Blackline Comics Co-founder and comic book artist, Jay Savage showcases his art and thoughts for the world!!
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
LOW COST PRINTING IS ON IT'S WAY!
So you have spent many hours creating the worlds next Spawn or X-men and you are going to sell 1 million copies! I hate to be the barer of bad news but this is hardly going to happen. In fact I have a better chance of having Captain Kirk in my kitchen making me dinner and Spock setting the table. Now I am not trying to burst your bubble, I am just being literal. Being Literal is something the comic book industry sorely needs, that and decent printing prices. So yes my entry today is about ungodly printing prices and what we at Blackline are doing to fix this ridiculous printing model everyone is forced to accept as being the norm.
Without going into great detail and a total rant, I am going to point out the problem and then the fix that we are hoping will take off, for the well being of the comic book industry. To date and for many years now printing prices within the comic book industry have been inflated. This is due to many reasons but the biggest reason is greed. I know there are plenty of printers out there that will argue that with me and will of course say I don't know what I am talking about. Trust me I have spoken with, or employees here at Blackline have spoken with many printing companies over the course of the last year. I have received around 65 quotes for printing from companies at all levels and with varying clientele. All I can say without pissing someone off is that it is no wonder creators are running to digital comic vendors to seek distribution of their titles. Now don't get me wrong I think digital comics are cool and we are releasing comics in digital form as well. Digital comics are the future whether older comic readers like me prefer them or not. That of course is a whole other conversation and maybe someday I will be brave enough to "GO THERE". For now though I want to focus on the fact that Indi creators can no longer afford to print their own books and make a living at comics. Well I should say that most cannot. There are some rare cases of Indi creators carving their own niche in the business and becoming very successful in the process and my hat goes off to them. Hell my hat goes off to any creator who has done their homework and created a GOOD comic or graphic novel. By the way I stress the word GOOD....
Anyhow let us look at some of the printing numbers proposed by just a couple of the notable printing houses now printing comics. We will look at quotes from a large company and the horrific on demand printing company. I will not be naming any specific companies or going through a laundry list of companies, but I will give 1 example of each and these will be the cheapest of the bunch.
Here is an example of a top level who's your daddy printing company that prints some of the most popular titles in comics. Now please note that these are obviously not the prices that they charge the "big guys" but then again we are not talking about the big guys here. We are talking about the guy that works nine to five or later and then comes home and shuts himself away from his family to create a funny book in hopes that it will make him a couple bucks, but most of all because he just plain loves the craft.
Sample Quote (based off an actual quote)
32 pages full color
Spot uv coating
$3.25 each, 3000 piece minimum = $9,750.00
I spared you paper types, measurements etc. If you have created a comic you should know this by now. The quality of paper on these quotes is for industry standard paper weights etc.
Now let us analyze this price. Never mind the fact that there are VERY few people who have an extra $9,750.00 lying around. Instead let us explore what effect this price has assuming that a creator does have the money to pay for this service.
Ok so you have deep pockets and you pay the almost $10,000 for 3000 books. You now have solicited your book to Diamond and it gets accepted for inclusion into Previews their distribution catalog. You should actually do this before printing but being that there is a 3000 piece minimum it does not matter what your pre-orders from Diamond are. Diamond sells your books to the retailers and takes about .31 per book as profit. Diamond also offers the retailer an average discount of about 50%. You are now down to a possible profit of under $1.50 per book, I am sure you noticed already that your potential profit is well below the $3.25 per book you were charged to print it. You have already lost right out of the gate. I know what your are thinking and that is that you are going to sell your book for $4.25 each to try and make up for the Distribution and retailer discount fees.
I say to you good luck! Imagine you are a comic book junky and you have $5.00 in your pocket due to our horrible economy and you are going to spend that last $5.00 on comics! You walk into your local comic shop and on the shelf you see Spider Man or any top 3 book priced at $3.00 and directly next to it you see the super cool looking first issue of xyz book by an unknown creator. Now the book looks great but the cover price is $4.25 and it is the first issue. Any collector worth their salt is not going to pay $1.25 more for a comic from an unknown creator and even more so if it is a first issue. Who knows if this new book is going to have an issue #2 there is no track record to prove that it is going to be a lasting series.
Collectors can no longer afford to buy books they normally don't and take a chance with what little money they have to begin with. Said collector is going to stick with what they know and purchase spider man and maybe a back issue with their Five dollars.
