What I Learned Doing 42 Comic Cons in 2025 (part two): Costs & Cashflow

I’m Mark Stay, author of the Witches of Woodville series and The End of Magic trilogy and welcome to the second episode where I’m sharing what I’ve learned from doing 42 comic cons in 2025…

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Let’s talk about costs, sales targets and cashflow. Ooh, exciting! This episode all stems from one very long question from…

ZOË RICHARDS, author of Tell it to the Bees and Garden of her Heart (not an author of fantasy or science fiction, but she sells at craft markets)

Zoë asks: What do you class as a good day/event?

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Mark Stay, author of the Witches of Woodville series and The End of Magic trilogy and welcome to the second episode where I’m sharing what I’ve learned from doing 42 comic cons in 2025…

Let’s talk about costs, sales targets and cashflow. Ooh, exciting! This episode all stems from one very long question from…

ZOË RICHARDS, author of Tell it to the Bees and Garden of her Heart (not an author of fantasy or science fiction, but she sells at craft markets)

Zoë asks: What do you class as a good day/event?

I’m not after sales figures, rather the formula you use. This is what I’m using, and I’d love to know if it aligns with yours.

Zoë lists her costs as…

• cost of stall

• additional costs (travel, parking, refreshments)

• depreciation costs (banner, bookmarks, table cloth, display materials)

• Costs for debit card sales (each sale incurs a small fee)

• cost of books ordered (like me, she gets author copies from her publisher at 50% RRP)

Then Zoë tallies that against her:

• targeted sales

• actual sales

• income from sales 

And the final result is:

• Total income from sales

• Minus total costs

Zoë continues: Is this the right approach? I find myself wondering if I’m doing well or wasting my time. I don’t have opportunities for comic con events as I write the wrong kind of books so mine are craft markets, which don’t always attract readers. 

Thanks Zoë and that’s pretty much the approach that I take: I tot up my costs, then estimate how many books I need to sell to cover those costs and target myself accordingly. You can tell I was a sales rep, can’t you?

I keep a spreadsheet with how much the table costs me and the estimated petrol expenses (I use the RAC calculator).

So I can tell you now that in 2025, I sold 1974 books, with a turnover of just over £20k, spent nearly £2.5 on petrol, and nearly £3k booking the events.

What I don’t track are those depreciative costs: the banners, the tablecloths, the bookmarks (and I’ll talk more about them when I do a tour of my table in the next episode)…

And I don’t track my biggest expense: stock (£6.4k in 2025),… because it’s the expense that never stops and presents its own issue: cashflow.

Now if you’re just starting out, and only have one or two books to sell, go and fetch the smallest of your violins because this is where I complain about the expense of having to regularly stock up on 9-10 published books. It ain’t cheap… 

Like Zoë, I get my Witches of Woodville books from my publisher, Simon & Schuster, at a 50% discount. And I get my self-published books from Bookvault and they cost between £5-6 per copy.

What am I complaining about? That sounds like a good markup… Well, I’ve realised that in order to have the stock arrive in time, I have to place the stock order two weeks ahead of the event. 

So if I’m coming off the back of two smaller, quiet events and then have to order for one of the bigger comic cons, and if I’m doing this every weekend, then I’m often out of pocket. Big time.

Yes, there’s a good chance that I’ll make my money back in a couple of weeks at the bigger event, but it means that I often end up overdrawn and it gets a bit squeaky bum time… and that’s why I’m not doing this for the money. Because, by the time you’ve totted up your expenses (I’m also paying for editors and artists and other expenses through my company, including two salaries) and paid your taxes and your VAT bill every quarter, there sort of isn’t any left.

What I get instead are readers. 1974 books that I personally signed and handed directly to readers. That’s a much stronger connection than selling something on Kindle for 99p to someone in Buttmunch, Indiana… That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. And no offence to the good people of Buttmunch. Go, Buttmunchers!

But hey, in 2026 the plan is to sell even more books! I’ve got a 5 book series, and now a completed trilogy, and more books on the way. So in the next episode, we’re going to talk about sales, and how to sell, and the tools for selling. I’ll even take you on a tour of my table. Ooh! Exciting, eh?

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