In the tradition of Kez, who is often more honest than she should be, here is my review of Ka-blam…in partial story format.

So, firstly, there’s this long-time digital artist named Kez. Now, this Kez person, she has never really made anything for print. Her main comic cannot even BE printed, because she designed it that way, because it’s meant to be a webcomic only (infinite canvas and all that jazz!).  But, Kez wanted something to sell. How could she go to a comic convention, or in her case an arts festival, AS a comic artist, if she did not have comics to sell or show? (She couldn’t, because then she’d be a poser, and no one buys anything from posers, unless she had a mad-cool digital set up with a projector, which she can’t afford, so that doesn’t matter anyways.)

Well, Kez had this convenient little short-story with which to experiment in print called Not Alone. Not Alone capped out at 49 pages, with a 3 page epilogue. It was grayscale. It was a stand-alone comic that also was related to her other, longer, work, The War of Winds.

So, Kez headed over to Ka-Blam because she wanted an on-demand printing, no minimum. She wanted people who handled COMICS. On a regular basis. Kez got what she asked for!

Enough of the third person.  Overall, I had a very positive experience with Ka-Blam. There were a couple problems starting off though. First, there was some really ODD quirk on the order page. No matter what I ordered, it said I ordered something ELSE. After a day of biting my nails, “Holy heck, do they know what I want? Was I sent the wrong invoice, but they got the right one?” I grabbed hold of myself. Rule one of spending money: you have a right to have your fears allayed.

So I sent in an email asking what was up using their message center. I guess I was the first one to mention this problem, because they had me order everything AGAIN, asked again if I followed their instructions, and then finally they just let me SEND them a message for what I wanted. That whole process took about a week. Since I was on a tight schedule, I began to freak out a bit.  They want 4-5 weeks for normal printing costs, and all the sudden, I was down to THREE. And Kez realized this, and Kez spazzed.  So, if you’re considering your own print run, give yourself a good 6 weeks of room.  Good news, they get back to emails within a day, sometimes multiple times a day. That’s good service at a small company!

But the Ka-Blam folks realized this was their goof, and offered a rushed printing job at no cost to me. Which I appreciated, because I would have asked them if they had not offered. It wasn’t my fault, even if I should have given myself more time in case something went wrong. I assume they have since corrected this ordering goof.

Kez will now admit to some REALLY STUPID GOOFS she made in ordering. First, the order sheet at Ka-Blam. I went for the Trade Paperback, Standard Sized, Perfect Binding. Now, I’ve always had issues filling out paperwork. Ka-Blam was no different.

Okay, I swear I stared at that field for 10 full minutes. By 2-page increments, I took this to mean “sheets.” Okay, number of pages divided by 2= how many sheets of paper you are going to need. Keep in mind that the more paper you need, the more expensive the final order, obviously. But nooooooo. This means actual PAGES.  Numbered pages. Uh duh. The 2-page increment thing REALLY tripped me up (I don’t even want to think about how many emails were sent with me sounding like a dumbass about that!). I would suggest that be changed to an extremely simple “If each page, not counting the covers, were numbered, how many pages would you have?” Obviously if it’s an odd number, the back of that page will still be there, it’ll just be blank. Feel free to ignore me if I’m just being totally dense. Yes, I was one of those kids who always over-thought questions. It’s a habit I’m trying to break. The Ka-blam staff dealt with my idiocy however and refrained from yelling at me. I know they wanted to. I could feel it. I don’t feel too bad though, since I dropped a bucket-load of money off at their place. Dealing with customers, regardless of their intelligence, paranoia or neurotic tendencies, is part of the business. I deal with it myself on a daily basis. If one more person asks me how to insert a link into a post, I swear I will scream.

ANYWAYS.  So, I received my books today! I ordered them June 14, they arrived July 8th. I received a digital proof of the page order and set up on June 24. For 50 paperback books, 56 pages long, color cover with lamination, blank inside covers, Ka-Blam full page ad, and 70# glossy paper inside with grayscale comic pages, the price was $349.43 ($324.25 Printing Cost + $25.18 S&H -$20.00 in credits, I think for the ordering goof, but I’m not going to count that here since I don’t think anyone else would get the credits when they ordered), meaning each book cost me ~$7.00.  I actually had my math wrong before when I was calculating price per book (to sell) on my end. I was going to sell it for $10 even. I may go for $9 now, maybe even $8.50. Not sure!  I still don’t know myself how much people will spend on this little book of mine. I will have to sleep on it.

So how about the quality? It’s….good. Not top quality, but rather good. I’ve heard complaints that pages fall out on perfect bound books. I personally have not had that experience. I own another book from Ka-Blam, Kate Sweet’s Juathuur Vol 1 actually. It is 100+ pages, and all of the pages are in there quite solidly.  I even pulled on a couple to be sure. I could easily see volumes a couple of hundred pages long have that issue, however. I have paperback novels that do that, but only the big ones. Barb Jacobs mentioned that people are much more satisfied with their saddle-stitch comics (staples).