To recap, your profit after distribution and retailer discounts is about $1.50 a book. You must now subtract your printing cost of $3.25 a book. Possible profit is now at a negative $1.75 a book. Oh and some of these quotes do not include shipping which can be about $100 - $200 depending on the company and in some cases more. This is another deduction from your profit.
There obviously will be some exceptions to this example but most will fall in this category. That is if they can get a retailer to purchase their book to begin with. One thing that helps retailers take a chance on your new creation is being able to offer a better discount than they are used to. That as well is a whole other conversation.
Now for example #2 the on demand digital printer.
The numbers here are about the same and in some cases a few cents cheaper. The good things about these companies is that there is no cash outlay up front and people can order the books just like a burger at a fast food joint. But once again by the time the book gets to the buyer they may wish that they bought a burger at a fast food joint instead of your comic. I personally ordered a book from probably the most well known of these companies and the quality was excellent, not that of an offset printed book but great none the less. I could not believe the price though, it cost me almost $7.00 for one comic after they added the shipping cost to my order. I cannot see anyone accept friends, family, and maybe a major die hard collector paying these prices for 1 new comic. Another thing to consider is that your book will NEVER be collectible in the sense that you will have to leave it available on one of these on demand websites for ever to sell enough copies to make it sought after and highly pursued which will never happen because they are too expensive.
So there you go, most of you creators out there may know this info and I hope you do. If you didn't well you do now. Some of these numbers are obviously not going to be the same for every situation but they are a general outline of what is going on and what you can expect. This horrible way of doing business has it's upsides like keeping the shelves clear of crap people don't want to read and making it harder for the really great books to stand out. Many people are moving towards just digital distribution because it is cost effective and the marketability of book is really timeless. There are many great qualities to the digital model. That again is another conversation.
This brings me to my point of this whole posting or rambling if that is what you want to call it.
Through extensive research and multiple potential deals, deals, and deals that fell apart we have taken the printing of comics into our own hands. Earlier today we completed our L.L.C. paper work forming our second business venture. Our second company that is a completely separate company from Blackline Comics is a printing company. Our goal is to offer low cost quality printing with low minimums to anyone who can afford the service. We understand that there is a balance that needs to be kept within any industry and that high cost printing acts as a filter to ensure that the quality of comic books available to fans is of the highest. However we also feel that there are a ton of creators out there that are creating amazing comics that will never see the light of day due to the costs associated with production and distribution. So we will be launching our printing service within the next 3 months. This service will be in the form of another website with no Blackline branding and will exist as a separate entity with a completely new staff that is already in place. We realize that there are other companies out there offering great prices and our hat is off to them. We just feel we need to be a part of helping to keep the printed comic alive as well as pioneering the digital age of comics. This is further proof that we are in this for the long haul. Our strategy in building these companies is not to merely be time tellers, but clock builders. To build companies that will stand the test of time. Thank you for reading my grammatically error riddled post.
Without going into great detail and a total rant, I am going to point out the problem and then the fix that we are hoping will take off, for the well being of the comic book industry. To date and for many years now printing prices within the comic book industry have been inflated. This is due to many reasons but the biggest reason is greed. I know there are plenty of printers out there that will argue that with me and will of course say I don't know what I am talking about. Trust me I have spoken with, or employees here at Blackline have spoken with many printing companies over the course of the last year. I have received around 65 quotes for printing from companies at all levels and with varying clientele. All I can say without pissing someone off is that it is no wonder creators are running to digital comic vendors to seek distribution of their titles. Now don't get me wrong I think digital comics are cool and we are releasing comics in digital form as well. Digital comics are the future whether older comic readers like me prefer them or not. That of course is a whole other conversation and maybe someday I will be brave enough to "GO THERE". For now though I want to focus on the fact that Indi creators can no longer afford to print their own books and make a living at comics. Well I should say that most cannot. There are some rare cases of Indi creators carving their own niche in the business and becoming very successful in the process and my hat goes off to them. Hell my hat goes off to any creator who has done their homework and created a GOOD comic or graphic novel. By the way I stress the word GOOD....
Anyhow let us look at some of the printing numbers proposed by just a couple of the notable printing houses now printing comics. We will look at quotes from a large company and the horrific on demand printing company. I will not be naming any specific companies or going through a laundry list of companies, but I will give 1 example of each and these will be the cheapest of the bunch.
Here is an example of a top level who's your daddy printing company that prints some of the most popular titles in comics. Now please note that these are obviously not the prices that they charge the "big guys" but then again we are not talking about the big guys here. We are talking about the guy that works nine to five or later and then comes home and shuts himself away from his family to create a funny book in hopes that it will make him a couple bucks, but most of all because he just plain loves the craft.
