Lulu vs. Ka-Blam

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). 

Ka-Blam Print	Lulu Print

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).