So, there are Tons of ways out there to have the work you made put into book form.
My Question, does any one have any idea who can serve the individual artist the best?
I am looking for options.


I am throwing this question out to you, because I am sure that you have positive/ Negative experience that we can all benefit from.

Thanks, in advance.

Comixpress is the cheapest, but is not known for their customer service (in fact, they're largely known for the opposite), though their printing is of a nice quality.

Ka-Blam is a little more expensive, but have better customer service. Their printing quality is also pretty solid.

Lulu is the most expensive, but they are considered to have excellent (if not the best of the 3) customer service.

These are just generalizations of course. I'm sure Lulu has pissed off a few clients, & that some will swear by Comixpress.

Personally, I recommend Ka-Blam, unless you've got a deep pocket and can spring for Lulu.

Later,
Chip

I always go with Brenner printing out of Texas. They did an awesome job on Engine vol#1....I was happier with their work even more than I thought I would be. (This being my first Graphic Novel/Book) Nowbody can beat Brenner for expertise in comics, since they have been around from the beginning......and, Diamond picks up directly from Brenner, saving you BIG shipping bucks. (That only means anything, if your title is picked up by Diamond.....which, unfortunatley, in this day in time, is no easy feat.)
Expensive, but you only have to do it once, then its there forever.

If you need print on demand, then cs2ink's list is good. I've had bad experiences with Comixpress though, they shipped REALLY late, and also ripped me off on shipping.

If you're in a position to do presales, which means you can print a batch of 1000 books or whatever, then you can find good deals at some local places. However, China (hong kong specifically I think) is apprently the place to go for cheap mass printing nowadays.

As far as POD:

I'm gearing up to do the first ish of Mastorism, and I'm planning on using Ka-Blam. IT was them or ComiXpress, but more than a couple reliable folx have recommended me away from ComiXpress (for what its worth-- I actually have zero experience with them OR Ka-Blam).

Lulu - I do have experience with, but for most comic applications, I'd say they're not the ideal choice. My experience with them was positive, its the price point thats the problem. They are geared for larger/longer books, not individual comics issues. Your COST will be way more than you;d ever want to CHARGE someone for you comic... That said, their prices may be more reasonable for larger books. On the plus side, in my experience, they always ship on or ahead of time, and the quality is good. Another plus, if you're doing a graphic novel and trying to get it into bookstores, etc, they have a distribution service that can help you with that... so that's kinda cool.

Thems are my thoughts.

This is an interesting question. I too am interested in Printing my comic eventually.

So I have a semi-related question:

Since my comic doesn't come in 'issues', how many pages of comics is a good amount to make a book out of?

I only have 74 pages so far. And someone told me that once I reach 200, I should make a book. They are full page gag-a-day style strips.

It depends on how much you think a reader would be willing to pay. If the book is too small or cheap, they'll feel like it isn't worth buying (or that you are trying to inflate sales by making lots of books). However, 200 color pages is *expensive* and people will balk at paying what they think is 'too much' for a comic they aren't a die-hard fan of. Hugely popular comics with skilled art (like scary go round for example) could charge more per book if they wanted to, but for small, new, or those comics with obvious weaknesses, cheaper is better.

So I think what you would need to do is investigate a bit at those places you intend to use- comixpress, or wherever- and get estimates for how much a book of X many pages would cost (plus however much you want to add on so you get your cut, usually this is a very small amount of the overall cost to the buyer). People don't like paying more than $10 or so for a book, but people are getting more protective of their money lately and they are going to want a lot for that $10.

Ask your readers what their price range would be, and what kind of material would make them more willing to buy a book. Reprinting things they can see online means that only the huge fans of the comic will buy anything. But a 'best of' has a better chance, or a book with some percentage of wholly new or exclusive material (comics, development works, etc).



If your objective is to make money with the books, it is unlikely to happen. Webcomic books, unless they can get picked up by a publishing house, are generally not profitable. Well-designed t-shirts do better (and the less a t-shirt has to do with the webcomic, the better it seems to sell). Actually I could go on here, but 'webcomics' in general is a very difficult field to make money in at all.

Well, I'll chip in as an observer (haven't used any of the services yet but I've been reasearching them all over net since I'm compiling Din Krakatau in a book form after it is serialized for those few who want it on paper)...

If you're planning on doing a 200-300 page b&w volume, Lulu is the place to go. Anything b&w up to pages comes out cheaper at ka-blam, but around 150 it reverses (you start with a lower price at Ka-Blam but pay 3cents per b&w page, while on lulu you start at roughly a 1-1.50 higher level but pay 2 cents per b&w page).

Color books seem to make sense only through Ka-blam (11&1/2 cent vs 15 cents per color page and a lower starting cost).

I haven't really looked into single issues, I'm more interested in trades/graphic novels, but I can tell you that anything stapled will be SEVERELY overpriced at Lulu as their main target is printing novels (so anything in the perfect bound b&w format will make sense).

Comixpress is off the list for me due to them being slow with printing and with adding it to their store (I'm mostly interested in that form since it would be insane for me to order large quantities, have them shipped overseas and then shipped back whenever someone wants a copy, not to mention I don't want book selling/wrapping to interfere with my drawing time). There's also Cafepress, but they not only offer very limited choice of sizes, but also are VERY overpriced.

