Printer Woes

*tearing out my hair*

Well, after getting one good book printing run (Inklings II) out of them, QualityPOD goes out of business. Just when I had a second project ready to send them too.

I'm thinking I might try a traditional printer, despite the huge overhead costs, because at this rate I'm probably spending as much money in time costs looking for a Print On Demand company as it would simply to just shell out a huge amount for a 1000 book run with a non-ondemand source.

Generally 1000 is the minimum quantity they will do. So then it means two things 1) can I recoup my costs for that large of a run, since I'm not planning to sell these in retail outlets?, and 2) do I have the storage space for it!!!! I gave up on large runs like that a few years ago when every available space in my tiny apartment (now tiny house) became filled up with all the limited edition prints. That was before Epson printers and large fancy giclees became the thing.

Specifically, for a POD company, my greyscales require that they have one of two types of machines: a Xerox DC250 family or an Xerox igen

Which seems to be exceedingly rare.

*more hair tearing*

Inklings II shipment arrived!

Well that's a huge load off my chest. I was worried that UPS wouldn't arrive in time before I had to leave for my hour long drive to the south bay tonight. Having had all kinds of UPS-woes in the past, I have low expectations; though the situation seems to have greatly improved once I moved out of an apartment and into a house instead. I used to scream curses at UPS and Fedex on a regular basis when they foiled my plans.

At any rate, Inklings II is here. I'll probably be spending a good portion of Fanime doing the cover sketches for the pre-orders. It'll give me something to do during the downtime at the show! I should have them ready to ship by the next Friday.

For any other artists looking for a POD company with good quality greyscale (NOT the laser dots that you'll see with most PODs, which incidentally was what made my search take so long, I recommend QualityPOD. Tell them that I sent you. :)

Inklings II

* $20.00 (+$15.00 for an original ink drawing on the inside cover)

* 56 pages of b&w ink drawings

* 8.5x8.5 inches, perfectbound

Inklings II previews & taking pre-orders

Well after searching high and low for a printer the past several months and being frustrated at several turns, and delayed, and delayed again, I've finally found what I was looking for.

The proof arrived in the mail today, and it looks good, so I'm going ahead with the run.

The other good news is that because it took so long to find a suitable printer, I eventually added another 6 pages of new art that came about during that intervening time span. So this one's 56 pages of ink scribbles.

If all goes as expected, they should be ready by the end of this month. Currently taking pre-orders for shipping approximately the first week of June. As with volume 1, I'm offering two options:

* book for $20.00
-or-
* book with an ink sketch on the inside cover for $35.00 (if you ask here nicely, I'll do a requested subject).

Here's a peek inside the covers:

dA prints of ink drawings

"From Sea Foam"
Medium: Ink
Size: 7x11 inches

Since I don't offer my ink drawings as prints from Shadowscapes, I've decided to add availability of them through deviantArt. As well as some miscellaneous others that are not sold as prints on Shadowscapes. Mostly it's the recent ink drawings of the past several months.

Along those lines as well, I'm still on the hunt for a good printer for Inklings II. It's been several months of wrangling. Unfortunately the printer who did the first Inklings for me went out of business. So it's left me in the lurch in getting reprints of it, and in getting this second volume off the ground. Was aiming to have some in time for Comic-con (mid-July), and in January that seemed like "Plenty of Time!!!" And then the months creep by and I'm still stuck at Square One.*hair-tearing moment*

I've been sending in price quote and sample requests to numerous printers. And while the prices have all been good, the quality alas has fallen far short of what I was hoping for. After chatting with my old printer a bit the other day though (probably something I should have done a while ago), I found out the reason why was because most of the print-on-demand companies are optimized for text printing. Since that's the bulk of what they do. They're not so good when it comes to the quality of grayscale printing.

I'm crossing my fingers though that the current company I'm having conversations with will be able to print with the same quality of Inklings I. Waiting for their samples later this week with baited breath, and then hopefully I can get past this roadblock.

Meanwhile...sweating through this sudden heatwave. Poor freezer's icemaker can't keep up with me.