Print On Demand Overview
Tony Piro - Tuesday, November 11, 2008 4:53
Print-on-demand (POD) publishing enables a cartoonist to publish books without investing thousands of dollars in a high-count print run. It is essentially high-quality laser printing, but for many small publishers, POD is the way to go. Additionally, many POD publishers offer order-fulfillment services, meaning they will take orders for you, print, and ship your books. They deduct a small fee before paying you for the sale, but many find it worth it to be rid of the hassle of order fulfillment.
When considering a POD, there are tons to choose from. Just consider this intimidating list. For this reason, I thought it would be helpful to provide an overview of the PODs that are most useful for us comics creators.
Before starting, I want to emphasize that if you are really serious about your comic and care about the final product, you should take the initiative to do some this research yourself. Contact these companies and get samples. See if you are happy with their paper and print quality. If you are going to use their fulfillment services, try buying a book from them. You want to make sure your readers will have a smooth and trouble-free experience. A bad experience will reflect poorly on you. Also, don’t forget to check whether there are any POD services near where you live. Doing business face-to-face can often be much easier than online.
Ka-Blam: Ka-Blam is a POD service that specifically caters to comics. They have two main book sizes, traditional comic-book and manga (although they offer custom sizes). They also offer floppies (traditional comic books) and soft-bound trade paper backs. They use 50# uncoated paper stock for the interior pages and 80# for the covers [Scroll down for an editor's note about the "#" unit of measurement]. Although I think the actual printing and color quality are amazing, I wish their paper was a little thicker. One advantage with Ka-Blam is that they have no set-up fee. You can save money by allowing a Ka-Blam advertisement to be printed in your book. Also, by printing with them you can easily sign up to use their store at IndyPlanet, which displays sample pages and has an easy-to-use buying interface. In principle, this has the nice advantage that you don’t have to order a big stock of books, because you can send your customers to the site instead. Personally, I would much rather do a pre-order, order 50-100 copies (which is what I did) and do all the fulfillment myself. This way you can make sure your readers have a more personal buying experience (and even sign the books to give them that added touch). But I know plenty of people that really like having this service available to them.
Lulu: Lulu is probably the biggest and best-known of all the companies I considered. They do a lot of business, with all different types of products, from traditional books to calendars to CDs. Lulu uses really nice paper (80# interiors with 100# gloss cover). They have a wide range of size options. They also offer an ISBN. This latter option is helpful because (at least in America) the minimum cost for ISBNs is $250 for 10 (and you have to buy at least 10). Lulu also offers sales thought both their own online store and on Amazon. The problem with Amazon is that take a cut of like 40-50% off the cover price. You therefore, have to price your books pretty high to go this route. Lulu offers discounts on large orders, but it’s only like 2-7% (and won’t apply on the Amazon orders because most people just buy one book at a time). Even though Lulu has good quality, their price is probably the highest for any of the PODs I’m listing here.
ComiXpress: Like Ka-Blam, ComiXpress also caters specifically to comics. They have many of the same sizes, and similar paper quality. They also offer an online store, but without the page previews. They have a setup fee of around $30, but this is a one time deal, which isn’t too bad if you’re printing a lot of books. They also offer a discount if you put a ComiXpress ad in your book. In most respects, I find ComiXpress to be similar to Ka-Blam, so if you are choosing between the two, I would suggest you get some samples to do your own comparison. Also, it is worth the time to ask other comic creators to see what their experience has been with them.
Print House Express: I know of a couple webcomic artists that use them and are pretty happy. Basically this is the kind of place to go if you want to just set up the order online, send them the files online, and get a 100 or so books fairly quickly. The offer a large size (8.5×11) and small size (5.5×8.5), and a wide range of different types of papers. If I were quickly printing up a mini-comic for a convention, I would probably consider them.
SIPS Comics: Like Ka-Blam and ComiXpress, SIPs Comics caters to the comics community. At first glance their website was a little scary (they use Flash!), but they offer some good services They don’t have a setup fee, but you can pay a little extra for a physical proof if you want (many of the the other PODs only offer digital proofs) Their paper is a little heavier (70# interior and 100# cover), so if this is important to you, you might want to consider them instead of Ka-Blam or ComiXpress.
