Print on Demand: What I Look For

After my experiences with Digital Webbing Presents (17, 18, 26) and Warmageddon Illustrated #1, my desire was never to print more comics than I absolutely needed. I still have close to 700 copies of Warmageddon Illustrated #1 that I continue to store to this day (several years later). With a growing family, my storage space gets smaller and smaller, so Print on Demand is the right solution for me. Only you can decide if it's right for you.

Here's what I look for in a POD service.

CUSTOMER SERVICE
I try to respond to every one as soon as possible, so I like to get a response as soon as possible. Whether it be via phone or email, I expect any business that I'm working with to respond to my needs within a reasonable amount of time. Usually that means I expect a response within one business day. If a company can not provide that, then they will have to make up the difference via pricing in order for me to stay with them.

TURNAROUND
I like the process from receipt of my files until receipt of the final product to take 10-14 days. Once the turnaround time has been established it should not vary by more than 2-3 days. My goal is to keep as little inventory as necessary, so that means I need to be able to depend on my printing partner to deliver within a reasonable amount of time. If they can not, this means that I have to carry more inventory and thus have more storage space.

PRINT RUNS
The entire point behind POD is the ability to print as little or as many as you need without incurring significant differences in cost (other than shipping). I like to keep my print runs o 25-100 depending on the book and it's expected turnaround. First issues tend to sell faster so I keep more of them in stock, but otherwise, I like to keep about 2 months worth on hand. A POD printer that forces me to stock more than 2 months worth is tying up my cash and storage resources.

PRICING
I set the prices on my products based upon my costs. For comics I try to keep that cost down to about 3 -4 cent a page. That means a 32-page comic should in around $1-$1.25. This is why I very rarely venture into the realm of color POD. Most POD provide some type of discount for increased quantities, so be sure to ask about where the first price break occurs.

If the best price comes only as a result of inserting ads for the POD, then I try to use that POD only as a last resort. I consider ads as endorsements of the product. If you see an ad for something in any one of my products, generally that means I support that product. That's not always true for PODs, so I avoid placing ads when possible. The first books, I printed using ComixPress and Ka-Blam both had their ads on the back cover. If I had it to do over again, I would not have done so. With the savings, I received from that, I would have been better off contacting my local comic book shop and asking them to buy the ad space.

SHIPPING
All printers use a different combination of shippers. My choices should be the United States Postal Service (USPS), UPS and/or FedEx. There should be the ability to decide which service I want (Priority, Express, Ground, etc) and I should not have to pay a premium above the shipping costs for the faster shipping method.

PACKAGING
I don't expect my comics to be collectible. I have no desire for my comics to be treated as collectibles, but I do expect them to arrive from the printer in salable condition. Any printer worth using as printing partner should be able to deliver product to your door with less than 5% of the product damaged in shipping. This means that package would be:
1) protected against shifting during transit
2) minimally protected against water damage
3) protected against damage caused by dropping
Even if the package is insured, the shipper should provide this minimal amount of protection for you because it can take weeks to be reimbursed.

PRINT AND TRIM QUALITY
What the minimum quality you are willing to accept is ultimately up to you. I look for:

1) trim quality - I expect the cuts to be clean with no extra debris left behind. I expect the product to be square. I expect the book to have uniform page length when in a closed position.

2) print quality - I expect the cover colors to be evenly distributed. I expect the blacks to be uniform. The final product should not be pixelated (unless that's the desired effect).

3) uniformity of product - I expect each individual unit to be an exact duplicate (within reason). This means the size should not drastically change and there should not be drastic shifts in color.


And that's what I look for.

Selling Comics Online: the Basics

There are 3 basics ways of selling items online.
1) Web Pages Linked to a Payment Method
2) Hosted Solutions
3) Complete Solutions Hosted on Your Server

WEB PAGES LINKED TO A PAYMENT METHOD
This option is you having a web page with your product and a buy it now or add to cart button. Generally, clicking this button initiates the buying process by either direct the user to purchase the product and/or adding the product to a cart provided by a payment gateway.

