Printing, Hosting and Financing for Independent Comikers

[Cetriya]

Liralen

A heads up to anyone thinking of going with Sidekick,

with posters he was fast but with books seems kinda slow and way too short of a turn around time.
I gave him 2 weeks and though he has responded with emails, I still kinda would like the books soon.

granted, this is a testing print so if he doesn't send them soon, and the quality isn't there, I think I'll just keep him as a poster printer.

thats my only thing with ka-blam, love them but they have no choice in interior paper stock and they're getting really popular. Popular is not a bad thing, but untill they find a way of keeping cost down and still be able to expand their work force, they get really busy during the summer. I think they might need to up their turn around time to 2 months, especially since they also print for indyplanet.

I don't know, orlando doesn't really have good printers. its not really an art town and renting is expensive.

[Kyousouka]

I'm not sure whether I said this before, but I don't see it on the front page. Some info MangaMagazine that I've gathered from artists working for them:


They expect a 15-page chapter every month, but they're willing to accept occasional slip-ups if you're usually consistent.

You get paid for every chapter, so ideally that's every month. 15 pages is the minimum and more pages are encouraged, but this does not affect pay as far as I know. From what I understand (ie, this is NOT confirmed), the payment is per-series, not per-artist. If you're working with a team, you split the pay. On the other hand, if you have multiple series on MM, you get paid for each one.

Pay is determined by popularity. $150 is the minimum per-chapter pay, and $250 is the maximum.
These are not great rates ($10-17/page with minimum-length chapters) and I've heard it compared to working for peanuts. However, editorial control is reasonable and they do some advertising for you.

They prefer longer stories (the FAQ states 36+ chapters is ideal, though they accept shorter works). In MM terms, that's 540 pages since their chapters are short.

The forums are not very active, and a common complaint is that they're too compartmentalised (too many subforums). The community is definitely not one of the selling points of MM at present.

MM does not yet make any money at all.
Their current plan is to go paywall in the future (require a paid subscription to read comics past chapter 2), but some of the artists continually try to convince the owner to not go that route since it has proven to be ineffective in most cases.
Time will tell what they'll end up doing and whether benefits to artists will increase.


Pros:
Pay
Hosting and promotion. MM also handles printing and splits profits with the artist (don't know the %).

Cons:
Pay is low, should be viewed as an extra perk rather than a primary incentive
No customisation of the comic's presentation
Uncertain future, no concrete business plan

I think MM is good for those who want to focus on getting their story out there and don't want to worry about handling their own hosting, printing, etc and do not want to worry much about the community aspect of webcomicking.
If that applies to you and you can handle the 15 pages/month requirement, MM might be just the site for you.

[Yume Yokohama]

Kyousouka

Do you have a web site link?

[Kyousouka]

Yume Yokohama

Kyousouka

Do you have a web site link?

MangaMagazine is already listed on the first page, which is why I did not provide one. http://www.mangamagazine.net/

[Errol McGillivray]

Man, I can't tell you how busy I've been.

Anyway, update:

Sidekick got themselves a site redesign and they want to focus on comic creator and other artists.

http://sidekickprinting.com/blog

[Kyousouka]

Forgot to mention, I think: Patterson is offset. They're fairly affordable, but still. If we're going to list them, I think we might as well list another offset printer,Transcontinental, which is a favourite with self-published comickers because of its speed and quality (but for price, there are other options, I believe).

I think it makes sense to include offset printers, as many comics can actually justify the larger volume of books (like Amya, Toilet Genie, The Meek, etc).


Also, a nitpick with the first post: Self-published comics are considered part of the industry too, they're just not counted towards sales figures since there's no way to do so. And being published doesn't automatically guarantee that you'll be counted either, if it's not with one of the more mainstream publishers.

[DeviousSnowPuppy]

GOOD idea! heart This will help so many people, including me!