Which company would you suggest for POD?

[Firlefanz]

I'm not asking for myself, but a friend is thinking about printing comics and self-marketing them through a website.

Which would be the best place to go for with this?

- Call me Firle.

Hannah Steenbock

Mystical Adventures
Beyond Horizons
Sphaira

[Pamela J. Dodd]

Most folks like Lulu nowadays, and they offer several different formats. I also know someone who is quite happy with CafePress.

Pamela J. Dodd
www.pamelajdodd.com
http://pamspages.blogspot.com/

[crystalwizard]

Lulu's cheaper than cafepress.

Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!

Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
http://flashingswords.sfreader.com

Visit my art gallery on art wanted at
http://artwanted.com/crystalwizard
All my books in print:
http://sojourn.omnitech.net

[jchines]

Would the comic be in color or BW?

I used Lulu.com once for a one-shot printing of an unpublished novel, and was quite happy ... but that was all text, with on interior illustrations.




In the history of grand adventures and heroic quests, goblinkind has never been more than a footnote. That's about to change.

Goblin Quest -- November, 2006
Goblin Hero-- May, 2007
Goblin War -- March, 2008

[Firlefanz]

Thanks for your suggestions. [img]/emoticons/smile.gif[/img]

I would assume that at least some of the comics are in color, Jim.

In a long buried thread someone mentioned the printer that Lulu uses as well - Lightning something? Is that still an option?

- Call me Firle.

Hannah Steenbock

Mystical Adventures
Beyond Horizons
Sphaira

[crystalwizard]

Lightning Source. You have to be a publisher yourself, if you want to use them.

Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!

Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
http://flashingswords.sfreader.com

Visit my art gallery on art wanted at
http://artwanted.com/crystalwizard
All my books in print:
http://sojourn.omnitech.net

[Firlefanz]

Okay, thank you.

It's possible that my friend will become a publisher, yes. [img]/emoticons/smile.gif[/img]

- Call me Firle.

Hannah Steenbock

Mystical Adventures
Beyond Horizons
Sphaira

[H.P. Lovesauce]

Actually, not too buried a thread--I just happened upon it last night:
I would say, though, that comics are a different kettle o' fish, and indie comics people are the ones to ask.



Robert M. Blevins said...

JCDelatorre said:

"Actually, I apparently don't know what I'm talking about. Ingram doesn't stock Lulu either...however, they have upgraded their system so Lulu books can still be purchased via online retailers without seeing "Book Unvailable" all over the place."

Okay...let's try to get this straight. First, if you are using Lulu.com, you aren't going to get many retail sales, anyway. Their price-per-copy to the publisher is WAY too high. At Lulu, a typical paperback in 6 x 9 inch might cost the publisher about $8.50. That same book would cost you about $3.25-3.50 at LSI. (This is the actual print cost to the LSI account holder (publisher) only. This publisher then sets a retail and a wholesale price for distribution. More below...)

Lightning Source is the way to go. However, you have to be serious in order to use them. They require your own ISBN prefix, which means buying a minimum of ten numbers from Bowkers or through the link at LSI. Don't buy from anyone except the official source or you could get burned with phony numbers. Book files, once uploaded to Lightning Source, are not cost-free to change should you make an error. Costs about $475 to make changes, even if it means adding a missing period to the file.

In reality, Ingram physically stocked few books from Lulu. They just say the book is available...

Lulu is easy to use, but expect few sales.
Lightning Source has the same quality, but is much cheaper per copy. You can wholesale your books to bookstores via a catalog if you use them. If you walk into a bookstore with your Lulu-printed book, the bookstore managers will politely decline. Why should they pay ten bucks for a paperback they can get for five dollars from other publishers who use LSI? Generally, they won't.

Bottom line: Amateurs and beginners use Lulu. Graduates and pros use Lightning Source. I found this out by interviewing bookstore managers around Seattle in person. Bookstore managers go to the same websites as writers...and most are quite hip to the pricing and distribution game. They won't even discuss ordering from you unless you can provide a wholesale price.

Adventure Books of Seattle uses Lulu.com right now. We are switching over to LSI on June 1, 2007...because we finally figured out how the system works, by going out into the field. Online sales, unless you are a famous author, are always going to be minimal, especially at Lulu, where you can't offer a decent price. At AB, we set prices at $9.98 for six-by-nine, and $19.99 for hardbacks...which is the cheapest you'll find at Lulu. But, this still isn't good enough, and still negates any entry into bookstores, who as I said, DEMAND wholesale rates.

When you decide to step up to the next level, try LSI and then start retailing those six-by-nines for maybe 6.99 plus shipping, and then wholesaling them to the bookstores (with a catalog) for 4.50-5.00 per copy. You'll get orders. Bookstore managers tell me they will often try books they are not sure about...if they can get them wholesale. If the book doesn't move, they sometimes use the old 90-day sale-or-return on the publisher. Most don't bother, though. They usually just discount the books and stick them in the cheap bin, moving them out the door. Managers tell me this is easier than shipping them back, anyway, and since they got them wholesale, it isn't hard to do. They take little risk.