My biggest issue with Ka-Blam is their lamination on the covers. It comes off, starts to peel after a bit. I personally like to play with covers, fiddle with them as I read, so that does not help matters. On Kate  Sweet’s book that I own, the lamination also started to come up a bit around the spine.  This does not affect readability, but it greatly irks me as an artist. I think next time, I will go with hardcover. It is also important to note that upon closer inspection, not all books are the same size, and the trim area can differ between books by a margin of 1/8 inch. So, some books are taller than others, and some are wider. Make sure your bleed area is uniform, or at the very least, that you have no unfinished art IN the bleed area. Sometimes it can show up.

The box I received was also battered to hell. It was basically ROUND when it arrived. No more corners. The top 5 books in the pile all had their spines squished. I guess I’ll keep those as give-aways? However, the books were nicely packed in bubble wrap inside, with some extra shredded paper padding.  Care was obviously taken, though I would have greatly appreciated a sturdier box, or a “do not drop-kick me into an airplane” tag.

In conclusion, for the customer service and quality, Ka-Blam gets an 8/10. They held up their end of the deal, corrected and took responsibility for their goof, dealt with ME, and earned my respect as a great place for the beginner/self-publishing comic creator. I think they still have some real issues to work out with quality, but for their prices and exemplary service, I would highly recommend them.

Here’s a few more important things I learned doing this:

1) Design for print from the beginning if that is your goal. Frankly, I’m one of them “weirdos” who thinks the web has far more to offer a comic creator than print. I had never tailored my pages to print dimensions before.  I didn’t even decide to print Not Alone until I was more than half-way through. This meant I had to REFORMAT all the pages, which took 16 hours a day for 8 days straight. Now, imagine doing that with a longer work. It was quite horrible, and I don’t recommend that.

2) If printing in color, keep in mind the colors will be DARKER in print. Lighten them up a bit from what you see on your screen to get them the right lightness in print.

3) Work between 300-600 dpi. 150 dpi is the so-called minimum, but it will probably look horrible, especially if you’ve got color or gradients of any sort. Gradients look best at 600dpi or above in print or else you’ll get “stepping (visible bands).”

4) Get friends to proof read for you. Sarah Sawyer of The Gods’ Pack was the only one of three to catch a typo I missed myself–after reading the whole thing through about 50 times.

5) Give yourself PLENTY of time in case something goes wrong. If Ka-Blam wants 4-5 weeks, next time I want to be done with 6-8 weeks to spare. Keep in mind the second printing job goes faster if they already have your files though.

6) Read the technical specs VERY carefully to make sure you are doing everything right. Ka-Blam provides templates. Download them. They are invaluable. Pay special attention to the file format they want. Ka-Blam wants LZW-compressed TIFF files in RGB mode. Most places want PDFs in CMYK. Keep this mind!

I’ll be posting a video on youtube tonight that has a bit more about the books, as well as other stuff I’m doing to prepare for the festival. My youtube account is here. If you have any questions, let me know!

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Okay, a short follow-up here. I started sending out my books about a week ago, and have noticed a few issues/received a few complaints. First, I’ve found 2 misprints in my order of 50 books. If each book cost me $7, that $14 down the tube (and I WILL be asking for credits, as these misprints were not my fault).  This misprint was, for example, page 12, blank page, half of page 32 upside-down, blank page, blank page, page 13.  Second, it seems there is an issue with the perfect binding and pages falling out. One reader let me know that because of how he holds the books (thumb in the inside binding) it has caused some splitting. Because of these issues, I’m revising my score of Ka-Blam from 8/10 to 7/10, and highly recommending them for saddle-stitch binding, but only moderately recommending them for perfect binding.

Second, a VERY IMPORTANT TIP FOR PEOPLE AUTOGRAPHING THEIR BOOKS: Do NOT use gel pens. They smear and can ruin a copy. Use sharpies.

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A second follow-up (Dec 2009): I ordered a second batch of books from Ka-Blam, again with short notice, since I seem incapable of planning things out. I used the “reorder” option, and was flabbergasted to find the books were all on the wrong paper! I had to email to find out they could NO LONGER PRINT on the thicker paper stock that I loved in my original order. Not only did they not notify me of their inability to print on the paper that I wanted, but I had to notice this myself and ask for a refund on the price difference–which was sizable. I worry that I might never have received the refund if I had not asked. The Ka-Blam folks are VERY nice and helpful, but seemingly very disorganized. I do not think I will be ordering from them again. I do want to order more books if they can’t print on the right paper for my book.