Sample Quote (based off an actual quote)
32 pages full color
Spot uv coating
$3.25 each, 3000 piece minimum = $9,750.00
I spared you paper types, measurements etc. If you have created a comic you should know this by now. The quality of paper on these quotes is for industry standard paper weights etc.
Now let us analyze this price. Never mind the fact that there are VERY few people who have an extra $9,750.00 lying around. Instead let us explore what effect this price has assuming that a creator does have the money to pay for this service.
Ok so you have deep pockets and you pay the almost $10,000 for 3000 books. You now have solicited your book to Diamond and it gets accepted for inclusion into Previews their distribution catalog. You should actually do this before printing but being that there is a 3000 piece minimum it does not matter what your pre-orders from Diamond are. Diamond sells your books to the retailers and takes about .31 per book as profit. Diamond also offers the retailer an average discount of about 50%. You are now down to a possible profit of under $1.50 per book, I am sure you noticed already that your potential profit is well below the $3.25 per book you were charged to print it. You have already lost right out of the gate. I know what your are thinking and that is that you are going to sell your book for $4.25 each to try and make up for the Distribution and retailer discount fees.
I say to you good luck! Imagine you are a comic book junky and you have $5.00 in your pocket due to our horrible economy and you are going to spend that last $5.00 on comics! You walk into your local comic shop and on the shelf you see Spider Man or any top 3 book priced at $3.00 and directly next to it you see the super cool looking first issue of xyz book by an unknown creator. Now the book looks great but the cover price is $4.25 and it is the first issue. Any collector worth their salt is not going to pay $1.25 more for a comic from an unknown creator and even more so if it is a first issue. Who knows if this new book is going to have an issue #2 there is no track record to prove that it is going to be a lasting series.
Collectors can no longer afford to buy books they normally don't and take a chance with what little money they have to begin with. Said collector is going to stick with what they know and purchase spider man and maybe a back issue with their Five dollars.
To recap, your profit after distribution and retailer discounts is about $1.50 a book. You must now subtract your printing cost of $3.25 a book. Possible profit is now at a negative $1.75 a book. Oh and some of these quotes do not include shipping which can be about $100 - $200 depending on the company and in some cases more. This is another deduction from your profit.
There obviously will be some exceptions to this example but most will fall in this category. That is if they can get a retailer to purchase their book to begin with. One thing that helps retailers take a chance on your new creation is being able to offer a better discount than they are used to. That as well is a whole other conversation.
Now for example #2 the on demand digital printer.
The numbers here are about the same and in some cases a few cents cheaper. The good things about these companies is that there is no cash outlay up front and people can order the books just like a burger at a fast food joint. But once again by the time the book gets to the buyer they may wish that they bought a burger at a fast food joint instead of your comic. I personally ordered a book from probably the most well known of these companies and the quality was excellent, not that of an offset printed book but great none the less. I could not believe the price though, it cost me almost $7.00 for one comic after they added the shipping cost to my order. I cannot see anyone accept friends, family, and maybe a major die hard collector paying these prices for 1 new comic. Another thing to consider is that your book will NEVER be collectible in the sense that you will have to leave it available on one of these on demand websites for ever to sell enough copies to make it sought after and highly pursued which will never happen because they are too expensive.
So there you go, most of you creators out there may know this info and I hope you do. If you didn't well you do now. Some of these numbers are obviously not going to be the same for every situation but they are a general outline of what is going on and what you can expect. This horrible way of doing business has it's upsides like keeping the shelves clear of crap people don't want to read and making it harder for the really great books to stand out. Many people are moving towards just digital distribution because it is cost effective and the marketability of book is really timeless. There are many great qualities to the digital model. That again is another conversation.
This brings me to my point of this whole posting or rambling if that is what you want to call it.
Through extensive research and multiple potential deals, deals, and deals that fell apart we have taken the printing of comics into our own hands. Earlier today we completed our L.L.C. paper work forming our second business venture. Our second company that is a completely separate company from Blackline Comics is a printing company. Our goal is to offer low cost quality printing with low minimums to anyone who can afford the service. We understand that there is a balance that needs to be kept within any industry and that high cost printing acts as a filter to ensure that the quality of comic books available to fans is of the highest. However we also feel that there are a ton of creators out there that are creating amazing comics that will never see the light of day due to the costs associated with production and distribution. So we will be launching our printing service within the next 3 months. This service will be in the form of another website with no Blackline branding and will exist as a separate entity with a completely new staff that is already in place. We realize that there are other companies out there offering great prices and our hat is off to them. We just feel we need to be a part of helping to keep the printed comic alive as well as pioneering the digital age of comics. This is further proof that we are in this for the long haul. Our strategy in building these companies is not to merely be time tellers, but clock builders. To build companies that will stand the test of time. Thank you for reading my grammatically error riddled post.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Where Was I?