A payment gateway is web site like PayPal.com or 2Checkout.com where you (the seller) have an account and they collect credit card (and other payments) from your customers. Gateways usually charge a fee per transaction, a percent of the transaction (including shipping costs), and/or a monthly fee. In return, they collect money for you, disburse the money to your account (when you request or on a schedule), and/or provide you with a means to linking to there payment systems.

Linking to a gateway in this manner is the most basic manner of selling online. It's quick, simple and easy. Most can do this by simply following the instructions laid out that the gateway. While being quick, simple, and easy, it's also the hardest to maintain. As you get more and more product, it requires you to maintain more and more code. As product is sold, it requires you to keep track of your stock and remove products when unavailable. This is a great solution if you only have 3 or 4 products that are always in stock. Once you grow beyond that it's time to look at the other options.

HOSTED SOLUTIONS
Hosted solutions are solutions made available to you on a another business's web server. Leading the pack in hosted services are eBay (with eBay stores) and Yahoo! (with Yahoo! stores). Hosted solutions are generally a one size fit all solution. They supply you with an e-commerce solution that fits the needs of most people and you make the best of it. Generally, there is a monthly fee associated with most hosted solutions. If you're interested in this path, then I suggest going to your handy-dandy search engine of choice and searching for hosted e-commerce solution. You'll get a plethora of results and hopefully one will be right for you. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about hosted solutions because ultimately they are too varied.

With hosted solutions, you want to avoid those that are just tie-ins to a payment gateway like PayPal or 2Checkout.com. These payment gateways offer their own carts, so you are paying for a service you can get direct from the gateway for free.

You also want a service that will bring additional traffic to your store. Think of a hosted solution as a mall. Retailers want to be in a mall because malls have significant foot traffic. Someone is out to buy one thing, but stumble upon your store because it's there. What you want from a hosted solution, the web equivalent of foot traffic.

You also want
- inventory tracking : product is removed as it is sold
- options : the ability to list one t-shirt with 3 colors (red, green, blue) and 3 sizes (S,M,L) instead of 9 different shirts. (Ideally, the options has inventory tracking as well)
- integration with PayPal and at least one other payment solution

Avoid (if possible)
- monthly fees
- per product fee


COMPLETE SOLUTIONS HOSTED ON YOUR SERVER
Complete solutions are packages that you can buy and download for installation on your web server (or web hosting account). These solutions are generally a series of database driven pages that allow you to:
-add, edit and categorize your products
-receive orders
-calculate shipping costs
-manage customers and orders
-keep track of inventory
- connect to a payment gateway

Think of this option as you own little Amazon.com. There are other options out there, but I like CandyPress (for ASP web servers) and OsCommerce (PHP web servers). ASP is Microsoft's Active Server Pages which is available almost exclusively on Windows web servers. PHP is available on almost any web server (including Windows servers).

This option is really for those control freaks (like me) that want to be able to tweak every aspects of their online presentation. They take having someone that is capable of maintaining the code and making required updates, and allow you to have infinitely more control over your products, customers, and order receiving abilities.

CandyPress
I got a little ahead of myself when I talked about CandyPress in an earlier posting. You can read more about CandyPress in my earlier review of it. You can see it in action at my online store (BullCityComics.com). It's versatile and easy to edit if you (or someone you know) have moderate knowledge of Microsoft's ASP technology (which I do) this is the best $80 you can spend.

OsCommerce
OsCommerce is an open source e-commerce solution that utilizes PHP and MySQL. There is an active community of developers and lots of templates (free and for sale). Oscommerce will do everything that CandyPress does and is free. I prefer CandyPress, but that's really just because I've spent the last 10 years as an ASP web developer. If I was a PHP web developer, OsCommerce would be my solution of choice.

Convention Essentials: Rock N Roller R2 Micro

Convention sales are one of my many revenue streams as a comic book self-publisher. I try to hit at least 3-4 different conventions every year. Most are the same every year, but I always try to hit a new one every year. Usually, it's me and my significant other at every convention, but every now and then it's just me. With such a small convention force, it's important for me to minimize labor and the most important labor saving device is my Rock N Roller R2 Micro.

