“Where do you get your comics printed?” is a question I often get emailed or asked at comic shows…

I’ve been thinking a lot about printing recently (I know, all aboard the fun train of Tom’s mind! Calling at all stations to Boring Pontificating) as I’m trying to figure out how to handle an anthology I want to put together.

This seemed a good place to collect some of my thoughts and maybe help those of you looking for a bit of advice on printing your small press comics.

Keep it simple

You know that famous illustration that appeared in a punk fanzine (Sideburns I believe) with the immortal lines “This is a chord, this is another, this is a third, now form a band”? That’s essentially how I feel about starting a comic. If you have a story you want to tell, an idea you’re dying to express, a feeling you need to communicate – all you really require is a pen, piece of paper (or fabric, or tissue paper, or whatever you can draw on) and access to a photocopier. Anybody who tells you different is lying and doesn’t know the first thing about why comics are so amazing and thus, shouldn’t be trusted.

Am I comparing the DIY small press comic scene to the boundless enthusiasm, excitement and creativity of punk in the late seventies? Yes. Yes I am. And I’ll fight you if you disagree. My limping, bruised and crippled corpse will still be right.

So. Draw your comic, get it out there. Make mistakes. Find out what works.

You can do amazing things with one sheet of photocopied paper. Folded several times, you’ve got an eight page comic. At the very least, by finding out what photocopiers end up doing to your artwork, you’ll have an understanding of what it was like for those early comics pioneers who had to deal with poor printing quality. Heavily inked linework and halftone isn’t just an aesthetic preference at this stage – it’s a neccessity.

Boutique comics

Eventually, you may want to produce a book with higher production values.

One of the many advantages of doing this yourself is that you’re not having to try and publish twenty two pages on a regular monthly schedule. Similarly your print run, at most, will likely be in the low hundreds. This offers some interesting options for how you choose to print your comic.

Matthew Sheret has started a fascinating conversation over at Ellis’ Whitechapel board regarding the comic book as an object of graphic art (choice line: “But can it still be a fetish object if you can only get it at obscure shows in small college towns?”). This is the right way to go I think. The decline of print media – or the death of print or whatever you want to call it – will only be limited to that which can be reproduced digitally. So make your comic impossible to read online. People always want something tactile. Artefacts. A beautifully designed comic will always grab a reader’s attention.

Even DC are returning to the roots of the newspaper funnies with their Wednesday Comics to breathe a bit of life into the monthly mainstream titles.

Here’re some ideas about how to achieve your own boutique small press comic:

1) A key factor is format. Mike Allred’s Red Rocket Seven was made to resemble a 7″ Vinyl record, Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library is a different size and shape with each issue, the Fantagraphics Ignatz series are published larger than the traditional American comic book size… Think about what your story is, how best the format can service it, and don’t let your comic be boxed in by any pre-existing sizes.

2) While you may print the material out on your computer at home, on a photocopier, or at a printers – you can still play with the paperstock. You could experiment with 3D, have pull out sections, use paper that only display illustrations when held up to the light… Just make sure these things are helping you tell your story or get your point across and don’t stray too far into novelty territory.

3) You can have the best interior work anyone’s ever seen but it’s meaningless without an interesting cover. Ware’s McSweeney’s #13 comes with an illustrated poster that details the history of comics and folds up into a gorgeous dustjacket with pockets for tiny mini-comics that fit inside (in fact, all the McSweeney’s are uniquely published and packaged objects. Seek them out). Adrian Tomine’s hardcover edition of Summer Blonde has a peephole cut out of the dustjacket which reveals a part of the illustration underneath.

You could print your main interior artwork on your home computer and screenprint your own covers on thick, matte paperstock to give it that hand-made feel. Or even draw a different cover by hand (we are talking small print runs here).

I tend to hand number each comic and offer the first 50 issues of a printrun with a screenprinted envelope. It’s worth checking out Philip Spence’s work to see some of the lovely boutique comics he creates.

Finding a printer

There’s no real easy answer to this one. Set aside a couple of days. Make sure you know what you want – how many pages your comic is, how many copies you want, and whether you want a full bleed etc. etc. – and then start calling around printers for quotes. Browse the internet for numbers of printers nearby. It’ll take some time but you’ll find one that is right for you.