Wow, some time has passed since I last posted. The days fly by when you are busy! Well I guess I will start this post by closing the last post about the Licensing Expo. Basically the Licensing Expo is the largest Expo of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. Anyone who is someone has a presence at this show. Some of the heavy hitters as I like to call them that were in attendance were, Marvel, DC, Fox, NBC, CBS, Sci-Fi, WWE, and Universal. The purpose of this show is to make contacts and license your properties to these major companies. Now there are a ton of great companies in attendance as well. I would not go as far as to say they are smaller than the companies I mentioned above but possibly not as known in the mainstream, so that is why I did not mention them. I believe there were about 500 or so companies in attendance. With all that said this is where deals are made, some right on the spot as they have "deal making rooms" that are closed off from the rest of the showroom floor. Many of the bigger companies like Universal require you to have a reservation with someone on staff to even enter their booth. Now when I say booth I mean a large booth about 100 foot by 100 foot. It was quite impressive, and at times overwhelming as we did not know where to go next or where to start. By the end of the day however we had made some great contacts and had a decent idea of what to expect and how to prepare for next year. I will try to post photos in the near future. In closing I would like to encourage anyone in the entertainment field that has a property to license, to attend this Expo as it is a great opportunity to shop around your projects yourself. Remember no one cares as much about what you are doing as you do. --Upward and Onward--
Friday, June 11, 2010
The Licensing International Expo! Umm... What Is That?
So you have not heard of the Licensing International Expo? Well let me fill you in on exactly what this amazing expo is and how it could benefit everyone in the comics industry. Ok so there is no doubt that some of you do know what this expo is, however for those of you who have never heard of this show (like me until 3 weeks ago) I will give you my take on it.
I should say that I am in no way a Licensing expert but I am learning this interesting aspect of business largely because I believe it to be a major part of any entertainment based company’s ability to go from a small time mom and pop type organization to a major player. I first learned of this Expo about 4 weeks ago on a request from a gentleman that I had been discussing a rather potentially lucrative business idea with.
He asked if I was going to attend the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas. I answered with a simple what is that? The conversation ended with his request that I meet him there to go over the particulars of the potential business deal that we had been discussing. Now usually I would request that I not go to this show on such short notice and we just do the deal else where, but this gentlemen is huge in the comics industry and if he said to meet him at the North Pole I would have agreed. So I naturally referred to the equivalent of the World Wide Web’s version of god (Google) and what I came across was very interesting but nothing really grabbed my attention about it other than it is free to attend if you register before the day of the show. Registration at the door for those who miss the pre reg deadline cost $50.00 which is not all that bad considering it is a 3 day show.
The day of the show arrived and I was set to go. I called Jason Elliot to swing by and pick me up so that we may travel to the strip together. The Expo was being held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center which is a very large convention space. Well after Jason had gone to his car to come pick me up he noticed he had a flat tire. A two hour tire hunt then followed. It turned out that the tires on his car were special order items and cost around $350.00 per tire. I will spare you the rest of the rubbery details and just say it all worked out and we arrived at the Mandalay Bay at around 12:00 noon.
Now I am easily impressed with even the littlest of details one of which was the check in process. There was registration Kiosks set up everywhere and you simply walk up and scan your barcode from the print out you receive via email when you pre register and it spits out your badge. This was a very simple and time efficient process which had us in the door in about 10 min. Now I did not know what to expect to see inside the main hall, but once inside I felt the little kid in me jump up and down and could hardly keep myself from running down the first isle I saw and taking pictures of everything I saw. This is where I will end this posting for now due to the length of the post and the fact that I have contracts to write before I go to sleep for the night. There is some thing I do not get much of anymore and it sounds really good right now so, good night and I will post the rest of this story tomorrow.
Upward & Onward
I should say that I am in no way a Licensing expert but I am learning this interesting aspect of business largely because I believe it to be a major part of any entertainment based company’s ability to go from a small time mom and pop type organization to a major player. I first learned of this Expo about 4 weeks ago on a request from a gentleman that I had been discussing a rather potentially lucrative business idea with.
