Ready to Print! Did that "clickbait" title get you all excited that this project might be nearing completion? Well... now that I've got you lured in let me clarify that while I am indeed personally excited and more than ready to get issue #1 of "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..." off to the printer... me being ready to print does not equate to the comic book being "print ready." For that to happen there's the minor little detail of finishing making all of the art and story. Just a little formality there. A teensy formality that'll just take 5 or 6 hundred more hours. We'll get there!
In the meanwhile, envisioning the finish line is a great way to stay motivated, and planning ahead isn't a bad idea either! At the time of my last project update (#16), I mentioned a couple orders I'd recently placed, the most important being a sample package from the printing service I'll most likely be producing "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..." through, an outfit known as Print Ninja.
Well, that package arrived as you may have already seen in my recent Appics post. Yep. That's a ninja mask that I just had to put on, which came in some nice "NinjaClass Mail" packaging complete with an admonition to resist hugging your postal carrier. And a sweet ass sword pen complete with its own scabbard. Print Ninja knows how to market and win over my geeky, childish heart.
After playing with my new toys for a little while (ok, maybe an embarrassingly long amount of time...) I delved into the meat of the package, the samples themselves! Also pictured are a couple Square credit card readers I ordered around the same time in preparation for conventions later this year. (Gotta be able to take that money!)
The sample kit consisted of several examples of comics printed through Print Ninja as well as a booklet of paper samples. The production on everything was very high quality and showed a good range of paper types and printing styles. Prior to shipping out the package, a representative from the company had also reached out to ask for any requests. As I'm hoping to do a "blank sketch cover" variant as well; they were happy to include a sample of such a comic.
All of the provided samples come labelled with the exact specifications of the project so that you can fully understand what you're looking at. For further detail the paper sample booklet can be consulted for an even wider array of weights and finishes. This book shows several styles of art on each type of paper to help demonstrate the way different materials may convey the inks, color, and saturation. It also doubles as a flipbook with the reverse being a Printing Setup Guide that has some incredible useful tips on file preparation, project planning, and samples of some of Print Ninja's enhancement options like spot UV and Foil.
If any of you fellow paper fetishists are out there and want to know the details... in the end I'm planning to print an 85lb cover, with 70lb gloss interiors. I was tempted to do a lighter weight as a lot of the design and styling of "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..." is evocative of my own "golden age" of discovering comics in the late 1980's. If I were to replicate that era more closely, we'd be looking at some simple, lightweight newsprint. But those papers have largely been moved away from, as advances in technology allowed for much more detail and better colors to be printed. The lower grade papers just won't convey the vibrance that I'd like to try and capture in this post apocalyptic fantasy world!
With that information in hand, I've been able to fine tune my printing quote. "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..." #1 will be a 36 page full color comic book. The Fundition Campaign currently running to help crowdfund this endeavor has always been planned for a minimum 2000 copy print run which could be enlarged or have variants added if stretch goals are met.
The currently quoted price works out to approximately $1.34 per copy, which is actually quite good. When I last self published a comic almost 15 years ago, I paid the same price for less pages, worse paper, and only black and white... not full color! Things have come a long way. The comic will most likely carry a cover price of $3.99 which is typical in today's market. This will leave me a decent margin for direct sales, and still enable me to sell to retailers or even through a distributor at some point. Those businesses will typically purchase copies in quantity at 50-60% off the cover price. That's why it is so important to print in quantity when hoping to approach those channels at all. At lower print runs a publisher needs to set the cover price extraordinarily high, or be ok with actually losing money on each copy sold through retailers, using that channel as promotion instead of revenue!
These quotes can apparently be locked in approximately 90 days in advance of the actual printing. "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..." is 1-2 months further out than that, so while this could change, I can only hope pricing won't climb due to any adverse conditions in the next few months.
The Fundition Campaign is going very well, but is going to require me being a bit more active about it as "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..." moves closer to production! I hope to alternate between behind the scenes "business" posts such as this one, and more creative art previews and possibly contests in the months to come. In the meantime, be sure to follow 
Take care! I hope you're enjoying the day by appreciating some paper and pretending you're a ninja. (What? Not everybody does that!?!)
- Bryan "the Imp" Imhoff
This is an official Fundition campaign update post to help fund the publication of the independent comic "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..." meaning your votes alone can help you earn rewards like a free copy of the comic and more! For more information check out https://fundition.io/ and the prior update articles for "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..."!
| 
| 
| 