MattBrady
01-04-2005, 06:20 AM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/CBMaker/newlogo.jpg" width="200" height="179" align="right"><i>by Ryan McLelland</i>
Welcome back to <i>Comic Book Maker</i>, the series on how to create and market your own comic book! These series of articles will run concurrent with the actual creation of a comic book titled the <b>Wise Intelligence Anthology</b>.
Down at SPX this past October I stopped by the PVComics table a number of times. One particular time stands out in my mind when DJ Coffman and crew accosted me and babbled on and on about a publishing service called ComiXpress. They raved, they foamed out the mouth, and they used words that aren’t too appropriate for this column. ComiXpress was what PVComics used to publish their comics and they couldn’t stop raving.
In having not the first clue of how to publish a comic, I decided that ComiXpress (http://www.comixpress.com/) would be the perfect place to start with should I decided to go a self-publishing route with the <b>Wise Intelligence Anthology</b>. I go a hold of Stuart Robertson over at ComiXpress and he was more then happy to answer my questions in how their services and company works.
“We've been incredibly busy since opening for business this past summer,” Robertson said on the company’s success. “We've printed thousands of comics and have 64 different titles available for purchase in our online store with more being added all the time. We remain committed to offering affordable low-run, low-cost printing and distribution to comic creators.”
Low-run and low-cost sounds damn good to me. The next question I of course need to ask is how do I get my comic to them and how does the comic actually get printed?
“The preferred file type for printing with ComiXpress is PDF,” says Robertson. “Files should be 300 dpi CMYK for full color pages (and covers) or 600 dpi Grayscale for black and white pages. Digital files can be burnt onto a CD and mailed to ComiXpress, or posted to a website or FTP server and the details included in the order form. There are no minimum orders and comics sold through the ComiXpress online store are printed on-demand and shipped directly to the reader when they place an order.”
It’s interesting to see this sort of publishing in comic books, one where you are able to print on demand whenever you may need comics. This way I’m not forced to outright print up 5,000 copies of this indy opus. Sure I could release <b>Wise Intelligence Anthology</b> and it could sell out in comic stores nationwide in a matter of minutes, forcing me to do several reprints with black and white Michael Turner covers (and perhaps a limited Barry Windsor-Smith chromium cover). The flip side to that coin is I could end up with 4,932 copies sitting in my basement after no one buys them in stores and conventions, deciding to hit the quarter bin to finish off their runs of <b>Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew</b>.
Of course the second thought that runs through my head is - does it cost a hell of a lot more to print up, say, 30 books then to print up 5,000? “We offer the same low prices whether you're ordering one book or a hundred,” says Robertson. This really pops the eyes out of the sockets, I just can’t believe this! With this process, it makes it so quick <i>and</i> easy to produce your own comic! “Once you've finished creating the files for your comic, you can use our online Comic Printing Cost Calculator to get an estimate and place your order. When we have received your order and files, we will email you an invoice for the total cost including shipping which you can pay directly with PayPal or by Credit Card.”
Now I can see what Coffman was surely lambasting me about. To top it all off, there is even a way to make printing up your comics <i>cheaper</i> through this process. I asked about a rumor I had heard that if you put a ComiXpress ad on the back cover, you got money off the printing of your book. “ComiXpress is dedicated not only to providing affordable print on demand comic books to creators, but also to selling them for the creators as well,” Robertson answered. “ComiXpress ads featured in any comic serve to show readers where they can purchase these comics online, and serve to increase sales potential for every comic sold through ComiXpress’s online store. For this reason we offer discounts to printing comics that feature Comixpress ads and all pricing is based upon three specific tiers of ad placement: back cover, inside front or back cover, or no ad.”
Lastly Robertson added, “To accommodate the increase in printing, we've made some upgrades to our printing system, and look forward to adding perfect-binding sometime next year to add graphic novel style books to the services we can offer comic creators.”
So after you publish your opus through ComiXpress you can then easily collect it into graphic novel form! How much better could that get?
Another print-on-demand service I had read about a couple months ago on Newsarama was www.Lulu.com/comics, who prints many on-demand books. Lulu recently entered the comic book game with its services and I reached out to find out more about how they do business. I got in touch with Stephen Fraser, who is the Marketing Director at Lulu, to get some clarifications on their services.