He asked if I was going to attend the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas. I answered with a simple what is that? The conversation ended with his request that I meet him there to go over the particulars of the potential business deal that we had been discussing. Now usually I would request that I not go to this show on such short notice and we just do the deal else where, but this gentlemen is huge in the comics industry and if he said to meet him at the North Pole I would have agreed. So I naturally referred to the equivalent of the World Wide Web’s version of god (Google) and what I came across was very interesting but nothing really grabbed my attention about it other than it is free to attend if you register before the day of the show. Registration at the door for those who miss the pre reg deadline cost $50.00 which is not all that bad considering it is a 3 day show.
The day of the show arrived and I was set to go. I called Jason Elliot to swing by and pick me up so that we may travel to the strip together. The Expo was being held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center which is a very large convention space. Well after Jason had gone to his car to come pick me up he noticed he had a flat tire. A two hour tire hunt then followed. It turned out that the tires on his car were special order items and cost around $350.00 per tire. I will spare you the rest of the rubbery details and just say it all worked out and we arrived at the Mandalay Bay at around 12:00 noon.
Now I am easily impressed with even the littlest of details one of which was the check in process. There was registration Kiosks set up everywhere and you simply walk up and scan your barcode from the print out you receive via email when you pre register and it spits out your badge. This was a very simple and time efficient process which had us in the door in about 10 min. Now I did not know what to expect to see inside the main hall, but once inside I felt the little kid in me jump up and down and could hardly keep myself from running down the first isle I saw and taking pictures of everything I saw. This is where I will end this posting for now due to the length of the post and the fact that I have contracts to write before I go to sleep for the night. There is some thing I do not get much of anymore and it sounds really good right now so, good night and I will post the rest of this story tomorrow.
Upward & Onward
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Off To The 2010 Licensing Expo
The 2010 licensing Expo, it is what I believe to be the largest expo of this kind. No I have never been to this licensing extravaganza however I am very excited. I am that person who loves to attend conventions and other events of this type. Usually I will attend as many conventions or expos as is humanly possible, and usually they are directly linked to the comic book industry. The licensing expo is a new adventure for me and as I stated earlier I could not be more thrilled about attending.
My brain is like a sponge and it desires to be soaked in all things entertainment, well not all things, but most anyhow. Today’s adventure also includes meeting with a gentlemen to sign what will hopefully be an agreement that will allow Blackline Comics to offer some of the best printing prices you have seen in a very long time! It is our goal to make it affordable for all creators to print their titles without having to sell one of their children to do so. Selling one of your children might sound like a good idea to most but if you were to sell your child then who would take out the trash?
Now on a more serious note the comic book industry is plagued with printing companies that completely and knowingly gouge creators when it comes to printing costs. This trend is killing comics as we know them and is part of what is fueling the digital aspect of comics. It makes sense, if I as a creator cannot get a major publisher to pick up my book and facilitate the printing, and my only alternative is third party on demand printing companies like Indi Planet that charge an arm and a leg, then I might as well say forget printing it and make it a digital comic. Any monkey with opposable thumbs and a key board can create a blog then create a comic on napkins with magic marker and with the help of a scanner, they now have a digital comic.
This unfortunate event lends itself to a completely different and huge problem, but that is for another day when I have more time to babble. Off to the Expo!
Upward and Onward
My brain is like a sponge and it desires to be soaked in all things entertainment, well not all things, but most anyhow. Today’s adventure also includes meeting with a gentlemen to sign what will hopefully be an agreement that will allow Blackline Comics to offer some of the best printing prices you have seen in a very long time! It is our goal to make it affordable for all creators to print their titles without having to sell one of their children to do so. Selling one of your children might sound like a good idea to most but if you were to sell your child then who would take out the trash?
Now on a more serious note the comic book industry is plagued with printing companies that completely and knowingly gouge creators when it comes to printing costs. This trend is killing comics as we know them and is part of what is fueling the digital aspect of comics. It makes sense, if I as a creator cannot get a major publisher to pick up my book and facilitate the printing, and my only alternative is third party on demand printing companies like Indi Planet that charge an arm and a leg, then I might as well say forget printing it and make it a digital comic. Any monkey with opposable thumbs and a key board can create a blog then create a comic on napkins with magic marker and with the help of a scanner, they now have a digital comic.
This unfortunate event lends itself to a completely different and huge problem, but that is for another day when I have more time to babble. Off to the Expo!
Upward and Onward
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