I'm running sqlcmd from a batch file and I was wondering how to make it return an ERRORLEVEL other than 0 when something goes wrong with the backup.
You should use the option -b in sqlcmd.

-b
Specifies that sqlcmd exits and returns a DOS ERRORLEVEL value when an error occurs. The value that is returned to the DOS ERRORLEVEL variable is 1 when the SQL Server error message has a severity level greater than 10; otherwise, the value returned is 0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162773.aspx
