Printing

Digital printing has to be one of the most revolutionary technologies to hit the comic book self-publish scene in the last few years. Not only does it open the doors for the print on demand (POD) model, but it also allows much better management of reward fulfillment on crowdfunding campaigns and best of all, in my opinion, it lets you print a single copy of your comic, to double-check your art, letters and color in a WYSIWYG form factor. Among different options, KA-BLAM has established a good reputation on this field, their quality is outstanding. You send them your art files as per their simple technical instructions and for less than 10 dollars, including shipping, they will print and send you a copy of your comic book. This is extremely useful, we have printed several “issues” of art and character proposals and always find that when you look at them in printed comic book form, you find things, good and bad, that you never saw on the screen. Highly recommended.

Another very well reviewed digital printer is Comic Well Spring, a division of Greko Printing. Up to this point we haven’t had any experience with them but we will try them out in the future since we’ve heard many good things about their quality and prices.

If you’re thinking of going through the direct market route or your crowdsourcing efforts result in hundreds of reward “orders”, your best option will be offset printing. Quality is even better than the already good results of digital printing and the price per unit difference is huge once you go over a certain number of copies. Of all the companies we have contacted that offer offset printing both in the US and abroad, we are leaning towards using PrintNinja when the time comes. They print the stuff in China but also have offices in the US which makes communications and logistics easier. We have examined a package of samples, which they will send upon request, and found the quality outstanding. Their printing price is hard to beat, an advantage which is sadly diminished once you add the shipping cost from China, although it’s still cheaper than most. They provide a price calculator on their website that let’s you know your costs in seconds.