Last week the self-publishing community was abuzz with breaking news: Ingram Content Group announced a new, significantly cheaper Print-On-Demand service.
This new option reduces the cost of printing a full-color graphic novel by more than 60%.
They named this new service ‘Standard Color Printing’ as opposed to their already offered ‘Premium Color Printing.’ Ingram will continue to facilitate their POD services through their subsidiary, Lightning Source.
About a year ago, I wrote a Paper Wings article on picking the right Print-On-Demand Publisher for you. Among the choices I reviewed was Lightning Source. I wrote:
Is Lightning Source right for me? If the exposure and availability that listing on sites like Amazon and Barnes and Nobel appeals to you, and if you have a significant international readership, then YES! Lightning Source is for you. The profit shares aren’t as high but that might be offset if your book gets into the hands of more people.
But this new option is a game changer. You can find a side by side comparison of the difference between Standard and Premium here.
Let me break it down:
- Choosing Standard offers more print size options.
- Saddle-stitch printing is not available in Standard (traditional ‘floppy’ comic books).
- The only paper stock choice is 50# instead of 70#.
My opinion is that more sizes is a good thing and the difference between 50# paper stock and #70 is negligible.
Of course, the biggest deal is pricing. In my previous post I reviewed a hypothetical book, ordering 100 copies of a full color, 132 page 6″ X 9″ books. We found that with Lightning Sources’s Premium Printing, this would cost you $9 a book, not counting set-up fees, shipping or purchasing an ISBN number. This estimate also didn’t count any discounts for ordering books in larger quantities, which starts at 50 books.
But with the new Standard service, that the same book is now only $4.20.
That is less than half the price.
It’s understandable that this has created a lot of excitement in the self-publishing community. The only thing we don’t know for sure is how this new Standard service actually looks. Different paper stock produces different results, and because this has just been announced, no one outside of Lightning Source has actually seen the side-by-side comparison.
I would personally like to see samples before committing, but the new pricing makes this a very tempting option. It certainly makes now, more than ever, an exciting time to pursue self-publishing.
Alan Evans is the creator of the #1 wrestling webcomic Rival Angels, and has been self-publishing for five years.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
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It definitely sounds intriguing but I am going to go with the crowd here and say I would need to see some samples first. My first thought when I saw the article was awesome cheaper printing prices but then immediately I thought well a significant price drop could be a drop in quality. If it is just a matter of paper and not color or printing then I may take them up on the offer. Like Lora mentioned, the vertigo books are traditional printed on less quality paper and they still look great.
My question for creators is the one Alan posed in his “Comment and Share”: If we do use this option, is it okay to keep selling a book for $20 when it only cost us $4 to print?
And if we do decide to do that, how is this different than the outrage that has come up against major publishers who are selling a digital book for the same price as a physical copy? Most people were indignant about this, seeing as how there were no printing costs involved in a digital book, and also no shipping/distribution costs of any sort.
Is it like a text messaging plan that is virtually free to the service provider but can cost you hundreds of dollars a year? That’s morally outrageous, and yet it’s the system we’re stuck in.
Are we going to do the same thing? And is it okay if we do it because we’re “real people” and the book publishers are “faceless corporations”?
I agree with some of the concerns in comments posted here about quality. If you’re selling a lower quality product (I mean the pages, not the quality of your story/art) how do customers feel about receiving it? People ask me all the time where I got my graphic novel printed because it’s a lovely book (I mean the paper stock, printing types on the cover, etc, not my story/art). But I have a publisher.
So if you can buy an IDW book from someone like me for $20 with matte cover and coated title logo, shiny interior pages and great colors that pop, and then you buy a similar length book from a self-published creator with a cheaper over all look and feel, do you, as a customer, feel cheated?
Or do we all understand the culture of “self-published” and don’t care?
What about someplace “blind” like a Kickstarter campaign where a customer is buying a package, say for $25 they get a book with a sketch in the front, but the product really just cost $5? This customer made an unknowing $20 donation for a product that could’ve cost as much as the new Spider-man individual issue!
Does that customer feel cheated when the product arrives?
Or is there opportunity to underprice other people?
