How much does it cost?

[wrarkadie]

I've been inquiring around to my friends and other people who may know.
How much money does it cost to make to produce and distribute your own
comic book/ graphic novel? All I want are some rough
estimates. How much does it cost to get published, how much does it
cost to get printed off? Is gonna be real grass roots, so any information
is helpful. Thanks

[THE REAL kirk]

You may want to check into lulu.com. Looks like an interesting concept and may be helpful for your endeavor.

[SpydaWeb]

Yeah, I recommend lulu as well. Basically the Cafepress of book publishing.

[parrish]

I have heard good and bad things about http://www.comixpress.com/ so that might be worth a look, too. They have prices that show how much it would cost to print X amount of comics.

Peterson, didn't you use this for the first issue of Mouse Guard?

[Petersen]

I did use Comixpress for the black and white printing of Mouse Guard.

I haven't had much of any communication with them since August of '05.
The problem they were having was they were so popular as a service, they couldn't keep up with demand. I have heard that they turned around the backlog and are printing on schedule, but I don't have any experience with them lately.

I was pleased with the quality. I was pleased with the price, although the cost was ~$1.50 per b&w book. That worked fine for me when I was selling books from my table (I could price the books for $3) But the price a distrubutor or comic shop want to buy them for, so they make a profit, is less than the cost of the book.

They started printing larger books (perfect bound) recently, but I have not seen or priced one out.

[hellboyone]

Although if you're a quality stickler, these online services are good but not great and it depends on what the artwork looks like. Online services print from digital files so they're really friendly to inked black & white work.

I've seen some Lulu sketchbooks with pencil artwork and I thought they were subpar at best for the price.

[shonokin]

If the sketchbooks used the black and white settings I'd definately agree, since they will come out at best looking equivalent to maybe a 600 dpi laserprint. The black and white settings are really just for text-based books. At least I wouldn't use them for serious artwork printing.

Lulu's color settings are much better though and will print top quality stuff depending on the source material and how accurately it is formatted to a pdf/doc/rtf, etc. Of course there is a real increase in the price, but it's worth it for a full color interior.

And actually cafepress does also do books just like lulu and comixpress. I haven't seen anything made by cafepress or comixpress so can't comment on the quality.

Price-wise, it seems comixpress would be the most budget-friendly service for a big run.

[MackSztaba]

Thanks for all the info guys. I am looking into printing a small limited edition skethcbook of my B&W work.:D

[gdeo]

Good luck...these are great resources that i'll be checking out also.

[Petersen]

I'd say if you don't want it to have a comic format (including similar paper stock) to go with a copy shop.
Kinkos: I have been using them lately to do some printing of sample books and posters and I'm happy with the quality and price. Something to look into.

I also have a local print shop I deal with for work and they have always been helpful to bind/trim/copy/print and sort materials for me and they are usualy more helpful on price than the big guys too.