LOW COST PRINTING IS ON IT'S WAY!

So you have spent many hours creating the worlds next Spawn or X-men and you are going to sell 1 million copies! I hate to be the barer of bad news but this is hardly going to happen. In fact I have a better chance of having Captain Kirk in my kitchen making me dinner and Spock setting the table. Now I am not trying to burst your bubble, I am just being literal. Being Literal is something the comic book industry sorely needs, that and decent printing prices. So yes my entry today is about ungodly printing prices and what we at Blackline are doing to fix this ridiculous printing model everyone is forced to accept as being the norm.

Without going into great detail and a total rant, I am going to point out the problem and then the fix that we are hoping will take off, for the well being of the comic book industry. To date and for many years now printing prices within the comic book industry have been inflated. This is due to many reasons but the biggest reason is greed. I know there are plenty of printers out there that will argue that with me and will of course say I don't know what I am talking about. Trust me I have spoken with, or employees here at Blackline have spoken with many printing companies over the course of the last year. I have received around 65 quotes for printing from companies at all levels and with varying clientele. All I can say without pissing someone off is that it is no wonder creators are running to digital comic vendors to seek distribution of their titles. Now don't get me wrong I think digital comics are cool and we are releasing comics in digital form as well. Digital comics are the future whether older comic readers like me prefer them or not. That of course is a whole other conversation and maybe someday I will be brave enough to "GO THERE". For now though I want to focus on the fact that Indi creators can no longer afford to print their own books and make a living at comics. Well I should say that most cannot. There are some rare cases of Indi creators carving their own niche in the business and becoming very successful in the process and my hat goes off to them. Hell my hat goes off to any creator who has done their homework and created a GOOD comic or graphic novel. By the way I stress the word GOOD....

Anyhow let us look at some of the printing numbers proposed by just a couple of the notable printing houses now printing comics. We will look at quotes from a large company and the horrific on demand printing company. I will not be naming any specific companies or going through a laundry list of companies, but I will give 1 example of each and these will be the cheapest of the bunch.

Here is an example of a top level who's your daddy printing company that prints some of the most popular titles in comics. Now please note that these are obviously not the prices that they charge the "big guys" but then again we are not talking about the big guys here. We are talking about the guy that works nine to five or later and then comes home and shuts himself away from his family to create a funny book in hopes that it will make him a couple bucks, but most of all because he just plain loves the craft.

Sample Quote (based off an actual quote)

32 pages full color
Spot uv coating
$3.25 each, 3000 piece minimum = $9,750.00

I spared you paper types, measurements etc. If you have created a comic you should know this by now. The quality of paper on these quotes is for industry standard paper weights etc.

Now let us analyze this price. Never mind the fact that there are VERY few people who have an extra $9,750.00 lying around. Instead let us explore what effect this price has assuming that a creator does have the money to pay for this service.

Ok so you have deep pockets and you pay the almost $10,000 for 3000 books. You now have solicited your book to Diamond and it gets accepted for inclusion into Previews their distribution catalog. You should actually do this before printing but being that there is a 3000 piece minimum it does not matter what your pre-orders from Diamond are. Diamond sells your books to the retailers and takes about .31 per book as profit. Diamond also offers the retailer an average discount of about 50%. You are now down to a possible profit of under $1.50 per book, I am sure you noticed already that your potential profit is well below the $3.25 per book you were charged to print it. You have already lost right out of the gate. I know what your are thinking and that is that you are going to sell your book for $4.25 each to try and make up for the Distribution and retailer discount fees.

I say to you good luck! Imagine you are a comic book junky and you have $5.00 in your pocket due to our horrible economy and you are going to spend that last $5.00 on comics! You walk into your local comic shop and on the shelf you see Spider Man or any top 3 book priced at $3.00 and directly next to it you see the super cool looking first issue of xyz book by an unknown creator. Now the book looks great but the cover price is $4.25 and it is the first issue. Any collector worth their salt is not going to pay $1.25 more for a comic from an unknown creator and even more so if it is a first issue. Who knows if this new book is going to have an issue #2 there is no track record to prove that it is going to be a lasting series.

Collectors can no longer afford to buy books they normally don't and take a chance with what little money they have to begin with. Said collector is going to stick with what they know and purchase spider man and maybe a back issue with their Five dollars.

To recap, your profit after distribution and retailer discounts is about $1.50 a book. You must now subtract your printing cost of $3.25 a book. Possible profit is now at a negative $1.75 a book. Oh and some of these quotes do not include shipping which can be about $100 - $200 depending on the company and in some cases more. This is another deduction from your profit.

There obviously will be some exceptions to this example but most will fall in this category. That is if they can get a retailer to purchase their book to begin with. One thing that helps retailers take a chance on your new creation is being able to offer a better discount than they are used to. That as well is a whole other conversation.

Now for example #2 the on demand digital printer.

The numbers here are about the same and in some cases a few cents cheaper. The good things about these companies is that there is no cash outlay up front and people can order the books just like a burger at a fast food joint. But once again by the time the book gets to the buyer they may wish that they bought a burger at a fast food joint instead of your comic. I personally ordered a book from probably the most well known of these companies and the quality was excellent, not that of an offset printed book but great none the less. I could not believe the price though, it cost me almost $7.00 for one comic after they added the shipping cost to my order. I cannot see anyone accept friends, family, and maybe a major die hard collector paying these prices for 1 new comic. Another thing to consider is that your book will NEVER be collectible in the sense that you will have to leave it available on one of these on demand websites for ever to sell enough copies to make it sought after and highly pursued which will never happen because they are too expensive.

So there you go, most of you creators out there may know this info and I hope you do. If you didn't well you do now. Some of these numbers are obviously not going to be the same for every situation but they are a general outline of what is going on and what you can expect. This horrible way of doing business has it's upsides like keeping the shelves clear of crap people don't want to read and making it harder for the really great books to stand out. Many people are moving towards just digital distribution because it is cost effective and the marketability of book is really timeless. There are many great qualities to the digital model. That again is another conversation.

This brings me to my point of this whole posting or rambling if that is what you want to call it.

Through extensive research and multiple potential deals, deals, and deals that fell apart we have taken the printing of comics into our own hands. Earlier today we completed our L.L.C. paper work forming our second business venture. Our second company that is a completely separate company from Blackline Comics is a printing company. Our goal is to offer low cost quality printing with low minimums to anyone who can afford the service. We understand that there is a balance that needs to be kept within any industry and that high cost printing acts as a filter to ensure that the quality of comic books available to fans is of the highest. However we also feel that there are a ton of creators out there that are creating amazing comics that will never see the light of day due to the costs associated with production and distribution. So we will be launching our printing service within the next 3 months. This service will be in the form of another website with no Blackline branding and will exist as a separate entity with a completely new staff that is already in place. We realize that there are other companies out there offering great prices and our hat is off to them. We just feel we need to be a part of helping to keep the printed comic alive as well as pioneering the digital age of comics. This is further proof that we are in this for the long haul. Our strategy in building these companies is not to merely be time tellers, but clock builders. To build companies that will stand the test of time. Thank you for reading my grammatically error riddled post.