The Rock N Roller R2 Micro is a folding cart that can transform into 8 different modes. It can handle up to 350 pounds and weighs only 17 pounds. Most importantly, it folds down to be about 6 inches tall, 26 inches long and less than 18 inches wide. The cart functions as a standard hand cart, a dolly, a platform cart, and a stackable cart.

This is by far the best $100, I've ever spent and saved me from multiple trips to the car and from carrying 30-60 pound boxes across convention centers and hotels. My back and legs thank me.

If you are planning on establishing a convention circuit presence, then this little cart shold become your best friend. I've tried standard luggage hand carts and even the heavy duty hand carts. Between the carts and the bungee cords needed to secure the boxes on the carts, I spent at least $40-60 only to have the hand cart overturn and spill around corners at least once at every convention. Since I purchased the R2, I've had no spills and no worries. In fact, the only problem I've had was one convention center wouldn't allow stacked platform carts in the elevator. So, I unloaded the R2, configured it into a hand cart, and was allowed on the elevator with no problem.

Buy one today and save yourself injury and frustration.
In the off season, your kids (if you have them) can even use it to haul each other around (like mine do ... with supervision).

Overnight Prints: 10% off all printing

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From the Mailbox: Copyrights

When I began this blog, I didn't really have a agenda or even more than a vague idea of sharing my experience self-publishing. My goal is really to just hit topics as I deal with them. If you have a self-publishing question that you want answered then feel free to ask me. You can post at Digital Webbing (see my links), here in the comments (that I just enabled), or send me an email (ljamal@ljamal.com).

Today (as the title says), I'm going to dip into the mailbo. So let's jump right in....

From LG in Illinois
I came across your blog on making your own comic and the advice is great, especially on printers and scanners. I have a couple questions in regards to copyrights? A friend and If are making a series of graphic novels. I want to know:

1) Does the complete series have to be all done to get published or can we submit book by book?

2) Should I have an attorney handle the legal side?

3) Should I have my work copyrighted?

I'll answer these questions in the order they are asked.

1) This isn't really a question about self-publishing, but more pitching a series to publisher. However, I will answer this question in multiple ways.
a) If you are planning to submit to publishers, I recommend being familiar with the publisher's current body of work and finding their submissions policy. Once you know their, submissions policy, following it. Usually, you'll only need a premise, a synopsis and 5-10 pages of finished art.
b) If you're self-publishing and talking about submitting to a distributor, then it's best to have as much finished as possible before orders come in for that first issue, especially if you have a limited series planned.
c) If you're being published by someone else work at a pace that allows for editing. If you finish the entire series and then the editor wants to make changes in issue 3 of 6, then you've painted yourself into a corner.

2) Attorneys are not entirely necessary, but if you're not comfortable reading and understanding legalese, then you should have an attorney. If you're putting together contracts, then you can save money on an attorney by just having them look over the final contracts after you've written it. If you're lucky you know an attorney personally who may be willing to help you out. If you're not so lucky, then you should look for a contract and copyright attorney.

3) Once you put any information in a fixed format, it is automatically copyrighted (not copywritten because that's not an English word). If you want legal protection, then you need to file with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress (if you're here in the US) and pay the fee. This isn't a necessary step, but improves your chances of successfully winning a legal challenge (is you find yourself in such a position). There are many different forms to file, so be sure that you file the correct form for your work. The basic cost is $45, but if you file online you can save $10 (and the cost of a stamp).

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E-Commerce Options: CandyPress

CandyPress is an online shopping cart system. It's ASP/VBScript based software designed to be used on Microsoft Internet Information System (IIS) web servers with an Access or MSSQL server database. If you didn't understand any of that chances are you're not a web programmer. I am, so I'll walk you through this e-commerce option.

In order to use the CandyPress e-commerce system, you must have a site hosted on a Windows based server capable of running ASP applications and have ability to connect to an Access or MSSQL database. If you don't have such web hosting, I recommend Hostexcellence.com (which I use to host all my web sites) or CrystalTech.com (which JLSMedia [my day job] recommends).