I know that if I were walking around Artists Alley and saw a full-sized GN for $10 that I’d never heard of, I might actually pick it up if the art really appealed to me and I was interested in the story. I would almost never make a blind purchase for a $20 book in the same scenario.
What are everyone’s thoughts on this? If you’re going to take the cut on printing a pretty but albeit expensive book, I see a real opportunity to sell to a lot more people if you lower prices.
Think about this: The Fables graphic novels, arguably one of the greatest comic series of all time, have paper that is only half a step above newsprint! BUT those books also only cost $10, $12, etc.
I’d rather have the full Fables collection at a price I can afford than on the world’s most amazing paper and I never buy the new one when it comes out. Because I love the characters and art and story. And the cheaper price doesn’t impact any of that. So I appreciate the lower price tag.
Thoughts?
I had this same thought about if our prices stay the same. It seems tempting to make more profit off of a book because profit on self published books is so slim as it is but it seems more in keeping with commerce to charge less for a product that cost us less to make. At the same time though we have to factor in the time spent making the work.
I didn’t see color as an option for me because most of my readers are readers of japanese manga (and or young and not deep pockets) so I know it would be hard press to push a 15-20$ low page count book. As I’ve heard and from my experience, we come for the art, we stay for the story. So I’ve kept to BW for cheaper printing and higher page count for 10$. Now that I can get a color book for about the same price, I’m going to try out for color and keep the price point around 12$, maybe a little more for a 132+ page book.
I rarely buy comics over 13$ and artbooks over 50$, I just don’t have that money.
I think ultimately if your pricing an OGN at $20 then you have to believe that it is worth $20, otherwise you would never sell any regardless of the print quality if that is the only merit the book has.
If you are only selling at this price because your print costs are so high but the book can’t command this value on strength of art and story then it will just lead to you retaining all of your stock. So you’d be operating an unsustainable business model and not getting your story into the world because your perception of your books value is clearly out of line with that of your market. You either need to reduce your price, or stop printing and go back to the drawing board.
If your book IS selling well at $20 a copy though then clearly, you have either valued correctly or undervalued the worth of your book.
The only question you really need to answer for yourself in that case is is there a noticeable drop in quality of print that makes me perceive this book is now of lower value?
If the print quality is the same, and your book sells well anyway, then there is no need to drop the price. The amount of time and effort that goes into making your own graphic novel means you will NEVER make anything like the TRUE value of your time back on the book through self-publishing, which is one of the reasons you can only do this if you love it.
Should you feel guilty for getting more bang back for your book though? (See what I dd? XD )
Hell No!
Artists struggle, and we do it every day, if we can get profits back direct to artists which are not unreasonable then I’m all for it.
If the print quality is noticeably lower however – it’s back to square one and the decision largely depends on how big a difference it is and how much the print quality affects your perceived quality of your own product.
If it makes the book seem less valuable to you – you should drop the price. If you don’t believe it devalues the book though then you’ll soon find out if the crowds agree with the feedback loop you can see in your sales figures.
I have worked retail for a number of years and even though it wasn’t publishing, I took a number of good things from that experience.
First off is treating your customers right without cutting off your own life support. My wife, Janet, and I published a novella (it’s a collection of several prose short stories my wife wrote that I illustrated) in comic-book size (via Ka-Blam) and to figure out the price we did a doubling of the print cost and that was our price. Since we know that we would keep the one-shot in print, it struck me as a fair price and now not even one year after our initial print run, we’re ordering another batch. My solo self-published comic, Quantum Gumbo, was priced pretty much the same way, even though it’s an ongoing.
Janet and I discussed this pricing issue long and hard and we realized that it’s more important to get the comics into as many hands (and hopefully minds) as possible. We’ve sold a few copies based on word of mouth, and so with our one-year anniversary of self-publishing approaching, I feel that the pricing was correct. Even if sales aren’t spectacular, I think that it’s because we only sell at local N. California cons, nobody really has given me or my wife much negative feedback as to the price.
Recently, we are beginning work on a graphic novelization of the novella and the Ingrams news has changed how we can do it. It’s still going to be a digital-first publication, but now that the possibility of a more affordable color hard copy is on the horizon we are going to be including a print copy as one of the phases/levels that our crowd-funding project will have.
