Tariffs, Technicalities, and Trouble: Indie Publisher Absent-Minded Studios Caught in Customs Crossfire

Ray Zweeres, founder of indie comic publisher Absent-Minded Studios, thought the hard part was over. He ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to launch his first collected edition of his flagship title Scarlett. After months of writing, art direction, and coordination with overseas printers, he wired $5,300 to a printing company in China for the debut trade paperback release of his comic series Scarlett. The order included 1,000 softcovers, 500 hardcovers, and 100 leather-bound special editions—1,600 books in all.

But instead of a celebratory unboxing, Ray found himself neck-deep in customs red tape—and unexpected costs—thanks to ongoing fallout from Donald Trump’s tariff war with China.

It started with a surprise email from his logistics company: a bill for $822.00 in import duties and brokerage fees. The invoice included a fentanyl tariff—despite the fact that what Ray was importing was ink and paper, not controlled substances.

Still, that was just the beginning.

The books, shipped from China to a California port, were then trucked across the country to Savannah, Georgia. That’s when U.S. Customs and Border Protection stepped in. During inspection, officials flagged the entire shipment for violating Section 304 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. § 1304). The offense? None of the books were labeled with their country of origin. No “Printed in China.” No sticker. No stamp. No dice.

To release the shipment, Customs is now demanding a per-book penalty: $1 per unit to manually sticker each book with the required label. That’s $1,210 up front, with the likelihood that the final bill will be $1,600 once the full count is confirmed.

Ray is now stuck between two costly choices:

1. Pay the labeling fee, delay delivery, and hope the books arrive in time for Heroes Con—his biggest event of the year, just five weeks away.

2. Refuse the shipment, eat the original $5,300, and pay another $5,200 to reprint the run properly—this time with “Made in China” stamped inside the covers.

As of this writing, Ray is awaiting a Monday update from his logistics manager to confirm the exact amount due and how quickly the stickers can be applied.

For indie publishers already operating on razor-thin margins, this is more than just a bureaucratic hiccup—it’s a gut punch. Ray did everything by the book. But thanks to outdated regulations and a lingering trade war, he’s paying the price—literally—for a label the size of a postage stamp.

Absent-Minded Studios may be small, but Ray’s story is a big reminder: in the world of global production, creators can get crushed by forces well outside their control. 

Now, this is the law, and you'll get no argument from me on following the law. But indie creators who are already pouring their soul into these projects don't have any idea how these things work. We are not Barnes & Noble. Without any history of printing books overseas, how is an individual comic book creator to know they are required to make a notation of the country of origin on their graphic novel? There's simply no textbook for this type of thing and $1,600.00 is an expensive lesson in how things are done. This law is not something you hear about in the indie scene because it is like Jay Walking, it's an unenforced law. Now, with the trade war, there is a heightened level of scrutiny on shipments, even small press books like Ray's shipment of Scarlett TPBs.

There are those that will tell you to avoid these problems all together by printing your books in the United States and deal with local printers here at home and stop sending the job to China. 

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