You might be lucky enough to know someone who can recommend a good printer, but if not you want to make sure you find one you can trust. One that is friendly and helpful and happy to offer advice on any of the issues you may not be an expert in.

A couple of the main things you’ll want to find out is whether they deliver the comics to you (if not, how close are they? Can you pick them up with some help from friends? If they do deliver – how much does it cost?), and what the unit cost will work out at. You’ll most likely want to sell your comics at double the unit cost so that if you sell out, you have enough to pay for another print run, but if you don’t you’ll hopefully have made your money back. If the unit cost makes this price seem too steep then start looking elsewhere or inform the printer what you were hoping for. By and large, printers will do their best to help you cut costs and secure themselves the job.

Preparing for print

Most printers will prepare your comic for print if you ask but they usually charge. If you want to save the money and have complete control over the way your book will turn out, it’s generally best to layout the work in InDesign or QuarkXPress. This is fairly easy, and if you’ve drawn your pages with bleed and live art in mind, you shouldn’t have any problems. You don’t need a design degree to know all this – the basics are online and you’ll most likely pick a lot of this up through trial and error. Don’t let the rules and jargon put you off. At worst, ask a friend with the software to do it for you in exchange for a drink or two.

When using colour, the main thing you need to be aware of is staying in CMYK mode as that’s what printers work with. Try to stick to pantone colours if possible (and various strengths of those colours) so you can tell the printers exactly which colours to print in. Another useful tip is to reduce the saturation slightly when you’re finished – the colours always end up being a little stronger than you expect.

Print-on-demand

I’ve never used this sort of service, but from my understanding, you can get your comics printed out as and when someone orders a copy. This is not really something that really fits into the way I like to distribute my comics but I can see a lot of advantages to the idea.

I’m not entirely sure what the results are like with the various POD companies. Some specialise in comics, but I have no idea whether you can work in formats outside the traditional ones. Many people I know swear by these sites though. Clearly, I just haven’t done my research.

Lulu are the biggest POD company out there right now. With Ka-Blam and ComiXpress specialising in the four-colour-funny medium. There’re also some UK based companies out there too such as Fallen Angel Media. I have no idea who produce better quality work.

Get in touch if you use print-on-demand. I’d be interested to hear what it’s like. Can you use POD but still create a unique, boutique small press comic?

Distribution on the web

Alternatively, you can try and find a way of selling your comic online somehow. Scott McCloud has a lot of ideas about this. But really, you should go and check out this Clay Shirky piece about the death of print media and the internet revolution – it’s a must read.

The screenwriter John August has offered his short story The Variant on his website as a Kindle formatted file and PDF. He’s written some interesting thoughts on how this works as a way of self-publishing. As I don’t own a Kindle or any kind of ebook reader, I have little idea on how one of these devices might deal with making comic artwork readable on the go but I’m told it wouldn’t really work. I’d like to try and make My Fellow Americans work for a Kindle though so will look into that and let you all know how I get on.

Longbox – the “itunes of comics” – seems like a good way to go (read Kieron Gillen’s ideas on Longbox for an explanation and sensible reaction to the application) in terms of getting work seen by as many people as possible and I don’t think it would damage your chances of people buying a physical version of your comic at a later point (see all the previous points for reasons why). But only time will tell if Longbox has staying power and if it will be easy to sell your work through it.

And that’s that. Phew… I can go on sometimes… Hopefully someone, somewhere will find this helpful.

Get in touch by email or leave a comment if you think I’ve failed to mention something particularly crucial or there’s something that I need to clarify.

Any other small press related questions you want answered in the future? Let me know at ventedspleen@hotmail.com.

“Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo”
- Don Marquis

Occassionally, for reasons best known only to themselves, a few small press comic artists email me to ask for advice about materials, printers, and what to do with their comic when it is published. I usually try my best to reply but sometimes I just don’t have the time.