CreateSpace: This is basically Amazon’s competitor to Lulu. They offer less size options than Lulu, but they make up for it by making it more cost effective to be on Amazon. Personally, I can’t imagine selling that many books through Amazon, so I’ve found many of the other PODs to be more flexible and cost effective for comics collections.
360 Digital Books: I chose to use 360 Digital Books for my own trade paper back, but I’ll try to give an unbiased review. 360 Digital Books offers very personal service. They have regional service representatives that will talk to you over the phone. They offer the widest variety of paper choices for both interior and cover, as well as different cover finishes (plain, matte or gloss, with professional materials that don’t warp). This way you can find the perfect price range and paper stock that best compliments your artwork. They offer either digital proofs ($30 fee) or physical proofs (which costs quite a bit more depending on the size of your book). They also offer order fulfillment like Ka-Blam, Lulu, and ComiXpress, but I’ve never tried using this myself. If you are doing a trade paper back, I highly recommend them for their price and quality. For floppies, they’re not as competitive because their focus is not doing comic books. Therefore, if paper quality is not a big issue for you, then you’re probably better off with Ka-Blam or ComiXpress.
I have a more detailed assessment of each POD on my site.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: The symbol “#” denotes “pounds” — a unit of paper density measurement. The higher the number, the denser the paper stock. It is the amount that 500 basis sheets of the paper would weigh, in pounds. For example, “20#” means “20 pounds per basis ream of 500 sheets”. Read here for more information.
This post was submitted by Tony Piro.
Chris says:
November 11th, 2008 at 6:46 am
It’s nice to know there are other players in the market, usually the only one you hear about is Lulu and not often in a positive light. Usually it seems POD is viewed pretty negatively, but I guess if you want your book in print and know sort of what you are doing POD can work for you.
tpiro says:
November 11th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Yeah, if there’s any one take away message, it should be that you should never just settle for the most popular option. There are plenty of choices available.
Although POD may be viewed negatively from an economic standpoint, from an artistic standpoint it’s fantastic. Most of the comics I bought at APE were POD.
Journalista - the news weblog of The Comics Journal » Blog Archive » November 12, 2008: Nothing ever ends says:
November 11th, 2008 at 11:19 am
[...] [Publishing] Print-on-demand overview Link: Tony Piro [...]
questioner says:
November 11th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
If I were to choose the Lulu Marketplace option, I could sell my book through their online store front, but it wouldn’t get an ISBN number. What is the downside to this?
Brad Guigar says:
November 11th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
You need the ISBN is you’re going to sell your stuff in retail outlets — like comic shops or Amazon. If you’re not planning to do this, you don’t need an ISBN. And if you start publishing POD without an ISBN, you can always add it for later editions of the book.
Greg Carter says:
November 11th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
You used to be able to buy one ISBN for $35, can you not purchase one at a time now?
At SIPS you need to order 100 copies to avoid a $50 setup charge.
If you use Ka-Blam, pay the extra and lose the ad. It makes you look cheap and also makes your book look like all the others. I’m hearing that editors and publishers won’t even look at a book with a big Ka-Blam ad on it. They want to see more commitment to your book looking it’s best. Putting on a garish ad to save a few bucks does not achieve that.
I’ve ordered from both SIPS and Ka-Blam and SIPS quality is much better. SIPS is a full-service commercial printer so they have better equipment than most POD companies. Each comic from SIPS has a paper slipcover so the covers don’t get ruined in transit. Wow. I really sound like a commercial for them… but the books I ordered for Abandon issue #1 look totally amazing. One note - SIPS is in Canada. My US bank charged an extra fee for an international transaction, but it was easily made up by the fact that they charge in Canadian dollars.
Just to be fair, I would use Ka-Blam again for orders under 100 copies. I’ve had great customer service and it doesn’t look bad for the price.
malki ! says:
November 12th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Hey Tony, great overview but I think you underemphasized the cost difference between CreateSpace and the others. Personally I’m pretty excited about CreateSpace; their size options are a little limited but they’re the cheapest POD I’ve ever seen.
If you’re buying inventory of books to sell at a show or through your own website, CreateSpace prices for both color and black&white paperbacks are, on average, about half as expensive through CreateSpace vs. Lulu.
