Who
is the cheapest printer?
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Depends. Morgan can be
worth it for simple lack of trouble.
-- Donna Barr |
Beware. There are comics
printers out there who advertise good prices, but can't deliver
the service, or don't have the printing capacity to get your
book out on time. Also, you need to understand printing pretty
well before you can compare quotes fairly.
-- Mike Meyer |
How do I prepare
my book for the printer?
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Absolutely finished camera-ready
work. What you send is what you get. Garbage in, Garbage out.
And if the screw-up is your fault, you don't get your money back.
-- Donna Barr |
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Send them camera-ready artwork, preferably really good copies.
A good cameraman can fix stray marks, etc., but you are better
off not assuming that you're going to have a good camera man.
Generally, the cameraman will decide what size to shoot each
page at to fill the page, etc. If you don't want that, you need
to specify what percentage something needs to be shot at. Make
sure that any full-bleed pages include registration marks. Do
be careful that the live part of the artwork follow the 2 x 3
aspect ratio -- if it doesn't, the cameraman will have to decide
what to cut off. Decide yourself beforehand, so you don't get
surprised.
I don't send original art to the printer -- things can get
lost, even with the precautions below, either at the mail, or
at the printer.
Make sure you mark each page with the name of the book, the
page number, and your address. I use Avery labels on the back.
Most printers also have job spec sheets that you fill out
to specify what they need to do. Be sure to write down any specific
instructions you have (flipped pages, etc.), and make sure it
is crystal clear which pages are which. Best that you prepare
a pagination guide. Make at least one for yourself, and feel
free to annotate it as needed.
If you are sending any pages on disk, include a hard copy,
so they know what the page is supposed to look like. A color
proof of your color images is necessary, too, so they can make
any press adjustments they need to. If you are using a page layout
program, include all of the fonts you used.
I always send a cover letter with instructions along with
the job -- don't do this verbally, always back it up in writing.
You are spending a lot of money, and if they don't do the job
correctly, you need to be able to prove you gave the right instructions.
Just try to cover all the bases, and make sure they have clear
instructions on how to reach you for questions. If you have a
technical question, ask it before you send the job, then follow
up. If you've done all these things, it's likely that little
will go wrong.
I also use either USPS Express Mail or FedEx to overnight
the pages to the printer. A tracking number gives me $15 worth
of peace of mind, and I tend to shoot for shipping on the first
week of the month, so I have to send out the book soon after
getting orders.
-- Mike Meyer
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How long
will my print job take?
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You have to ask the printer this up front; no doubt,
their answer will depend on when they receive the camera-ready
art.
Also to be considered is the printers' workload for the time
your book will be there
It used to be that a printer like Brenner would take 4 weeks
to turn around a book. These days, they take around two weeks,
and I've had books turned around in 9 days. That Express Mail
certainly didn't hurt.
-- Mike Meyer
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How do I avoid printing mistakes?
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Get blue lines and cover
separations. You want to be able to check the printing masters
before they go out!
-- Donna Barr |
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Send them everything they need to know. If you think you need
to, get blue line proofs. I typically don't, and have had good
luck, but if there's anything technically difficult whatsoever,
don't leave things to chance. Do a pagination guide -- going
through the motions to do so will often flag any iffy areas.
Some publishers do their own film to ensure that it's done right
-- I might do that if I were doing a greyscale book, and I would
definitely order proofs if I were doing a color book. Don't assume
that they'll just know to cut off the doodles on the side of
Page 3, or that page 7 is supposed to be shrunken.
I don't typically get proofs of the cover seps; my desktop
printer (HP Deskject 870Cse) does a really good approximation
of what it's going to look like, actually better than when I
was getting $10 Cyclone proofs, and both match the final product
pretty well. I got this nailed down after doing 6 or so covers,
so be sure you are comfortable first.
-- Mike Meyer
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What is a pagination guide?
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It's a mock-up of the
way you expect the finished comic to look, with the pages placed
in the order and orientation that you expect. This is especially
important if your book design includes upside-down or sideways
pages, like in a flipbook. Typically, you double-sided copy the
pages that are supposed to go together. I generally make a couple
extra when I do it, so I have mock-ups to show people while I'm
waiting for the book to come back from the printer. I did quite
a few books without doing this, but when we did flip-books, it
was an absolute must.
