Question about comic printing companies
└ posted on Sunday, 19 November 2017, by Novil
I’m currently looking for (comic) printing companies located in the United States that also ship to end customers as part of their service. So far, I’ve contacted Ka-Blam, TopatoCo and 4th Dimension. I already eliminated the Print-on-Demand companies Lulu and CreateSpace from my consideration.
If anyone of you knows another potentially interesting printing company, please write a comment in the comment section below. Your input is very appreciated!
Not sure how the deal is eaxctly, but Ookoodook ships for Order of the Stick. Bet they know where it’s printed if it’s not even done by them as well. They even handle shipments to Europe, shopped at them a few times for OotS books.
lightningsource (https://www.ingramcontent.com/publishers/print/print-on-demand) is the print-on-demand source for Ingram. Once you set up the initial files and see a hard copy from them, they can print and ship to the end customer for each book in the future. I was checking them out for my latest illustration book, and their prices weren’t bad. I didn’t get to the stage of ordering a sample book, but Ingram is a pretty big publisher here in the States – they can’t be too bad.
plotholetsi wrote:
I’ve now read several comments that the quality of their “Standard Color” option is bad or at least inconsistent. And their “Premium Color” option is almost as expensive as Ka-Blam’s color option which is said to be of good, maybe even very good, quality.
Have you looked into Hiveworks Comics? They collaborated with recent Blindsprings and The Meek kickstarters, and the overall feedback was positive from all sides, afaik.
Vivid Publishing (http://www.vividpub.com/) was started by the creators of DreamKeepers to publish their own comics. They have recently published for a few other comics as well. I own all four volumes of their comic and the quality is excellent.
Cray Z. Bouy wrote:
They appear to be using Ka-Blam for printing.
What about PrintNinja (http://www.printninja.com/)? I think Erfworld printed their books with PrintNinja.
https://www.blackbox.cool/
They don’t print, but they handle everything else. You could print in China a lot cheaper and have it all sent to blackbox and they’ll handle the rest: The checkout process, credit card processing, customer service and the actual shipping.
Mana Wheel type event going on ???? (ref The Magic Goes Away).
Just for clarification: What exactly are you looking for? Low prices, good quality? Or some other qualities? Does createspace have too low royalties? Do you look for additional advertisement?
TopatoCo is best because not only do they do quality printing and ship directly, they have a massive base of followers nationwide who will check out and buy your print comic because they FOUND you through TopatoCo. I’ve done this myself, as the consumer.
@ 13xforever:
As a longtime fan of several of the webcomics currently under the Hiveworks banner, I believe that Print Ninja is who THEY use for their physical printing needs, at least on the Namesake comic kickstarters. And since I’ve backed all three of them at the physical item level, I can personally say that the hardback stuff is *really* good quality. Well constructed, consistent print colors, and they stand the test of time pretty well. I could be wrong about WHO it was using them, but I’ve heard “Print Ninja” in connection with “Good quality, price, and turnaround time”.
Not sure if they ship or not, but I heard good things about Image Comics + Top Cow Productions.
@ spas:
I’ve dealt with TopatoCo a couple of times, and I was favorably impressed with their products and service.
China Seven Color Group Co. Ltd. Xuancai Print is a professional manufacturer of various types of packaging and printing products, including color paper boxes, paper bags, instructional manuals, catalogs printing, book printing,packaging boxes, cards, tags, posters, gift boxes, playing cards, file folders and brochures. custom board book