FLIGHT

Alright here goes...

Our college has an annual student sale every year towards the end of April. I have roughly 20-30 pages of 4 panel B&W comics that I want to print and sell. A few things, the internet printing companies are expensive when it comes to expedited service. Am I better off going to Kinkos and photocopying/assembling the entire mess myself, or is this process totally horribly time consuming, and would I be better off forking over control to the Kinkos people? Also, for one standard day of selling (like suppose you were at a con) how many copies should I get? I don't want to run out...but I don't want to have a bajillion left over. Any advice would be much appreciated. Also when the comics are scanned I'll be sure to post them here!

_________________

Printing is a weird process. Itll never look the same way as it does on your screen ( colour stuff) and its pretty much trial an error. Ive tried different print places that were recommended by friends but int he end i wasnt happy with the prints. I would honestly suggest trying a few different print stores , trying their different printers and also trying different papers. Although this is time consumming it does weed out the bad results from the good ones and youll have a good idea where youll want to print your stuff. The last thing you want to do is to send your work out to a print place get, print 40 pages and have bad results and a huge bill.

OR invest in a nice printer and do the prints yourself if you have some money to spare. Overtime itll pay itself off.

Local print shops will usually give you a better price, a faster turn around, and a lot more creative input than internet printers. The only down side is you have to do the whole print run in one go. Photocopying and stapling it yourself is often the cheapest and easiest route, and allows you to only print new copies when you actually need them. Do yourself a favour and invest in a giant stapler and a guillotine (a.k.a. long-arm stapler and paper-cutter, but I like my names better). Such things are readily available at office supply stores. Kinkos charges exhorbitant rates for cutting paper.

EDIT: Plouffe suggested getting a printer. In fact that is what I've done. A Laser printer is super expensive, but now I can print in colour for what Kinkos charges for B+W copying. Inkjet printers are not at all cost effective though.

_________________
Jonathon Dalton

Hm well I think I'll be photocopying because the comic will be in black and white. But assembling and stapling myself? Sounds like a plan!

_________________