-- Mike Meyer |
What is a blue line?
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A blue-ink copy of the black-and-white
work. To let you know how it will appear, and how dense the lines
will print.
-- Donna Barr |
What's a
'short run'?
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Short run printing is
the term for a small printing job. Press capacity is scheduled
for large commercial jobs to maximize the use of the equipment.
Sometimes there are gaps in the schedule which are just large
enough to run a short print job, say 500 or 1000 copies. This
time is offered at a discount, and often printing concerns use
short run brokers to match people who need small printing jobs
with press time. Everyone wins -- the printing company keeps
its people paid and equipment running, and people get nice printing
discounts.
-- Mike Meyer |
What are color separations and why do they cost
so much?
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A lot of time and plastic.
-- Donna Barr |
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Four-color process printing requires 4 plates instead of one.
Separation is the process of converting a continuous color image
into the right combination of dots for the four ink colors (CMYK).
This can be done photographically or electronically. Either method
requires generation of film and burning of a plate (there is
also plateless 4-color printing now; suffice it to say that this
equipment is even more expensive). These materials are costly,
and there is labor involved with both electronic or photographic
separations.
Typically, if you deliver a CMYK electonic image, you are
charged only for the film, since you have already separated the
colors in the proper balance. This is a big moneysaver, if you
have the ability to do it (full-version Photoshop, removable
disk media).
-- Mike Meyer
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How many books should I print?
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Enough to get the price-break,
without going crazy over storage.
-- Donna Barr |
My printer messed up my job -- help me find
a new one.
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Did they mess it up?
Or did you not communicate? Stay ON a printer -- they can't read
minds!
-- Donna Barr |
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Printing is a fairly complex venture, not like a visit
to Kinkos by any means. It's complicated enough that you don't
know what you don't know about it, and printers often aren't
forthcoming with explanations of the technical details. So, it's
really important to build a good relationship with your printer,
get your questions answered, get a clear picture of the costs
involved, ask what you are getting, etc.
This investment of time goes both ways -- printers like informed
customers. They also like repeat business. A regular customer
will get good turnaround and price breaks on even small jobs.
It's counterproductive to be jumping printers everytime something
goes wrong. Most of the time, it's because of something you didn't
know to ask. When it is the printers' fault, you are going to
have a lot more leverage if you are a regular customer with future
business down the road, rather than someone who has gone through
5 printers and can't seem to get satisfaction. If it's something
you're doing wrong, then the next printer is going to screw things
up just as badly.
There are printers you should avoid. Most of them are small
shops, and they often promise low prices, small press runs, high
quality, and quick turnaround. If anyone can deliver all of these
things, it's not going to be a small garage-based press house,
as quality printing is a business which uses expensive equipment
and a fair amount of labor. If you've been burned by this kind
of operator, it makes sense to change printers, but you can probably
avoid them in the first place. Ask around, you'll hear some stories...
-- Mike Meyer
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How do I get my books from the printer to the
stores?
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Distribution dropship
points.
-- Donna Barr |
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With Diamond's reorganization, they seem to have a lot of
the smaller publishers simply sending their books to one of the
distribution centers, and they break up the shipment from there.
Larger orders, you would ship to each of the distribution centers
individually. Diamond used to pick the books up from Quebecor
and from Brenner Printing, but with the closure of their Dallas
warehouse, I don't know about Brenner any more.
Your printer can arrange appropriate shipping for you; it
is a cost you need to account for.
-- Mike Meyer
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What
is the best way to ship books?
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UPS -- but only if you
double-box! They dropkick those things.
-- Donna Barr |
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UPS is reliable and affordable, but if you have more
than a couple of cases, you probably will want to have your books
shipped by a freight company. Freight takes longer, but if you
have a palette full of books, they'll be shrinkwrapped onto a
palette and handled with a forklift. The books come out with
a lot less wear and tear that way, and the cost is quite a bit
less than UPS. UPS does have a hundredweight service, which is
a good compromise.
Freight pricing is kind of tricky -- I've gotten shipments
that were quoted at about 4 times what the final cost was. Brenner
seems to quote the highest price for the shipment, then they
farm out the shipping to a freight broker who gangs the shipment
onto other shipping, in the process getting you huge discounts
for sharing the truck, fuel allowances, etc. It's all voodoo
to me, so make sure you have someone explain things thoroughly.