But then I also love to procrastinate…

With this in mind, I was looking over John August’s fascinating screenwriting blog and thought that perhaps I could, like him, compile a few blogposts that cover frequently asked questions. One of which being:

Where do I sell my small press comics?

There are several options available to you. Mostly, small pressers rely on their local comic book retailer to stock their comic and encourage their customers to take a chance on new material. Sadly, this sort of thing can be rare which is why some of the more successful self-published comic artists are using the internet and monetising it in a way that is working for them (see Octopus Pie and the TopatoCo collective). So…

1. Sell through your website

It’s easy enough to set up a website using blogspot or wordpress or any of the other million ways in which having a website has been made simple. Paypal or Etsy are probably the best ways of making it easy for you and the customer to exchange goods for money but I’m sure there are, again, several different ways to do this too.

2. Attend comic conventions

There are lots of local, national and international comic conventions throughout the year. Along with all sorts of alternative zine symposiums and DIY events that would suit a small press publisher. Working out which ones suit your material and are helpful to you is trial and error, but most will certainly provide an opportunity to meet other creators. Perhaps the most pleasant aspect of these events is getting a chance to meet people who are interested in small press work and, hopefully, your own. Having said all this, I tend to find these things completely exhausting and have yet to feel totally comfortable when sitting behind a table.

3. Use your local comic store

Most comic stores will probably take your comics on a sale-or-return basis and take somewhere between 20-30%. I can’t speak for the rest of the UK but in London, with McForbidden Planet generally only taking comics distributed through Diamond (which is an entirely different headache) and places like Comicana focusing more on back issue trade, the only viable, centrally located shops are Gosh! and Orbital Comics. Here, in my experience, is how they treat small press material:

Gosh! are well known for their support of alternative and independent comics. They have a great stock and are located opposite the British Museum so receive a great deal of passing traffic. They used to take small press on sale-or-return and offer a 70/30 split but, with the departure of one of their staff who used to oversee the small press section, they have opted for firm-sale (buying the stock from you on the spot) with a 50/50 split. This means they may not take your stock if they don’t feel it is appropriate and will probably buy 3-5 copies in based on whether they think it will sell.

Now, firm-sale is a policy that The Beguling (in Toronto) and a few other stores have for small press. I understand it simplifies the paperwork for the staff and makes things that little bit easier, but predominantly these stores offer a better deal than a 50/50 split. That, for a lot of people, may not even cover printing costs and makes taking comics to Gosh! a choice between getting your comics to a wider audience or making your printing costs back. Which is a shame. The small press scene and local comic stores have always had a natural symbiosis and work together to create an exciting artistic community. This policy doesn’t strike me as something that encourages that.

Which brings me to Orbital Comics. Who have, since day one, had a sale-or-return policy with 100% of the profits going towards the creator. The idea being that if they offer this deal, more creators will use Orbital, and more people seeking small press material will patronise the store (hopefully picking up a book that the store will make profit on while they’re there).

There are other bookstores and art/design shops that your work may be suitable for in London, which leads me neatly into…

4. Target your audience

A lot of the material in my comics focuses on very specific subject matter (art school, music, relationships, auto-immune diseases, american politics) which I’ve always tried to address by getting my books in the relevant places. Taking boooks to independent politics bookshops, to gigs/record stores, to private views/exhibitions… whatever gets my work into the hands of those who may be interested but may not walk into comic stores regularly. It’s always worthwhile trying.

5. Organise a book launch/exhibition

Finally, one way to sell your book and get people to see your work is to do it all yourself. Organise a book launch, hire a venue, get bands to play and then advertise or market it in your own way. It can be stressful, it can be a lot of work, but it can also be a lot of fun. One of the positive aspects of the continuing decline in printed media is that more people are taking it upon themselves to do things like this and it goes a long way towards creating a vibrant and diverse alternative scene.

So there you have it. A small, and by means compressive list of some of the many ways to get your work seen. I’m sure there are better, more viable avenues for you but these are the methods that work for me and might prove useful as a starting point.

Get in touch

Leave a comment if you think of some obvious alternatives I’ve neglected to mention. And if you have any pressing questions you want a rank amateur like me to answer then by all means email and maybe I’ll blog about it in the future.