Broken Frontier

Part I

Part II

10. Printing

Now it's time to get your book printed up. The most important production details described next determine the realism of your publishing venture. You HAVE to explore the following and have them in mind BEFORE even thinking about publishing. Why did I just now touch base on this? Well, it's the most crucial and often most depressing aspect of publishing, so I wanted to make sure you remembered it all.

So let's review the major production expenses you need to consider:

Printing
Shipping
Advertising
Art chores (we'll review this last, as that lets you see what kind of budget you have left for an art team after the necessities for publishing are factored in)

11. Choosing a Printer

Printing is the big expense to consider when figuring out your budget. You have to pay printers in advance! You can't wait to get your money from sales; that's way too risk for a printer.

There are a number of printers you can go to for comics. The most famous for comics right now is Quebecor in Canada. It doesn't mean they are the best choice for you; they are just the most used. Most of the DC and Marvel books you see are produced in Quebecor. Other printers used by smaller publishers are:
Brenner Printing
Morgan Printing
Quantum Color FX (No website available. They are in California)

There are also printers in eastern Asia that offer excellent deals on printing but if you come across one, consider that the time for them to ship your book to the US can be up to two months! Most of the printers we mentioned can turn around your comic in a few weeks - this all factors into your solicitation and in-store dates.

12. Getting a Price Quote

I suggest calling/e-mailing and talking to as many printers as you can find. This is what you do to get your book lined up to print before receiving your orders from Diamond. When you talk to them, ask for a quote. To give you an idea of how many copies you can expect to print: If you print at Image, most creator-owned books sell between 3000 and 8000 copies. If you self publish, most small press titles sell between just a few copies to 2000 copies. Big difference, right? Makes Image sound better? Well, let's keep reading before we make any decisions because you don't know where your sales will fall.

You won't know how many copies you'll be printing yet, so just get a quote for the worst case scenario, best case scenario (be realistic) and various stages in between.

Ask for a pricing chart, if possible. That will make the quote easier to understand, and it gives you something like a scale for various print runs. Make sure you let your printer know to include all setup and shipping costs in the quote as well. Let them know that you don't want ANY surprises. After you get a quote you like, continue to talk with that printer and let them know when to expect your files and let them know where your books will have to be dropped off (you can get that information from the distributors before you get your orders... just ask for it. they are happy to give it to you) and how quickly you need it printed and dropped off (if there isn't an extra charge, ask for two weeks. Three weeks is the standard, though).

13. Short Runs

Books under 30,000 copies are considered by most printers to be "short runs." This is because a lot of calibration has to be done on the press for what the printer considers to be a small amount of paper. Face it... those guys/gals print magazines, books, etc, that have hundreds of thousands to millions of copies produced. For a run of 2000 copies, the printer sometimes has to use almost as much paper as your entire print run just to calibrate the machines! Sometimes, even more. This creates what is known as a break-point: the amount of copies where the printing begins to sky-rocket because it isn't cost effective for the printer. As a result you'll find that with the smaller the number of copies printed, the less money you actually save. For example, printing 2000 copies and 5000 copies can sometimes differ only a couple hundred dollars! For a printer, lowering the number of copies you print won't always save you money.

14. Cost vs Number of Copies Printed

Anyway, just for reference, for 2000 copies of a full color comic book, you can expect to pay upwards of a 1.00+ a book in printing! Yikes! But for 5000 full color copies, the cost averages out to be more like 60 cents a book. Once you move up from 5000 copies, the costs generally begin to get cheaper a little bit at a time because it is starting to become somewhat cost-effective for the printer. By the time you hit 10,000 full color copies, you're typically around the 50 cent-a-copy a copy mark. Printing around a 100,000 copies is where you really start to see some savings on printing... but that doesn't happen very often these days, even for the big buns Marvel and DC.

Now you have an idea of how expensive a book can be to print. But nooooo… It doesn't stop there with the printing costs. There are more printing options to factor in.

When you talk to your printer, you need to ask about direct-to-plate printing. This is the way a lot of printing is done these days. One of the older and still common methods requires something called film which is used in the printing process to make the printing plates (it's too complicated to explain, unless you really want to know). Producing this film costs extra money! So if the printer has direct-to-plate for short runs, then ask for it!

Printing is a pretty complicated monster. There are a number of things that need to be considered... we're talking options that may sound great at first, but can get pretty expensive. For a full color comic, the weight of the paper plays a role in the cost. The fancier the paper (heavy gloss), the more it will cost you. On short runs this may only be a few dollars. But when you are self-publishing, a penny saved is a penny earned!

Fancy paper may sound great, but having the best paper in the world may actually take away from your comic. If you talk to printers early on, it's a wise idea to ask for paper samples used to print comics! What better way to know ahead of time, right? And it allows you to know exactly what you are getting when the book is printed. Also, covers come in different paper weights and coatings than the interior pages.  You see, the interiors of a comic are printed separately from the cover. The cover give the book extra support, help to hold in the staples, and makes the book more durable. So they tend to be a bit thicker and nicer. Why is this important in terms of cost? Well, full color comics by default have a full color outside cover and a black and white inside front and back cover. If you want the technical term, that's a 4/1 (four over one). (I won't bother to explain what that means. If you all want to know, just ask and I'll explain in another feature)

If you want your cover to be full color on the outside AND the inside, you'll have to ask for a 4/4 (four over four). Sounds better, right? Well, yeah. But it will also add around 200.00 in setup costs to your printing cost, and add a small incremental cost to the entire print run for each cover printed.

To be continued…

- Val Staples