crowd-funder. As of this morning, 36 people have pre-ordered 57 books. Total sales, including the 7" record and a few special offers/add-ons, are $1,261.00. For those of you cheerleading on my behalf, that's around $600 shy of the point where I'm able to break even on the whole pre-order sale. "Breaking even" is dependent on how many copies I decide to print beyond the pre-orders and contributor copies.
HEY KEN, HOW MANY BOOKS YOU PLANNING ON PRINTING?
I had an interesting conversation with my friend Gene on Sunday about that. He asked me how many I planned to print, guessing that it'd be somewhere between 300 or 500 copies. (I might have let a scoff-ful noise in response to that. I apologize Gene!) The reality of print costs, my financial status, and my capacity to hustle dictate a much lower quantity. Right now I think I can afford to buy around double the number pre-orders. As of right now, that'd be 50 or so "Living With Explosions," 35 "Undead Ballads," and 25 copies of "The Sheriff and the Gunsel." Those totals sound about right for the number of comic and record shows I hope to vend at in 2025.
I guess I should also add that any wholesale rates I can offer are what I would personally consider cost prohibitive, so I'm not actively soliciting any stores. Basically, I'm open to wholesale orders, but I only expect them from stores that are invested in nix Comics enough to ask me for the rates. So far the only store that has reached out to me for an order is Lost Weekend Records, and I'm guessing they're the only store that will. Kyle's a mensch.
I really don't want to put sales pressure on anybody, but the reality is that if you want these collected Trade Paperbacks, you should be pre-ordering them. Unless a metric-shit-ton of people suddenly do just that, these books are going to be scarce.
HEY KEN, HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO PRE-ORDER?
I guess that prompt to pre-order begs the question of a deadline. I've been very loose about that, mostly because I didn't want to fall into the passive-aggressive trap of telling would be readers to act now or never. But... well shit... if I didn't end up there anyways. Inevitable maybe as "all things come to an end" and all that. In this case the end is being driven by two factors: I want to keep my promise to ship in December. That means placing my print order in Mid-November at the latest. The other is that this website will need to be renewed in November, which I will do on a expensive month by month basis until I have all of the orders shipped. That means I gotta pick a day.
And that day is Friday, November 15th. At the end of day on the 15th I'm going to stop offering the books for sale, only using this site maintain contact with pre-order buyers for communication purchases. Expect me to go back to using the nixcomics.com site as my primary contact point by the end of 2024.
WHAT? NO SPECIAL OFFER THIS WEEK? It's a coming! I commissioned Pat Redding Scanlon to do pictures five drawings of artists who have influenced or informed Nix Comics. (Like Suzi above!) She's just about finished, so I'll post them up once they arrive here at Nix HQ. If you're busting your piggy bank to see if you have enough, expect a price of $25 each.
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