By Paul Daughetee
At the end of the second part of this article on the Production Office, we had created an Adobe InDesign document that contained all 32 pages of your comic. Your comic book is almost done—isn’t it!?
THE BEGINNING OF THE END – It’s critical that before you go any further, you verify that everything about your comic is as you want it to be. Use the EXPORT feature of InDesign to export a PDF of your comic for review. When exporting, set the Adobe PDF Preset option to High Quality Print. Use the defaults for this preset and hit the Export button. The result is a PDF file that your local printer will be able to use to run off a small number of proofs for you and your team to review.
PROOFREADING – Realistically, you’ve been all over this book from the beginning and you’re sure that everything is perfect—and it may very well be. But this is the document you’re going to be sending off to be printed or for online distribution. My advice is to take your new proofs and proofread them forwards and backwards and then give it to others so that you can get some fresh eyes on it. If it’s NOT perfect, now is the time to find out—not after you had 4000 copies printed and shipped.
OOPS, FOUND MISTAKES – Okay, it happens. But aren’t you glad you found them? If you’ve gotten to this point using Adobe InDesign, it’s relatively easy to fix the mistakes. Simply address the issues on a page by page basis and copy the corrected pages into your document’s working folder. InDesign will see that files have been changed when you open your InDesign document and you will be asked if you want to update the links that link to those files. Simply answer yes. Now it’s time to export to a PDF and proofread your book one more time to verify that all of your changes were picked up in your new PDF. When you’re satisfied that your book is error free and as close to finished as you can make it, it’s time to get the product out the door.
THE PRODUCT – It’s time to decide what the product is going to be. Are you going to do a small run of 100 issues or less? Are you looking to distribute your comic book online? Maybe you have an outlet for your books and you’re ready to run off 1,000 copies or more. Each of these options have different requirements for the final product and it will take some research on your part to nail down exactly what your next step is going to be.
ONLINE DISTRIBUTION – There are a lot of outlets these days for online distribution of your comics. Kymera Press uses comiXology Submit to distribute our books. Go here to find out how to format your book so that it meets their criteria. The primary difference to what we’ve covered up to this point and the format for comiXology Submit is that all of your pages should be in RGB mode rather than CMYK. Before you do submit to someone for online distribution, thoroughly investigate the site to make sure that you retain ALL rights to your materials. It’s also in your best interest to verify that any distribution deal you make is non-exclusive so that when opportunity knocks, you’re free to answer the door.
PRINT DISTRIBUTION – If you’re hoping to get your book in your local comic book store, you don’t have a lot of options. You can go it alone and hit the road with a trunk full of your books and personally visit comic book stores in and around your area. If you go this route, you’ll be selling directly to store owners. Otherwise, you’ll need to get distribution through Diamond Comic Distributors. They’re the only game in town for worldwide distribution.
It’s possible to submit directly to Diamond. If they like what they see, they will add your book to their monthly catalog PREVIEWS which goes to all the comic book outlets. If you’re interested in reading more about their process check out this link.
The other route to distribution through Diamond is to submit to one of the independent publishers such as Image Comics. You can check out Image’s submission guidelines here. They’ll be handling your distribution through Diamond if they pick up your book.
PRINTING – So you’ve got your book finished and have decided to get it printed. The next step is to figure out how many books you want printed. If you’re handling distribution yourself, you may want to print a small quantity until you see how the book is selling. You’ll pay significantly more per copy going this route but your initial cash outlay will be much smaller. Once you’ve identified a company to print your small quantity, work directly with them to identify how they want your book formatted. Generally, they’ll be fine with the PDF format we’ve discussed but they may want it in an RGB mode rather than CMYK.
If you’re looking at larger quantities, you’ll need to find a commercial offset printing firm to print your books. Look for one that has experience printing comic books and work directly with them to identify how to prepare your book for their presses. Typically, they’ll want a PDF prepared in CMYK mode, but each company will have their own requirements which you’ll need to follow to the letter.
Kymera Press is using Marquis (formerly LeBonfon) and we’re very satisfied with the results to this date. One advantage of using a firm like Marquis is that they have an existing relationship with Diamond. When Diamond has orders for your book, they’ll contact Marquis and have the books printed and drop-shipped directly from Marquis. If you would like to get a quote from them, go here and submit your PDF for evaluation.
CONGRATULATIONS! – So you made it this far and you’re holding a printed copy of your creation. Nothing left to do but promotion, publicity, packaging, building the brand and of course… finishing the next one.
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