As far as recouping the time spent on creating, it’s not going to be instantaneous. It’s going to be a long haul. I consider all the time and effort we’re putting into the novella/graphic novel and on-going series to be an investment that will give us a pay off in a few years.
I’m in the process of finishing the second issue of Quantum Gumbo. There’s going one more local comic store that’ll start carrying it this week. By keeping the price on it low (again it’s just double what it costs to print), I feel that I’m engendering good will with my readers and hopefully that’ll translate into fans.
Basically, by keeping the price reasonable(print cost X2), I feel that I’m able to sell to more people, who (in theory) will “tell friends”, and end up with not only better raw sales, but in the long run more money in our pockets. And with Ingram’s new POD, we’ll continue the pricing practice and do well.
One last thing, if this new POD can only do bound copies, then it stands to reason that the published works will be “evergreen”, i.e. always in print, and with that stretched-out time line, lower profits per copy may very well translate into many more copies sold.
Anyway, I gotta get back to drawing. Thanks for all the info, ‘wingers!
Thank you Lora! I will add more to my comment later but I had to get this out.
I AM CHEAP
I haven bought but maybe 5-10 in the last 5 years. I came from the day of 1.95 comic that are now $4. I am also one of the first people to be upset when some professional charges some crazy rediculous price for something that isnt worth it. Example: I was quoted $1000 for a full-turm brake job on my car that I could litterally do for less than a $250. Some things are not worth the retail tag and it is that mentality that drives the income race that creates our huge societal gap.
That crazyness being said, I would absolutely love to charge less for a book if I get it printed for less. This cost is one of the major factors that has been killing the comics industry in the first place! I can lower the overall price, keep my profit margin the same (possibly a small percentage higher) and gain and retain customers who will learn to love my art and stories. Just like your Fables reference, we are here to provide art and story experiences to the audience, a pretty product can easily be a distant second if need be…Especially for monthly serials.
Whew! sorry for the rant, just had to get it out. I want to keep profitable, just not at the cost of my customers.
thanks!
re: Lora’s question. I really feel like the whole idea of lowering costs is exactly for maximizing profit. People complain we can’t compete on margins – well here you go. Is anyone here not aware of how incredibly hard it is to make any money on a comic book? I wouldn’t think so.
For myself, I would pass some savings on to my readers, but not all of it. I would keep the book competitively priced with things of the same sort that are in the stores today, and I’d keep the rest as profit.
Also, I’d be fine *buying* a book I liked from an artist I knew did the same thing. I’d be happy to support that artist.
Ditto Tom!!
Exactly. Just because the book only cost $5 to get it printed doesn’t mean it’s only worth $5. The artist’s work should be worth something more than the paper it’s printed on.
For myself, I’d probably drop the price from $20 to $15 and settle for an “I get more profit AND more people can afford it” sort of compromise. The only thing I think is dishonest is people thinking that the artwork shouldn’t up the value of the paper!
I would want to see samples as well to make sure the condition of the book is still great but this is awesome for anyone that has been thinking about publishing.
Very interesting. #50 paper is definitely middle of the road stuff. Printing books cheap is great, but when I buy a book, I want quality for my money. I’m not saying a book like this isn’t quality, but someone needs to hold one in their hand and give a report
If Lightning Source allows you to print a single book (like Amazon’s CreateSpace does) then it’s worth running one off to see. I assume the problem here is setup fees though. The great thing about CreateSpace – there are none. Print one book, and if your cost per book is $3, then you simply pay $3 (plus shipping of course).
CS uses #60 paper on their books. I have a handful of them, and the paper is decent, but not something that you would see in a real nice book. So #50 is going to be a small step below that.
Has anyone used their service before? A big question is how is the customer service? How easy/hard is it to use their system to print a book? Do they have useful tools? etc.
I think #50 is basic bond paper that you buy at stores for your home printer. What I’m more worried about is ink saturation an if there is any DPI limits. Since the lower grade paper need better ink saturation to look good (with the exception of newsprint).
