Printing Problems

When people think of how comic books are made, they’re usually pondering over the creative details. They wonder how to format a script, draw a page, color, letter, and so forth. All of which is hard work, to be sure, but it’s all for nothing if you don’t know how to actually print a comic. If you are an aspiring comic book writer, or artist and you haven’t been picked up by a major publisher then it’s a very serious concern. While there are a multitude of printers around most of the conventional printers are far beyond the means of anyone outside the bigger names in the comic book industry.
Printing is never easy. The minutia of work involved with getting words, and pictures on paper are staggering, not to mention the errors that are guaranteed to happen with every run. However whereas the traditional (i.e. non-graphic novel) printing presses offer a wide selection of printers at widely varying prices and qualities, the comic book/graphic novel printers unfortunately do not.
There is a fairly large selection of printers, however most aren’t too friendly for smaller orders of prints, and thus require a large investment. Many printers require hundreds or thousands of copies as a minimum, and charge exorbitant prices for those. This locks out a major portion of the market seeking to print their work are smaller publishers and aspiring creators. Printers’ high fees severely limit not only who can print, but the content on the comic book market.
Comic books are great, but one of the biggest problems the genre faces today is the lack of variety. Super hero titles all have different characters and twists, but even the biggest fans will have to admit that there isn’t a lot of difference conceptually between them. You have some titles from Vertigo, or Image, and so on that break the mold, but it’s not a lot. The ideas are out there, they’re just waiting to be put the page.
There are however options for aspiring creators. Some printers offer web services at more affordable rates. So it’s certainly possible to get your idea printed, but you don’t have too many options. Printing companies need to reevaluate their business models. As it stands now, most cater to a small group of publishers and block out a large amount of eager customers, which is just bad business.