Print on demand

[whitecomics]

Does anyone else have opinions, or recent experience, about print on demand publishing? I think a lot of us assume (I certainly did) that the print quality is too awful for it to be a serious option despite the advantages, but it seems like that's starting to change.

I've used Ingram Spark myself for a few recent books, and wrote up something about my experience that might be helpful if you're considering this. I've found it not perfect by any means but an affordable way of printing bigger/longer books. Does anyone else have experience with the other big POD venues or feelings in general about this? 

[yestomlake]

Thanks for posting and writing about your experience. I haven't used POD, just printers like Greko and KENESS to print small amounts of comics. Ingram Spark looks like a good option for me from what you described.

I'm curious if you sell online through Ingram? Does it integrate with your own website? Or do you use it like a traditional small printer where you order at cost from them and sell those on an ongoing basis?

[whitecomics]

It's nice because I can easily do both of the options you mention - direct people to say bookshop.org, where the IS books are automatically listed, and then also order at cost to sell copies myself. I've been ordering about 20 copies at a time, which is a good compromise between my limited storage space and not spending too much on shipping.

[adamszym]

I used Lulu to print my most recent book and it came out quite nicely. It's a book with a LOT of black ink on the page but the quality of the image didn't really suffer for it. That being said there is some variance in the quality as when someone orders your book it could be printed at a number of different printing facilities with different levels of quality control. But overall I've been pleased with my experience!