Before I get too far into this, let me first explain a few things about how I do drafts of Tiny Life.
After everything is written and drawn and inked and scanned and toned and lettered, I try to print a proof for myself to see how well it looks on paper versus how well it looks on screen. I’ve tried doing it at Kinko’s, but it costs a shitload of money (literally. I asked the guy how much it would cost to print a 20-page black and white pamphlet with color covers and he said, “Take a poop in your pants. That’s how much”). I’ve also tried calling around to various printing houses and it either costs about $100 or it’s free as long as you’re also printing a few thousand copies for distribution. At that point, I turned to the internet and found on-demand printing houses.
The best two I’ve found are Lulu and Ka-Blam; others, like Comicxpress have limited options and poor service. Instead of a long diatribe on each company, I figured I’d give you a point-by-point breakdown on the important issues:
1) Lulu’s interface is simple to use. Basically, after you’re done making a page (using Photoshop, Manga Studio, or simply scanning your originals as-is), you just upload it to their service. After you’re done, you can switch around pages, save the files to their servers for later use (which is awesome is you’re looking to make a TPB later), or reload a page if you’ve found a mistake.
Ka-Blam’s interface is simple once you’re used to it, but it takes a while to understand it. What you have to do is save all your files, then name them as pages in the comic (meaning, “cover.tif”, insidefrontcover.tif”, “page1.tif”, “page2.tif”, etc.) Then you have to save them as a zip file. Then you have to save them somewhere on the internet so that the Ka-Blam people can get to them. If you want to change just one thing – for instance, I spelled “parents” as “parants” in one issue – you have to do the whole process over again.
2) Turnaround time for Lulu is fairly quick. Usually, after I upload the comic to their servers, I can get a copy in my hands in a little over a week.
Turnaround time for Ka-Blam depends on how much you’re willing to pay. If you pay a premium, they say you can get it in just a few days. I paid the basic fee and got mine in about three weeks. This is perfect it you’re planning on completing five issues before publishing anything.
3) The cost for Lulu is outrageous. It costs more than $5.00 to print a 20-page comic. If you order several hundred, the cost moves down to just under $5.00 per book. They do, however, have a pretty good deal if you’re making a huge book. Tiny Life Demos, which includes pretty much all Tiny Life work until the 2008 publication, is more than 400 pages. It costs like twelve bucks to print.
The cost for Ka-Blam is amazing. It only costs like $1.40 per issue. This is awesome compared to pretty much any other printing house in North America (I’ve found cheaper in Hong Kong, but it’ll cost you another $20 to ship it over) – if you’re only looking to print a handful of issues, that is. This isn’t the best place to go if you’re looking for anything more than about 500 copies. Once you hit bulk like that, it’s time to make some phone calls. If you send out comp copies or multiple proofs, Ka-Blam is the place to go.
4) I only do black and white, so I can only speak for grayscale and grayscale users. In Lulu, black is BLACK and white is WHITE. This means that there are often bleeds on some of the lines (meaning that the line is thicker in some areas than I had intended) and the crosshatching can often bleed together making the page look a bit murky. The tones (the “dots”), however, look pretty good. I was very afraid that you might see a pattern instead of the tones (i.e.: it looks like a plaid sweater as opposed to a gray sweater that is in a dark room), but Lulu is very good about keeping their inks fresh.
In Ka-Blam, the lines do not bleed. Every thickness of every line is intact. However, I think because they use gray tones instead of strictly black (just a hypothesis), some of the dots interact at odd angles and a pattern sometimes emerges (the plaid sweater thing).
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Ka-Blam Print
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Lulu Print
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5) Lulu prints a product that feels like a magazine. It has a heavy paper (both on the cover and on the internal pages) and you can actually feel the ink impressions on the inside.
Ka-Blam feels like a comic. It has a comic-stock cover (70 lb., I think) and the internal pages are slightly better than newsprint (which is what I designed Tiny Life to be printed on).
