Now that I’ve printed all sorts of comics on KDP, I have THOUGHTS, and I wanna share them with the folks who are also considering KDP for printing their comics! This post is targeted at full-color comics, but I may do a post on black and white comics at a later date if there’s interest. While this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of differences between color options and general information, feel free to leave questions and I can try to answer! ♥️ Strap in! This’ll be a long one! First off, KDP is hard to learn, especially for comics. The formatting is very specific and sometimes very infuriating. Your text goes one pixel out of the proper zone? Congrats, your file is rejected! After publishing a few books through KDP, I’ve started making my art with very generous margins to try and combat this. No matter what you do, you’ll have to finagle your files a lot. (Thanks for putting up with my anguished late night texts when KDP sends me another error email, Beth 🤣) Once you figure out how to assemble your files and what settings to use, it can be really fun to see everything come together. Not having to worry about overhead costs, packaging, and distribution for the books is really helpful, especially with how long comics already take to make! I’ve printed three graphic novels using premium color so far, and while I prefer the smooth, slightly shiny paper texture you get with premium color, the standard color option is perfectly serviceable and much more reasonably priced. Premium color generally reproduces your colors more accurately, BUT the higher quality will up your costs a lot. A 200 page paperback in standard color will run you around $8.05 to print (with a minimum list price around $13.45), meaning $20 is a reasonable list price. At that price you’ll earn around $3-4 in royalties per copy. A 200 page paperback in premium color, however, is about $14.85 to print, and the minimum list price is around $24.75. You’d have to charge at least $30 to make the same royalty per copy with premium color. This isn’t terribly unusual pricing, even with books from larger comic companies, but people will bat an eye at these prices. Oddly enough, Indie comics are expected to be less expensive than mainstream comics. For hardcovers you can generally expect to add at least $10 to that premium color price—coming out to about $40 for a 200 page book—and you’ll still earn about $3-4 per copy, at least in my experience. Standard color is not currently available for hardcovers on KDP. Trim size doesn’t affect pricing at all, by the way! That was something I wondered back when I started, hoping smaller trim sizes would save me some cash. It does not. 😂 (These prices aren’t exact of course, and may change or vary depending on when you’re reading this and where you’re from.) Some cons I’ve noticed with standard color books is that there is print banding in some places, and the papers in the front and back of the book are at risk of some nasty creasing, likely occurring during manufacturing. It isn’t awful, but it is something to be aware of. Planning your comic to have some sort of buffer or non-important pages (such as title or decorative pages, or just plain sheets) may help prevent your pretty art from getting crinkled. Lettering in standard color books suffers. There’s often a red offset on the text, and this offset or halo can also be visible in the art. On occasion it can make lines fuzzy. Blacks won’t be reproduced richly in standard color, and may give the art a washed-out appearance. This is due to standard color paper’s matte finish. It’s fairly close to copy paper, frankly. Other colors reproduce better than I expected though, and are fairly close to the premium colors, ignoring the dulled black ink. All that said, I don’t mind the results. I’ve seen worse, and you may not even run into all the same issues I’ve mentioned here. Remember, all of these tradeoffs can—and often are—reasonable for the price difference. It’s up to you. If you’re wanting to have a nice stock of author copies for cons or something, the standard color price is much more appealing and much less likely to make you weep the tears of a broken person…and wallet. Premium color is beautiful. It’s my preferred option budget-wise for paperbacks that are under 150 pages. I personally feel like page counts above 150 in premium color start getting a bit too expensive for most buyers, since you’ll likely need to charge $25-35 depending on how many pages are in your book. The paper is smooth and a bit thicker, more like what you might find in a trade published by the Big 2. The ink is glossy and vibrant, and the crisp line quality it gives in both the art and lettering is great. There’s a reason it’s the recommended option for comics! Good color reproduction. Their printers sometimes struggle a bit with reproducing blue tones, but that’s a very common issue across all printing. Their rich blues print more accurately than books done through Ka-Blam! Printing. I much, MUCH prefer KDP’s paperbacks over Ka-Blam! Printing’s paperbacks, despite Ka-Blam! being an easier company to work with in general. Now a quick bit on paperbacks vs hardcovers! (Which isn’t really comic-specific, but the information is a bit different for comics). I love both book types, though keep in mind that the trim sizes for hardcovers are much more limited than paperbacks, which you can even do custom trim sizes for. Hardcovers are bound really well and much sturdier…but with that solid binding comes a much narrower inside margin. You’ll probably need to add bigger margins in the middle, or you won’t be able to see the art or read the dialogue as easily! With paperbacks you can bend the book open wider with ease. KDP only offers case laminate hardcovers, though you could make custom dust jackets and offer those elsewhere if you really want. No doubt I’ve overlooked some info, but for now we’ll leave it at that. Got more questions about publishing comics with KDP? General comic questions or anything? Lemme know! ☺️ Thanks to anyone who made it through this mammoth! I hope it was helpful to anyone else out there who is having a hard time finding a decent print-on-demand place for paperbacks, or folks who can’t decide which color option to use.
All the best, -Lissie Dixon
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Lissie DixonArtist, author, general wearer of many hats. Creator of many things. Archives
February 2024
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