I know this has been asked a lot, but I would like some help with finding a self-publisher.

I was looking at something along the lines of Lulu, but I'm not sure if they're any good. I've heard some big time complaints from customers, and I've also heard some good things about them. Could anyone give me some advice here?

Let's say I've got about 27 pages of black-and-white comic, and want it printed in a traditional comicbook form, what service would be best to use? Lulu doesn't seem to do small-scale, issue publishing very well from what I've heard, but I'm not sure of my other options.

A little help would be much appreciated. :)

First of all Lulu is amazingly expensive. Do a price comparison:

For a comic book size BW comic, with 28 pages (you can't do 27 pages, it has to be in multiples of 4),

Lulu charges $5.97. Tell me that isn't the stupidest thing you've ever read.

Ka-Blam: $1.68. That's a bit better isn't it? You are giving up your back cover for a price discount. It will be more expensive to remove that ad.

Comixpress charges $1.51 BUT there's a $20 setup fee, so be sure to take that into account for the total price. Here too, they take the back cover for a discount.

And those are just a few, there's more like SIPS and there's bound to be some local printers as well. Always remember its going to cost something for shipping as well.

The best thing in all instances is that you can order 1 to whatever.

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask.

I have to say I haven't really enjoyed Comixpress. They tend to not respond in a timely manner. They took almost 3 months just to put my comic on their store.

They went up in prices recently, I had ordered some more copies and they said I had to come up with a new price. But they still haven't updated the price on their site.

What if someone ordered a copy now? It just doesn't jive well for them to even take a long time to update the prices on the site! O_O

Thanks for the advice!

I'm really inexperienced at things like this, so I don't want to jump in without doing some homework first.

I haven't really had a chance to look at Ka-Blam yet, but it looks a lot better for me when compared to Lulu. Have any of you used it? I certainly won't go for Comixpress if they charge a setup fee in addition to what Justnopoint said about them.

I'd really like to know about some experiences the people who've used any of these services have had.

I haven't heard anything negative about KaBlam yet.

1 cool thing about comixpress is that they went ahead and made my 60 page dual sided 1st issue even though it is bigger than what they said they could max out at.

Ka Blam says they can't go over the pages they advertise AT ALL. So if I want to use them I'll have to split my 1st issue into 2 -_-

Which I guess I'll do cause I have been considering more and more about trying them out. I heard their color is better as well.

Well, the bigger the pagecount the lower the price per page. Lulu makes sense only if you're printing lets say a graphic novel of 100-200 pages. Single comic books? Forget it.
Lulu's focus is books mostly, so anything with a decent pagecount.

I don't know that even then you'd want to use Lulu. Anywhere you go, it will always be cheaper the higher page count you use so you're more likely to get a better deal somewhere else. I haven't checked prices for pages that are several hundred in number, but does anyone have a project like that ready to go?

I'm currently getting my book printed with SIPS Comics . They've been very helpful and easy to deal with. My book is 40 pages (36 black and white interior pages, 4 covers) and only $1.48 per book to print.

albone
I don't know that even then you'd want to use Lulu. Anywhere you go, it will always be cheaper the higher page count you use so you're more likely to get a better deal somewhere else. I haven't checked prices for pages that are several hundred in number, but does anyone have a project like that ready to go?

I went over with their calculator and this is what it shows as manufacturing cost...
This is all for Comic in two different bindings and at different pagecounts in the 6.625"x10.25" dimensions.

Saddle Stitch (goes only up to 88 pages)
32 pages b&w $6.25
32 pages color $7.80

88 pages b&w $12.68
88 pages color $16.20

Perfect Bound(32 pages are minimum for this one)

32 pages b&w $5.17 <---different binding and price drops
32 pages color $9.33 <--- different binding and price goes up

88 pages b&w $6.29 <--- notice how the page count more than doubled yet the price only $1.12 higher
88 pages color $17.73

100 pages b&w $6.53
100 pages color $19.53

250 pages b&w $9.53
250 pages color $42.03

500 pages b&w $14.53 <---that seems very affordable I guess?
500 pages color $79.53 <--- Down to 15cents per page.

When you're printing standard comic books, the offer is rather crap. But if your goal is a 100+ page black and white graphic novel, then they start to shine. I'm guessing it's because then the printing technology is the same as they use for all the novels, meanwhile the saddle stitched books are most likely unusual for them, so the price is higher.

I chose a 4 page b&w book and came out with a price of 3.60$, so I'm guessing they charge 3-3.50 regardless of the pagecount as some sort of a fee.

But... I don't know how trusty is that calculator on their site. While binding affect the price FORMAT DOESN'T!

I chose b&w A4 perfect bound (which is couple of inches wider and longer) and at the same pagecount price remains the same. Shouldn't more paper and ink make it pricier theoretically?

Or perhaps it's printed on larger sheets and then cut down to size...


Well anyway, if you have a single issue to print, go with one of the comic book oriented companies. If you have a b&w graphic novel with hundred of pages, go to Lulu I guess?

Also, your profit is not included in these calculations, plus if you're going to send your book to distributors (whether to Diamond as a comic book or elsewhere as a graphic novel/trade) the final price will be much higher since both the distributor and retailer need to make profit on it (and Amazon needs enough to make a profit while making a discount at the same time, haha).