Overall, here’s what I recommend:
Use Lulu to print proof copies. If you’re just printing one in order to find mistakes or to “see what it looks like,” then Lulu is your best shot. It’s quick, it’s efficient, but you have to keep in mind that your inking my look a little worse through this company and you have to keep in mind that if you order more than one or two copies, it’s just gonna piss you off (I ordered 10 copies one time and it cost like $60).
Use Ka-Blam if you’re all done with your drafts and you want to show other people. If you’re going to a small show (like SPX or SPACE) and want to sell a few copies, then Ka-Blam is your best shot. I think I’ll also be using it for back issue stock as well (that way I don’t have to order another “recommended” 20% of each issue and then store them forever).
My plan for Tiny Life involves making a few books simultaneously so that I can get it out as fast as possible. I don’t want to start that until I know it will be easily distributed and available. I also plan on making supplemental material for the website to help enhance everyone’s understanding and enjoyment of the basic concepts of Tiny Life (it also permits me to be a little more creative and abstract than the book allows). However, I also don’t want to start that until I know it will be easily distributed and available. 
So, instead, I’ve been fixing my driveway, finishing my basement and working on a website for my students. 
I don’t know that the stick figure will be very appealing. I mean, I still remember Stick Figure Theater on Liquid Television, which was great. With Tiny Life, it feels like a Radiohead music video, but I can’t see people really throwing down money it. It might be helpful if you produce a less than $1 preview, pointing out why it’s important to get on board, what makes the stick figure idea work. But honestly, as it is now, I can’t say that I’m interested.
Actually – and don’t tell anyone – I really don’t read comics that much anymore. I’ve tried to stay away from the repeated scenarios and stereotypical potshots that many comics take. How many times have you heard, “If you’re not with me, you’re against me,” or a powerful hero (or villain) scream, “That’s enough!”? I think, if you really think about it, the answer is higher than you care to relate. 
Writing is just a matter of creating three or more characters, establishing them, adding change and waiting to see what happens. In the first eleven pages you’ve established a depressed character deep in a rut while introducing, albeit off camera, his siblings. In an action adventure type story you’d want to start with the most exciting, adrenaline filled event in the book and go backwards or, preferably, forward from there. In a more slice-of-life tale, which is, I think, what you’re going for, real life emotions are recognized and established more easily and therefore the pacing has to be higher through the narratives. Ed Brubaker’s early auto-bio stories, before he became the big time writer he is now, when he had to draw his own stuff, paced the anecdotal tales so well that it worked, even though he didn’t win his first Eisner until he collaborated with an artist, Eric Shanower. Joe Matt’s auto-bio stories were extremely depressing, but they were bizarre enough that they developed a following. While Joe portrayed himself as self-absorbed, selfish, abusive and unlikable it was still entertaining to watch him betray his girlfriend to get some rare porn, which he obsessively edited, or an elusive reel for his Viewmaster collection.
2. You mentioned a couple times that this is a depressing work (or at least compared it to other depressing works). I don’t see it like that. Although l(a does chronicle a lonely spot in Jed’s life, I don’t think I would consider it depressing. This is really the point where Jed begins to wake up a little bit. One of the themes of the entire series is that Jed has to learn to function on his own, and in this book he begins to do that. Not as much as he will in Books 8 and 9, but still…
Again, this all comes from my, admittedly, limited experience. But, I do speak from some experience. I have developed and scripted many grand and epically sweeping stories, intended to go on for dozens, perhaps hundreds, of issues, and almost always I have been met with one comment: ‘Reduce the meat of your tale to a single six issue graphic novel. If we like it, we’ll publish. If it sells well, you can do more’.
I think, when you talk about how large Tiny Life is, you’re referring to the letter that accompanied the preview links. This first novel, l(a, is only 104 pages long. It’s a five-issue story arc. Although the series itself is set for around 3000 pages (and now that I look at it again, it might be closer to 2000 or 2500, depending on how much I can cram onto a page), there are 10 books in the series with varying lengths. 