The first thing I asked was how many comic books was Lulu actually publishing at the moment. “There are over a hundred comic book publishers using Lulu, by our definition,” says Fraser. “An individual creator becomes a publisher when he or she chooses to publish using our site. In the culture of comic book creators, this isn't as much of a leap as it is among novelists or textbook authors who are less used to thinking of themselves as publishers. Comic book artists seem to be accustomed to the idea of self-publishing.”
Lulu also asks for PDF files in one of three sizes, but also can use JPGs or even a crudely laid-out Word document as you wish the comic to appear. They also asked for a 300 dpi resolution so the images that are sent are basically ready to be printed. As for costs, I was told about a $4.53 base production cost, a $.15 per full-color page or $.02 per black and white cost, then creator royalty and Lulu’s commission.
“So if you publish a comic on Lulu and your Mom buys a copy, the price she will pay will reflect the above elements (and shipping, of course),” says Fraser. “You will then receive your royalty for that copy and every other copy you sell.”
Fraser added, “creators who use other means of publishing, I think there are usually set-up costs in the hundreds of dollars. Authors can also purchase ISBN assignment through Lulu that will make their work available on Amazon.com, BN.com, and other retail sites. But many simply sell their books on Lulu.com.”
Lulu has the ability to publish an individual comic, an issue of a magazine, or a book all of which can be saddle-stitched, perfect-bound, or spiral bound, depending on my specification. The fact of the matter is all this can be done just so one copy can be printed. I again had to ask if this sort of business was successful for the company?
“We have seen a powerful word of mouth campaign promoting Lulu in the comic book community, driven in part by the fact that no one else offers high-quality, full-color print on demand comics with no set up fee or minimum order,” says Fraser. “We started talking to comic book creators because we have comic book fans within our company and because a significant part of what Lulu set out to do in the beginning was to provide publishing tools to communities. Comic book creators and fans are an impressive community. It's been a huge success so far.”
Certainly these two companies sound like they have had a good deal of success printing comic books these ways and those who have used the services sound like they have had a very easy time using them. It certainly is revolutionary and something for me to think about should I have to go and self-publish the comic book.
But I’m not thinking that way. <i>Someone</i> out there wants to publish my comic book! So in the next column I’ll be building my query letter to send to publishers and talking about what exactly to put in a submissions packet.
<i>Questions? Comments? Leave your thoughts here on the message board OR give Ryan a write at comicbookmaker@hotmail.com . Read the blog at http://wiseintelligence.blogspot.com .</i>
Welcome back to <i>Comic Book Maker</i>, the series on how to create and market your own comic book! These series of articles will run concurrent with the actual creation of a comic book titled the <b>Wise Intelligence Anthology</b>.
Down at SPX this past October I stopped by the PVComics table a number of times. One particular time stands out in my mind when DJ Coffman and crew accosted me and babbled on and on about a publishing service called ComiXpress. They raved, they foamed out the mouth, and they used words that aren’t too appropriate for this column. ComiXpress was what PVComics used to publish their comics and they couldn’t stop raving.
In having not the first clue of how to publish a comic, I decided that ComiXpress (http://www.comixpress.com/) would be the perfect place to start with should I decided to go a self-publishing route with the <b>Wise Intelligence Anthology</b>. I go a hold of Stuart Robertson over at ComiXpress and he was more then happy to answer my questions in how their services and company works.
“We've been incredibly busy since opening for business this past summer,” Robertson said on the company’s success. “We've printed thousands of comics and have 64 different titles available for purchase in our online store with more being added all the time. We remain committed to offering affordable low-run, low-cost printing and distribution to comic creators.”
Low-run and low-cost sounds damn good to me. The next question I of course need to ask is how do I get my comic to them and how does the comic actually get printed?
“The preferred file type for printing with ComiXpress is PDF,” says Robertson. “Files should be 300 dpi CMYK for full color pages (and covers) or 600 dpi Grayscale for black and white pages. Digital files can be burnt onto a CD and mailed to ComiXpress, or posted to a website or FTP server and the details included in the order form. There are no minimum orders and comics sold through the ComiXpress online store are printed on-demand and shipped directly to the reader when they place an order.”
It’s interesting to see this sort of publishing in comic books, one where you are able to print on demand whenever you may need comics. This way I’m not forced to outright print up 5,000 copies of this indy opus. Sure I could release <b>Wise Intelligence Anthology</b> and it could sell out in comic stores nationwide in a matter of minutes, forcing me to do several reprints with black and white Michael Turner covers (and perhaps a limited Barry Windsor-Smith chromium cover). The flip side to that coin is I could end up with 4,932 copies sitting in my basement after no one buys them in stores and conventions, deciding to hit the quarter bin to finish off their runs of <b>Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew</b>.