Personally, I think the way to maximize profits with a POD book is to buy inventory at the cheapest base rate possible, and then sell them directly to the customer myself (that way you can personalize it, bundle it with other products, etc). CreateSpace really outshines Lulu in that regard, with the bonus that you also get placed on Amazon automatically. If only 5 people ever buy it through Amazon, so what? It’s no extra trouble for you, since they print & ship it for you.
A.Fraser says:
November 12th, 2008 at 3:06 am
I feel kinda bad saying this, but…
I enjoy my experience with Lulu.
The fan base for my comic is so stinking small that useing any other company wouldn’t yeild better results.
I figure if I want to take things up to the next level I can invest in a print run with ISBNs and an add in Previews.
I have to get more readers first.
tpiro says:
November 12th, 2008 at 6:40 am
@Malki ! Createspace was added just for completeness. I haven’t ever used them, but some people have told me good things about them. I’d be interested in hearing more people’s experience with them.
Looking at Createspace’s pricing, it’s *really good* for trade paper backs. Especially if you do the Pro Plan (why wouldn’t you?). Their paper quality is definitely a little lower than Lulu, but Lulu’s paper isn’t coated either, just heavier. Really Createspace vs Lulu isn’t a fair comparison. Lulu is so expensive compared to every other option, I can figure out why anyone would use them.
My first volume of comics is a 92 page, full-color, comic book size trade paper back. I decided to go through 360 Digital Books because I wanted all the bells and whistles to really make it a special book for my readers. If you’ve ever seen the Girl Genius books, it’s a lot like these (the book, not the artwork!). My book features a 12 pt cover, 80# *glossy* interior pages, and a professional looking matte finish to the cover. The cost was $10.92 per book, with a $30 setup fee. This isn’t as cheap as Createspace, but you have to admit, that’s a pretty amazing price for a POD with so many features. (In comparison, my books would cost $18.33 through Lulu with worse quality paper.)
On the other hand, if I could just get my books printed with a fancy hard cover by Dark Horse…
ANDY says:
November 12th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Good information! I appreciate the review and round-up. I am still astounded at the cost of Lulu but it was fairly simple to use. (Interesting sidenote about my bad luck: Lulu raised prices between the time I ordered my first book for proofing and the time I was ready to make it available for public sale a week later… another $9 per book! ugggghhh! (my book is 165-pages, 9×7, full color)) I am now investigating other POD options…
Steve Horton says:
November 13th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
The huge problem with CreateSpace, and the thing that’s totally turned me off from them forever, is that interior PDFs are limited to 100 megabytes, no exceptions. This pretty much locks out any graphic novel of any decent size.
tpiro says:
November 13th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Good point. My book definitely wouldn’t have fit within 100 MB.
Scott Lincoln says:
November 13th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Great topic/article, Tony.
The Gigcast - Your Webcomics Podcast » Blog Archive » Webcomic Wire - 11/13/08 says:
November 13th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
[...] Piro has a review of the various print-on-demand options there are [...]
Kory Bingaman says:
November 14th, 2008 at 12:49 am
I’ve had a great experience with Lulu but they’ve recently upped their prices, so my already pretty expensive book that I was working on now costs 42 dollars to print instead of 28. I was only planning on ordering a few sample copies from them to begin with, but now they are so expensive that I have a hard time plunking 42 bucks on a 160 page book. I’ll have to check out some of these other options.
Dave Wachter says:
November 14th, 2008 at 1:40 am
I’ve been doing POD since 2005, using two of the mentioned services: ComiXpress and Ka-Blam. Overall, I’ve been very satisfied with the results from each. On my latest project, we found a new service, at comicbookprinting.com. As a new service, they didn’t experience the customer service drawbacks that plagued the other two when they became known, and then became swamped with business(especially around convention season). The price was great and the quality was far better than I expected. I mean, the printing quality really blew me away. So to anyone doing POD, I say give them a shot as well.
tpiro says:
November 14th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Thanks for offering another service Dave. I’ll have to check them out for a quote.
Its exciting to see the growing competition for this market. Hopefully that will lead to better prices and customer service.
Dean says:
December 23rd, 2008 at 2:00 am
Hi All,
It seems most of the reviews are from comic book authors. I first found Lulu when searching for a way to use a POD service for my standard coft cover B&W book, a self help book, after looking at Booksurge and being a bit confused with their process.
Can anyone point me in the direction of some good reviews of POD for my type of book and author?
Cheers
Dean