You can't beat the price, though -- 60 - 80 dollars shipping
for 2,000 32-page books on good paper.
Definitely double-box. UPS is notorious for rough handling;
typically the driver loads all the boxes into his truck himself,
for one thing, and I've yet to see those guys being especially
careful.
-- Mike Meyer
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What's the best way to mail one or two comics?
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For one or two comics, I slip the books into a bag, with a
board. I put the whole thing in a 7 1/2 x 10 1/2 manilla envelope.
The fit is snug, and the resulting package is rigid. Anything
more than 3 books will be sufficiently rigid on its own, long
as it's bagged.
Here's a cool trick -- if you need to mail a couple of dozen
comics, the USPS has a special flat rate Priority Mail envelope.
The rate is $3.00, no matter how much you stuff into the envelope,
which is relatively stiff cardboard. I take a stack of comics,
wrap them in bubble wrap, and stuff them in this mailer. It's
a pretty good deal -- you end up saving at least a dollar in
postage doing it that way.
-- Mike Meyer
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Should
I put up a Web page for my work?
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Definitely!!!
-- Donna Barr |
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I recommend doing a Web page for any small publisher for a
number of reasons:
- You can maintain a page for three years on the money you'll
spend to print one comic.
- You can do color comics on the Web for the same money as
black and white comics.
- The Web audience is growing even faster than the comics audience
is shrinking.
- Publishing is publishing, and the discipline of keeping up
your site is good practice .
- You can do a very professional job without spending a lot
of money on tools.
-- Mike Meyer, Twist and Shout
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What does it cost to maintain a Web page?
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Depends on whether you
do it yourself, or have somebody else do it. $100.00 set-up,
$25 -- $35.00 per month is common.
--Donna Barr |
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It cost us $100 to get the domain name (for 2 years),
$35 set-up fee (waived because we'd already had an existing Web
account of a different type), and $20 a month. This is pretty
common, though I think we could have gotten the domain name cheaper.
You don't need a domain name, but if you ever intend to get
one, you should probably do it now, as they are going fast, and
they insulate people accessing your site from changes in ISP,
etc.
-- Mike Meyer, Twist and Shout
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How much money can I make from a Web page?
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A lot -- if you get your
website out in front of people. And for that, you have to advertise.
-- Donna Barr |
Where are good sites for promoting comics-related
pages?
|
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Ed Dukeshire's Digital
Webbing is a great place for posting announcements of updates,
press releases, and he also runs listings of the books currently
in Previews, if you submit them.
The other big gun in the comics-pages game is the Comics Site
Alliance. Started by Quinn Supplee of Poison Frog Color Design,
and taken over by Ron Phillips, the site now has links to over
1,000 comics pages.
Then, you also want to submit your site to the major search
engines: Excite, Alta Vista, and Infoseek to start. You should
also submit to Yahoo, which isn't a search engine, but a directory.
These are just a start. Go to these sites, do a search on
comics, and you'll probably find quite a few others.
I also recommend trading links with other companies with pages,
like mine.
--Mike Meyer, Twist and Shout
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To all of you comic related and comic
web sites, here's a site that allows you to submit to quite a
few web guides and more. http://www.broadcaster.co.uk
-- Bebe Williams, Art Comics |
What is
the best way to learn HTML?
|
|
I'm not convinced you need to learn HTML, myself. Get
Macromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe PageMill (the new Windows version
is very nice indeed, includes Photoshop LE, integrates the site
management functions of SiteMill, and costs $79 - $99 on the
street). You can use Netscape Composer or Netscape Gold, but
they are painful to use. I'm sure the Claris and Microsoft visual
Web editors are perfectly fine, too, but I haven't used them.
I do have an HTML book, but hardly ever even refer to it.
The one I use is HTML:
The Definitive Guide, published by O'Reilly and Associates.
Sometimes you do want to look at the code your editor is generating
and tweak it, or to edit it quickly with a text editor, so having
a basic knowledge of HTML is helpful, but I wouldn't pay someone
money to take a class or anything. Better you spend the money
on graphic design books, because design sense and editing and
writing skill are far more important to a page than the HTML.
-- Mike Meyer, Twist and Shout
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