You can visit the CandyPress website it will detail everything that the software does for you. This is the software that I use for my store and for me it came down to the following features:

Payment Methods and Gateway Integration
A payment gateway is based how you receive payment from your customer. The Candy Press system ships with integration with all the major online methods including PayPal, 2Checkout.com and Authorize.net. This means all you need is to add your account information to the Candy Press system and BAM! you're ready to accept payments online via any of the available gateways. If one of the many gateways is not for you, then you can also add custom programming to integrate another payment option.

Inventory Tracking
Candy Press allows you to enter the inventory for any product that you place in the store. If you enable the inventory tracking feature, Candy Press will update your inventory as items sells and even send you emails when inventory levels start to run low. This is very useful if you are a self-publisher using Print on Demand.

Live Shipping Rate Quotes
Candy Press ships with the ability to allow your to calculate shipping by any method you wish. You can do it by price, by weight, offer free shipping etc. You can also enable live rate quotes from UPS, FedEx, Canada Post and the United States Postal Service (USPS). Enabling live quotes requires you note the weight of each item and then totals the weight for each item in the cart. It then fetches the correct shipping rate for each one of the services you have available.

In my store, I use USPS and my cart returns shipping quotes for Express Mail, Priority Mail, First Class Mail, Parcel Post and Media Mail. This coupled with PayPal allows me to quote rates based upon weight AND print postage without leaving the house.

Easy Modifications
Anyone with a little experience with ASP and VBScript, can easily modify the CandyPress cart to do almost anything you desire and wholly integrate it into any site. In fact, that's pretty much what I spend 40 hours a week doing at JLSMedia. This can be simple modifications such as changing the way that products are displayed to more complex modifications like adding a buy back program.

My buddy, Mike Hawthorne, has a web site that includes modifications that allow him to have a weekly updated feature (Dirty Girls) and weekday comic (Hysteria) and even a daily feature (Monster a Day). There is also his blog which is completed integrated with his Blogger.com blog and, of course, the fully featured shopping cart.

I've been involved in e-commerce since 1997 and have built e-commerce systems that have handled 300-400 orders a day. Candy Press is the most versatile and easily modified ASP shopping cart that I've come across.

If you're in need of an e-commerce consultation, contact JLSMedia and tell them that Jámal sent you.

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Why the Big Post Dump?

You may have notice that there are lots of new posts that are in fact old posts. The reason for that is I generally write 3-4 posts on the weekend and then set them for a future date without posting them. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't have a time system where you can post in the future, so I have to remember to come back and make the post active and I simply forgot.

As a result there are about 5-6 new posts from the last 2 weeks and a couple more still in cold storage. I'm working on a system to remedy this problem, but until then catch up on reading.

Back-ups the L Jamal Way

Regular back-ups are probably the one thing that most computer users just don't do. For a comic book creator of any type, back-ups should be one of the most important things that you do and they should happen as often as possible.

I do back-ups on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Daily - I back-up all my important drives. This includes mainly my work files and email.
Weekly - I archive the files that I completed during that week and back them up to CD and upload them to my storage web site.
Monthly - I back-up everything.

I don't have some fancy back-up program or anything like that. What I have is computer that I bought off of eBay for $100. I then bought a really large hard drive (at least 350 GB) and installed it into the computer. This computer serves as my file server.

I'm a Windows user, so I then wrote a simple DOS batch file that copies the mission critical drives to my file server on a daily basis. On a monthly basis, that same machine simply copies all the hard drives from my other 3 computers to my 4th computer. That's it. Done.

In addition to my file server I also utilize my web space. Web space has become extremely cheap and if you're like most people, you don't use more than 10-15% of the space that your web host allocates to you. I've signed up for what my web host (www.hostexellence.com) calls the Unlimited Business Account. For about $200/year, I get unlimited web space and I have decided to use some of that space as storage. So as I finish projects, I RAR then into a single file and I upload them to a special storage account on my hosted machine. This includes my self-published work as well as other work. I store my self published work permanently. All other work get deleted once it's 2-3 months old. This is what I call my off-site storage.

My off site storage takes up about 2.5 GB.
Most of this takes place late at night or other times when I'm not actively using my machine and if you're really clever, you can schedule all this to occur without you needing to be present AND have it email you when it's completed. I don't go to those extreme ends, but I've lost enough email and have had to redo enough work to know that you just can't ever back-up enough.