We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrew Kozlowski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Andrew , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project that I’ve been a part of is helping with DCAZ (The Duval Comics and Zines Fest)- as I understand the initial planning started way back in 2019- it was the brain child of Lindsay Anderson and Dan Wiley- to bring a Zine fest to Jax. They teamed up with the Jacksonville Public Library and were ready to host the first event in March 2020- as you can guess it never happened! In 2022 James Greene (a librarian/artist/teacher at Main that helped organize the first attempt at DCAZ) brought the idea back up- and invited myself and a few other local folks- Anthony Aiuppy (local artist/teacher/dynamo) and Emily Malo (who started a zine consignment pop-up called Prop Shop Jax) to get involved. The first DCAZ fest was held at the Jax Public Library Main Branch in October 2022, and was followed by the second in June 2023- with another in the works for 2024! I’m trying to name as many people who made DCAZ happen- but I know I’m missing so many people- regardless it meant the world to be involved with bringing the world of comics and zines, specifically small press publishing and diy publishing into such a spotlight in Jacksonville. I’d helped organize conferences and exhibitions before at different places where I’ve called home- but this was a first for me in Jacksonville. DCAZ means so much to me because it helped me connect to this city which I’ve only been a part of since 2017- to see the excitement and growth around zines and self publishing has been awesome, and I’m happy to continue to help see DCAZ into the future- to provide more exposure for the people writing and creating here in Jax.

Andrew , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My first exposure to art was reading comics in my local paper when I was just a kid. I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was 11-12. I ended up going to art school at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia and ended up studying printmaking. I went to graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University and got my MFA. I really wanted to teach at the college level- which is ultimately what brought me to Jacksonville to join the University of North Florida.

During 2020 I found myself unable to travel to put on exhibitions or create the work that I had made for years- large scale murals of wheatpasted screenprints. I was also struggling to teach art online to my students. I found myself diving back into that first artistic impulse- making comics. While comics had remained a part of my art making for years- they came back in a major way in 2020- I guess I finally had something to say.

I started to write and share weekly diary comics on my social media feed, which eventually found me publishing my own books. At UNF I wrote a grant to get a Risograph Duplicator- a unique printer (imagine a screenprinting studio smashed into a photocopier) with the idea that I could publish my work and help others publish theirs. In the summer of 2023 I opened my online store: Paper City Publishing- where I sell my own work and the work of a number of other Jacksonville based artists. My goal is to start working with more artists to publish their work in small run book forms and to get my students invovled with the process. I’ve been teaching a class called Comics & Narrative at UNF during the summer session- it fills up so quick- the students are hungry to tell their stories and learn how to get them out in the world.

Offering people a chance to learn how to make physical books of their work to share is something unique- it breaks up our usual relationship to the images and posts we see via our screens all day long. I think there is something incredibly meaningful in writing, drawing, and printing your own work and sharing it- it just cuts through and means more. That is what I hope Paper City can start to offer people- a chance to experience art in a more intimate tactile way.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

In 2021 I started to post a comic every Sunday on my Instagram. January 1st just happened to be a Sunday and I just put a comic out into the world. Honestly it was a resolution, to make a 4 panel comic each week and share it- I just never told anyone it was a resolution, until about October when I realized “hey I can actually see this through!”.

I realized that I had set some important rules in that: I wanted to post once a week- more was fine, but I only HAD to post once a week. It had nothing to do with an algorithm, it was about what I could handle.

Giving myself a reasonable deadline allowed me to develop my style by having a goal- something short and achieveable. If I made it the year and stopped, that would be fine- if I kept going (which I did) then that was fine too. Still just having a deadline was important- it kept me making work and showed me what appealed to my audience. I didn’t spend much time chasing likes, but getting the feedback was nice- it let me know what hit with people.

Over that year I started to see my audience grow- I think the biggest part was to engage with the process with intention. When someone commented, I sent a note back- I tried to do the same for others. I think we all know how bad social media can be- and so I thought I would engage with it on a level that suited me, that felt right- this probably hasn’t gotten me the biggest audience- but it has provided me with one that I feel like I connect with and that connects with my work.

So when it came time to launch Paper City Publishing- it was a natural outgrowth of those years of posting, making comics, and developing that audience. Now I’ve got a fanbase, which might be small, but is very supportive- and I know that if I keep doing what I’m doing I can keep building that audience.

I think we get caught up in the big flash- the viral- but what we need to focus on is the everyday- I don’t want my career to be reduced to one good post one day- I’d like to see it grow with me over years.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly is a really interesting theory that I’ve been thinking about. Basically the idea is that if you had 1,000 true fans that would pay you $100 a year for your work you could make $100,000.

In practice this is a lot more nuanced- but the thing I like about it which Kelly talks about is that it is a finite number- something you could count to- it gives you a goal that seems reachable- something you can work to (unlike going viral). Of course you gain and lose fans, and not everyone will buy absolutely everything you ever do- but this idea is helpful for me to understand what kind of business I can run- or want to run.

Another way to think about it is to ask: what is my number? How much would make a difference to my life- for most people I think having an extra $300 a month would be great! So if I figure I’ve got X number of fans and can make so many books a year can I make that amount? Maybe if you go to business school and really learn this stuff this is all pretty obvious, but working as an artist, and with other artists so often money talk becomes garish- which I do get- but at the same time while I might not have “quit my day job money” from my art, I do know that what I make reaches people and it can support itself.

Kelly posited 1000 True Fans in 2008- and part of it comes from working to build an authentic relationship with your audience. He saw this possibility through the rise of social media- and I would add that with the number of platforms to host and sell your work it is an avenue that any creative person should at least be aware of. The other part that I like is the idea of how it deals with competition. It is so much nicer to think that in a city like Jacksonville with a population of about 1,000,000 people that there is a potential for a lot of people to find their 1,000 True Fans! Add in the reach of the internet and it becomes easier to become less guarded over opportunities and audiences.

Make your work, find your fans, engage them authentically, and you might be surprised how far you can get with your work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.papercitypublishing.com
• Instagram: @andrew.kozlowski

Image Credits
James Greene, Tea Loo, Andrew Kozlowski