Also worried about how good the binding will be. I see this as a comics printing option, but I wouldn’t use it as an art book printing option.
*raises hand* I use Lightning Source!
Cetriya, the bond paper in stores is 20# paper and it’ll say so on the packaging. That’s a good idea though; Go to the store and look at what 50# paper looks like to see if you like it.
Tom, I might be old school, but anything over 30# newsprint is fine with me and I always thought that 70# paper was overkill. Throw glossy paper into the mix and now you have shiny blacks which I *hate*. But I digress.
Createspace was $1 more per copy using the hypothetical book above before if you’re using their Pro Plan. Now, Createspace is $5.20 more per copy. If you think 60# paper vs 50# paper is worth the $5.20 then I will not try to talk you out of it.
You can print out ONE book with Lightning Source if you want. In fact, every sale I make through Amazon or Barnes and Noble is effectively this.
Customer Service is very good and their print department is knowledgeable, but I have a background in printing and publishing so I understand them fine. Would someone without that background fare as well? I dunno. Their website is a *little* confusing, but their templates are solid. The have instructions on how to prep your files and make your pdfs, but if you have trouble along the way, I’m not sure that they’re going to be your technical support on that. If you know your way, even a little around InDesign, you’ll be fine. If not, you might want to get some help. Printing the actual book is a breeze. Just give yourself enough time for shipping if you’re on a tight deadline or else you’ll be paying a lot for rush shipping.
And remember that this new option is NOT for saddle-stitched comics. You’ll want to use this for trade paperbacks.
Thanks for the info. To be clear, their website is a LOT confusing. I took a couple minutes to check it out, and I looked around for a way to start an order, or to price something out, and all I see is an email address. Whut?
Is there some kind of link to price things out. Say what you want about CS, but the site is bang easy to use and you don’t have to talk to anyone to print a book.
The prices do sound great. I’d like to print one of my books over there and have a look. Also, I agree that the glossy pages are overkill – I’m not a fan either. So no, I don’t think #60 paper is worth 5 bucks more per book – OTOH, there’s something to be said about a nicely but together book with nice paper.
I have to put together a hardcover book for my Kickstarter project early next year. I’m wondering if LS could be competitive there – and I also wonder if they can do things like printing in signatures so a hardcover lays nice and flat. I have some background in pre-press myself, so I’m concerned if the process isn’t as automated as CS. But I just couldn’t find out where to start.
Lightning Source does let you run off one book, but it has set up fees and you pay heavily for that, proofs, etc. You’re looking at nearly $100 just to look.
Ah – okay, I didn’t see that above. That’s kind of a bummer. For a short run of books then, you are probably still better off with CS (say 10-30 books or so? Depends on size etc.) No setup fees, a proof is the same cost as your book – and you can even digital proof at no cost if you are comfortable with that.
The old “pro” plan is gone. Everything is essentially pro now – there are no fees other than the cost of the books.
I think you need to create an account to get to see all of LS’s material.
As to Brian’s point, it’s a one-time cost of $37.50 to set-up a new title. You HAVE to sign off on a physical proof which will run you with express shipping $30. If you want that book listed on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc, it’s $12 a year.
This article isn’t about trying to convince you to use LS, just that they have a crazy less expensive option.
Personally, if the quality is as good as it has been, I’ll still be using them. Count up these costs to 100 of the hypothetical book and it’s $499.50. That still beats CS’s $1,009 for the same book. Of course, if CS can come down that much, I’d be willing to try them.
Saw this earlier in the week and I’m definitely intrigued. I do want to see samples before buying, but this potentially makes profit margins on PoD much better. Definitely keeping an eye on it.
Wow Alan! thank you for the post!
This has actually been a major subject of discussion with my anthology team because we have been trying to cut the prices since it is all self-publish and direct sales right now. Our community founder has actually been looking into Lightning’s services for a while now so I am sure he will be thrilled!!
Thank you for putting more of this out here!
Oh, and wingerz I have posted the first in the “Building an Epic” series on my blog if you would like to jump over there and get more content. Hope you enjoy!!!
http://www.derrickutz.com/2012/08/building-epic-part-1-scale.html
Dutz!!