Here are the prices I came up with while researching 128-132 page color trade. Comixpress will print it for about 12$, but they'll charge you 32$ upfront regardless how many copies you order for the production/editing/whatever cost.
Ka-blam will do it for a bit over 19$ while Lulu will charge almost 24$.

This is why I'll be doing a b&w (or greyscale) edition later so that I can sell it for about 10$ cheaper, heh.

I'm not that worried about the price since this is going to be only for those who read it online and want it on paper, but at the same time I don't want to rip people off too badly... and neither lose money on the whole deal. So I guess it'll be Ka-blam. :)

what if we wanted to print in color?

where should we go? I don't really trusts Ka-Blam's method, of how you have to give them your ftp address and all that information.

JoeL_CQB
what if we wanted to print in color?

where should we go? I don't really trusts Ka-Blam's method, of how you have to give them your ftp address and all that information.

You should read the post right above yours :)

skoolmunkee

JoeL_CQB
what if we wanted to print in color?

where should we go? I don't really trusts Ka-Blam's method, of how you have to give them your ftp address and all that information.

You should read the post right above yours :)

I should have added, other than the 3 just mentioned.

Aurora Borealis
Here are the prices I came up with while researching 128-132 page color trade. Comixpress will print it for about 12$, but they'll charge you 32$ upfront regardless how many copies you order for the production/editing/whatever cost.
Ka-blam will do it for a bit over 19$ while Lulu will charge almost 24$.

JoeL_CQB
I should have added, other than the 3 just mentioned.

If you want print on demand, those are pretty much the 3 you have to choose between.

If you can afford/risk to do a batch print, mail them out yourself, and recoup the money over time, you have a lot more options and can do lots of shopping around to find the best price for quality. Print on demand is a fairly small market though.

Well, since the thread is up and all, I might ask some questions myself.

I've heard of Comixpress' latness with shipping AND with adding new books to their store. So my question is... how late is late? I'm mostly interested in how long it takes them to put the book into the store AND how long it takes to fill orders for books bought through there. Any experiences?

Initially I have crossed them off the list, but the option of being able to print the book in color with some extras and to sell it BELOW 20$ while making couple of bucks profit on each one (for which on Lulu I'd have to price it at 30$) sounds rather good.

I don't mind waiting a month or three if it means the ability to sell for a more reasonable price... but if it'd turn into half year or so then I might be a bit pissed, haha.

So, anyone? :)

I don't know about the length of time it takes to get it placed into the store, but I can tell you that I ordered Rice Boy on July 20 but it wasn't shipped until the end of August, AFTER I (and several other people who had also ordered the book and not gotten it) emailed them asking what was up.

Their reply was something about 'sometimes there is a short delay between ordering and printing, especially for perfect-bound books, which take longer than the stapled ones' Really though, a month? That's ridiculous.

I used Comixpress for my first book. Let me tell you how much they suck.

The quality is about a 3 on a scale of 1 (bad) to 10 (good). The cover is not coated, so the ink comes off all the time. I've had to refund so many people because when they get their book and t-shirt, the book's ink has come off all over the shirt. It's also kind of flimsy, and just looks cheap.

I received many books already damaged. Wrinkled, ink ruboff, crushed corners.

I ordered 500 books. I only received 420. I attempted to contact them to get the last 80, but after a month of false promises to do something, they stopped answering my emails. I never did get those books back.

The cost is pretty cheap, but considering I paid for 500 books and only got 420, the price per book went up there. (From $4.20 per book to $5.00 per book)

It also took around 7 weeks to get through the whole process. And they never added me to their online store.

Now let me tell you how much I love lulu.com.

I just re-released my first book as well as the first edition of my second book. The process took... 5 days. 5 days between sending in the files and having the physical books in my hands.

The covers are coated and glossy, and the paper stock is much nicer. They look like real books. They ARE real books. They are bound nicer, so I'm not afraid of the pages falling out.

They make it very easy to set up the files so it turns out the way you want it to. (Such as how to lay out the cover image so the spine lines up right)

The only drawback to lulu is the price. If I do it 1 book at a time, it's $7.75 per book, but if I get 100 at a time, it's $6.13 per book. And I can retail them for $15-$17.
Let me tell you, for the quality, it's worth it. They make REAL books, instead of things that look like books but fall apart if you try to read them.

Now, I don't have any experience printing things other than graphic novels, so I don't know too much about how lulu handles a 32-page single-issue stapled comic.
Comixpress actually does alright with this, surprisingly, as does Ka-blam. I have bought some comics that used them as printers for the single-issues, and they were alright. Ka-blam was nicer, though.

In the end, I would say choose between Ka-blam.com and lulu.com. DO NOT use Comixpress. Their customer service is atrocious and their products range from mediocre to horrible.

Ok, thanks for the info :D

Since the online store thing is rather important to me (I never have enough money for large bulk orders not to mention the shipping of everything back and forth across the ocean or the fact that I don't want to get stuck with unsold stock) I guess that crosses certain company out of the list.

So, I guess I have solved the nerve-wracking dilemma of "where to go with the book after it's done". It really hinders my creativity when I fall into that mode and spend time calculating, recalculating, checking online, re-checking, pondering formats, pagecounts, covers etc.

Seeing that the finished book would cost about 25$ to make through Lulu, I think I'll go with Ka-blam and keep Lulu for my future b&w projects and perhaps an artbook or two (once I get enough high quality images that would look good in an overised hardcover) :D


Meanwhile, back to the drawing board :)