Bookstores require a 50-55% discount from what's called 'normal retail' for a particular sized book. At Lulu this is impossible. At LSI, it's easy. Remember: It's not how much you make from each sold copy. It's how many copies you can move into bookstores. Volume...the key to success.

I once gave a talk to some hopefuls in Seattle and reminded them that selling books is just like selling cat food, charcoal briquets, or anything else through a retail outlet: You have to be able to acquire the product at a cheap enough rate to offer standard wholesale rates to your target market (in this case, bookstores) or you haven't got a chance.

There is a video over at AB about 'Lulu vs. LSI' and how to realistically move into Lightning Source. It's the one named 'Some Thoughts on Publishing.' AB Videos

RobertM
Managing Editor
AB of Seattle

[BitterHermit]

PM or email me and I can likely give you some more specific advice - given more specific information, anyway. I've got a lot of ISBNs out there feeling worthless. Production and content management are my specialty. As far as marketing . . . try Alibris? Hire it out. Use your friends, family, exes, neighbors, pets, random hitch-hikers, etc. to get the word out.


Best of luck.


As far as my rates, the first twenty questions are free. (The answers, however . . . [img]/emoticons/smilewinkgrin.gif[/img] )

Firlefanz said... [img]/emoticons/smile.gif[/img]
Okay, thank you.

It's possible that my friend will become a publisher, yes.

Incredibly prolific penster

[H.P. Lovesauce]

David BH Pitchford said...



PM or email me and I can likely give you some more specific advice - given more specific information, anyway. I've got a lot of ISBNs out there feeling worthless. Production and content management are my specialty. As far as marketing . . . try Alibris? Hire it out. Use your friends, family, exes, neighbors, pets, random hitch-hikers, etc. to get the word out.


Best of luck.


As far as my rates, the first twenty questions are free. (The answers, however . . . [img]/emoticons/smilewinkgrin.gif[/img] )

Firlefanz said... [img]/emoticons/smile.gif[/img]
Okay, thank you.

It's possible that my friend will become a publisher, yes.

Animal, vegetable, and/or mineral? [img]/emoticons/wink.gif[/img]


Hmm, will keep them ISBNs in mind. A publishing "collective" would work better than a crowd of individuals, methinks.

[Firlefanz]

Thanks, David.

I'm pointing my friend here. [img]/emoticons/smile.gif[/img]

- Call me Firle.

Hannah Steenbock

Mystical Adventures
Beyond Horizons
Sphaira

[BitterHermit]

[quote]

H.P. Lovesauce said...

[quote]

Animal, vegetable, and/or mineral? :wink: Most of the innitial questions in these matters tend to be more or less irrelevent except for the fact that they lead to more precise, informed questions. So there is a surprising validity to your jest.


Hmm, will keep them ISBNs in mind. A publishing "collective" would work better than a crowd of individuals, methinks.Yes. It's a damned expensive hobby. I'd love it much more if it didn't have me scratching around for spare dimes so much of the time. Given the resources, I could likely crank out two dozen books a year pretty much on my own (resources, of course, including the content for said publications). But that's gonna run into a host of dead presidents. [img]/emoticons/smilewinkgrin.gif[/img]

Incredibly prolific penster

[simon162]

Firlefanz said...
I'm not asking for myself, but a friend is thinking about printing comics and self-marketing them through a website.

Which would be the best place to go for with this?

Hello,
Pressmart , a media service company offer digital publishing and arching soultions to publications.They deliver print publication for newspaper,magazines,journals and catalogs over the new media distribution channels including web editions,mobile editions,podcastable content, RSS feeds,social networking and content aggregations services. For more information visit pressmart[dot]net

[brownie]

Traditional publishing is the best way to go, but if too many rejection letters, Authorhouse is okay.

[simon162]

Hello,

Digital Publishing is better than Traditional Publishing .

Benefits of Digital Publishing -
# Low per-page fee gives you zero upfront investment and page-level control over ongoing investment.
# E-commerce ready and Advertising enabled solution gives you a market-ready product from day one.
# Value added assistance in promoting digital edition to subscribers and advertisers.
# ABC and BPA compatible solution helps you increase audited circulation of your digital edition.
# Auto archival of digital edition gives your internal team access to a rich researchable archive and saves your future investment.

[unclepete]

simon, if you're still around -- that website is long on advertisement and short on actual information -- I had a hard time finding the actual product, and still have no idea how much it might cost me as a publisher to put my magazine out there, or where people would find it when I did...

____________
'The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.' --Thomas Jefferson
www.creativeguypublishing.com

[Jordan Lapp]

I think you're responding to an ad, Pete.

Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
Every Day Fiction

[unclepete]

Pretty much what I was thinking too -- but I always try to give the benefit of the doubt. especially if I can get a jab in. [img]/emoticons/tongue.gif[/img]

____________
'The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.' --Thomas Jefferson
www.creativeguypublishing.com

[BitterHermit]

Yeah. If we could just marry our SUBSTANTIAL content to their aggressive, but much less substantive, advertising . . . We could all sit around discussing this over a nice bottle of something you can't find at grocery stores . . .


Read me soon in The Return of the Sword!
Blog: http://bitterhermit.wordpress.com
Buy wine: http://fringemonkey.org
Poetry Blog: http://fringemonkey.wordpress.com

[Naked Ape]

Lulu is useful, but it also shows your buyers your inexperience. It's the amateur answer to self-publishing.

Use Lightning Source (part of Ingram) or Book Surge (part of Amazon).

The benefit of LSI is that you get on Powells.com and the benefit of BS is placement on Amazon.com. Listing with both gets you the largest online bookseller and access to Ingram distribution, i.e. most brick and mortar stores can order your books.

The cost is more than Lulu, but you don't have the stigma of having the publisher listed as Lulu. The benefit of avoiding that should also be self-evident.

All three essentially use the same printing tech, though LSI and BS likely have higher end machines (thus better quality printing) than Lulu. With all PODs though you will have a barcode on the last page of the book block. You can search around for digital short run (dozens to hundreds printed at once) printers who use the same POD machines, but don't put barcodes on the book block. Malloy is one I know of that you can do this with.

[crystalwizard]

Naked Ape said...
Lulu is useful, but it also shows your buyers your inexperience. It's the amateur answer to self-publishing.

I will have to disagree with you there. Lulu is a printer, nothing more.

Incidently, the anthology that Preditors and Editors is putting out to assist them in covering the costs of the lawsuit, is being printed by Lulu.

We've had this discussion elsewhere but Lulu is a very valuable resource. Not to mention FREE to the publisher to use as they take all their costs out of the sale of each book instead of requiring the publisher to pay up front. Plus their quality is exceptional.

Naked Ape said...

Use Lightning Source (part of Ingram) or Book Surge (part of Amazon).

Use LSI. Do NOT use book surge. LSI produces an excellent quality product. Book Surge produces a low quality product.

Naked Ape said...

The benefit of LSI is that you get on Powells.com and the benefit of BS is placement on Amazon.com.

LSI uses Ingram and Baker&Taylor for their US book distributors and Bertums and Gardners for their UK distributors. That means any place that orders from those distributors will have books printed by LSI as long as the publisher chooses to be distributed. LIbraries order from B&T, btw, and so do schools.

[RLCopple]

It should be noted, that you can have fairly wide distribution with Lulu if you are willing to pay for it. From their web site:

The Secret Weapon: Published By You. (ISBN)

With Lulu's unique Published By You service, you literally become your own publisher. For a small fee (see pricing chart), you receive a distribution package that includes an ISBN (an internationally recognized identification code), and open the door to the widest audience of potential buyers - a global market that there's simply no other way of reaching.
Here's how we make it easy for people to find your book:

Your book is listed with major global book industry databases. These listings lead directly and automatically to tens of thousands of retailers, online and off - among them Amazon.com, Borders, and Barnes & Noble, Inc. - not to mention thousands of schools, universities and library systems on four continents.

http://www.lulu.com/en/services/marketing/isbn.php#isbn

Now, one of the limits is bookstores can't do returns to them. Once it's printed, you own it. And most bookstores don't want product they can't return if it doesn't sell. But you can have for relatively cheaply, a book sold with an ISBN, your own 'publisher' name, and distributed widely. I don't know about the distributor's cost, what the percentage on those are, which I expect aren't as deep. But most bookstores won't look at ordering if it isn't at least 45%.

R. L. Copple

blog.rlcopple.com
www.raygunradio.com
www.haruah.com

Infinite Realities available at Barnes & Noble

[crystalwizard]

Just a caution:

Lulu can not legally sell ISBN numbers. Only the registering entity can and in the USA, that's Bowker Books. Lulu does, however 'say' they are selling the ISBNs. What they are doing is charging you 3x what Bowker would for an ISBN and telling you that 'you own it'. However since Bowker is the entity that maintains the books in print records, and maintains the list of which publishers own what ISBNs, as far as Bowker is concerned, Lulu owns that ISBN and Lulu is the publisher of whatever book has it assigned to it. Not you.

The same thing goes for anyone else that tries to sell you ISBN numbers, at least in the USA.

Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!


<a href="http://flashingswords.sfreader.com" target="_blank">
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords</a>

Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print

[unclepete]

Publishers/resellers:

www.isbn.org/standards/home/Pubresellers.asp

ISBN FAQ (for Bowker -- US only):

www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/isbnqa.asp

____________
'The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.' --Thomas Jefferson
www.creativeguypublishing.com