Of course the second thought that runs through my head is - does it cost a hell of a lot more to print up, say, 30 books then to print up 5,000? “We offer the same low prices whether you're ordering one book or a hundred,” says Robertson. This really pops the eyes out of the sockets, I just can’t believe this! With this process, it makes it so quick <i>and</i> easy to produce your own comic! “Once you've finished creating the files for your comic, you can use our online Comic Printing Cost Calculator to get an estimate and place your order. When we have received your order and files, we will email you an invoice for the total cost including shipping which you can pay directly with PayPal or by Credit Card.”
Now I can see what Coffman was surely lambasting me about. To top it all off, there is even a way to make printing up your comics <i>cheaper</i> through this process. I asked about a rumor I had heard that if you put a ComiXpress ad on the back cover, you got money off the printing of your book. “ComiXpress is dedicated not only to providing affordable print on demand comic books to creators, but also to selling them for the creators as well,” Robertson answered. “ComiXpress ads featured in any comic serve to show readers where they can purchase these comics online, and serve to increase sales potential for every comic sold through ComiXpress’s online store. For this reason we offer discounts to printing comics that feature Comixpress ads and all pricing is based upon three specific tiers of ad placement: back cover, inside front or back cover, or no ad.”
Lastly Robertson added, “To accommodate the increase in printing, we've made some upgrades to our printing system, and look forward to adding perfect-binding sometime next year to add graphic novel style books to the services we can offer comic creators.”
So after you publish your opus through ComiXpress you can then easily collect it into graphic novel form! How much better could that get?
Another print-on-demand service I had read about a couple months ago on Newsarama was www.Lulu.com/comics, who prints many on-demand books. Lulu recently entered the comic book game with its services and I reached out to find out more about how they do business. I got in touch with Stephen Fraser, who is the Marketing Director at Lulu, to get some clarifications on their services.
The first thing I asked was how many comic books was Lulu actually publishing at the moment. “There are over a hundred comic book publishers using Lulu, by our definition,” says Fraser. “An individual creator becomes a publisher when he or she chooses to publish using our site. In the culture of comic book creators, this isn't as much of a leap as it is among novelists or textbook authors who are less used to thinking of themselves as publishers. Comic book artists seem to be accustomed to the idea of self-publishing.”
Lulu also asks for PDF files in one of three sizes, but also can use JPGs or even a crudely laid-out Word document as you wish the comic to appear. They also asked for a 300 dpi resolution so the images that are sent are basically ready to be printed. As for costs, I was told about a $4.53 base production cost, a $.15 per full-color page or $.02 per black and white cost, then creator royalty and Lulu’s commission.
“So if you publish a comic on Lulu and your Mom buys a copy, the price she will pay will reflect the above elements (and shipping, of course),” says Fraser. “You will then receive your royalty for that copy and every other copy you sell.”
Fraser added, “creators who use other means of publishing, I think there are usually set-up costs in the hundreds of dollars. Authors can also purchase ISBN assignment through Lulu that will make their work available on Amazon.com, BN.com, and other retail sites. But many simply sell their books on Lulu.com.”
Lulu has the ability to publish an individual comic, an issue of a magazine, or a book all of which can be saddle-stitched, perfect-bound, or spiral bound, depending on my specification. The fact of the matter is all this can be done just so one copy can be printed. I again had to ask if this sort of business was successful for the company?
“We have seen a powerful word of mouth campaign promoting Lulu in the comic book community, driven in part by the fact that no one else offers high-quality, full-color print on demand comics with no set up fee or minimum order,” says Fraser. “We started talking to comic book creators because we have comic book fans within our company and because a significant part of what Lulu set out to do in the beginning was to provide publishing tools to communities. Comic book creators and fans are an impressive community. It's been a huge success so far.”
Certainly these two companies sound like they have had a good deal of success printing comic books these ways and those who have used the services sound like they have had a very easy time using them. It certainly is revolutionary and something for me to think about should I have to go and self-publish the comic book.
But I’m not thinking that way. <i>Someone</i> out there wants to publish my comic book! So in the next column I’ll be building my query letter to send to publishers and talking about what exactly to put in a submissions packet.
<i>Questions? Comments? Leave your thoughts here on the message board OR give Ryan a write at comicbookmaker@hotmail.com . Read the blog at http://wiseintelligence.blogspot.com .</i>