Last night I did something that I have not done in ages (no, don't be disgusting we're better than that!) - I sat down and started wading through and reading copies of Black Tower books.
Let me explain. I receive the completed pages for a book whether comic (around 20-30pp), comic album (48-90pp) or graphic novel (over 100 plus pages) and read through them. I then check the artwork. If all of that is okay and believe me I have been sent scans or even photocopies by artists that are not good and will not be good quality when I then scan them.
I then have to make sure that any ink specks or even dirty fingerprints are removed.
Then comes the resizing and that can take two brief but boring processes -if you have to do this 48-300 times it kills your eyes and brain!
Then you have to pull all of the pages together to form a PDF file to send to the Print on Demand (POD) company - KS 001, KS 002, KS 003, KS 004, KS 005....you get the point. One out of place page (and with 120-300 plus pages it does happen) and it can take 20-30 minutes to correct things (I have it down to 10 minutes after all these years).
Completed the PDF then has to be uploaded to the POD which, depending on size of file, server speed at my end or more usually the POD end of things, that can take 10-30 minutes. Once that is done you then have to download the stored pdf after the POD converts it to printable to make sure they have got everything right -I learnt early on that with everything done automatically by computer you check every time.
Everything okay then you move on to putting the cover art together and that process with the POD company can take 30-40 minutes. Download file to check the cover over....looks fine? Then you have to go through the process of activating the file and that can be 45 minutes.
Phew...glad that's over? It isn't. You then have to sort out your pricing and remembering that just for storing the POD gets a big cut, the printer who shove everything through by computer get their cut. Then you have to go through all the store front description and so on.
THEN you order a proof copy. Believe me with everything done by computer and lazer printer etc there is no quality checking or control and I think a total of ten books had me complaining as their computer rearranged a couple pages or the printer had not been cleaned and gave out very low quality printing.
The thing is that if anyone buys a Black Tower book he/she (I do not exclude the possibility of any aliens) is supporting my business and giving me their money so they deserve a good product.
So, excluding getting the creator(s) to complete the project -only the anthologies have occasional To Be Continued stories and all over books are self contained and absolutely no cross over into multiple books- by the time the book appears on the store front I may have put in 2-3 weeks of work on it.
British Golden Age reprint books are far more labour intensive as the Golden Age strips/books we find are usually in a heck of a state.
Different qualities of paper were used -none of them of a high standard. Inks and the quality of printing varied and you’ll find orange, blue, green, purple and even red inked pages. Now if you are converting that to black and white, or more accurately grey-tone, it’s a nightmare!
Then you get the foxing, mold or spattering of ink (from printing). And worst of all the pen scribbles and tears repaired using sellotape (AAARGH!).
Some people who have seen an original scanned page do not believe it is what the printed version comes from. I’ll demonstrate but I want to share a funny story first.
It could be that this particular book was damaged during printing and several copies were affected. Whatever, it’s weird.
Anyway, this is the sort of original page I get:
Let me explain. I receive the completed pages for a book whether comic (around 20-30pp), comic album (48-90pp) or graphic novel (over 100 plus pages) and read through them. I then check the artwork. If all of that is okay and believe me I have been sent scans or even photocopies by artists that are not good and will not be good quality when I then scan them.
I then have to make sure that any ink specks or even dirty fingerprints are removed.
Then comes the resizing and that can take two brief but boring processes -if you have to do this 48-300 times it kills your eyes and brain!
Then you have to pull all of the pages together to form a PDF file to send to the Print on Demand (POD) company - KS 001, KS 002, KS 003, KS 004, KS 005....you get the point. One out of place page (and with 120-300 plus pages it does happen) and it can take 20-30 minutes to correct things (I have it down to 10 minutes after all these years).
Completed the PDF then has to be uploaded to the POD which, depending on size of file, server speed at my end or more usually the POD end of things, that can take 10-30 minutes. Once that is done you then have to download the stored pdf after the POD converts it to printable to make sure they have got everything right -I learnt early on that with everything done automatically by computer you check every time.
Everything okay then you move on to putting the cover art together and that process with the POD company can take 30-40 minutes. Download file to check the cover over....looks fine? Then you have to go through the process of activating the file and that can be 45 minutes.
Phew...glad that's over? It isn't. You then have to sort out your pricing and remembering that just for storing the POD gets a big cut, the printer who shove everything through by computer get their cut. Then you have to go through all the store front description and so on.
THEN you order a proof copy. Believe me with everything done by computer and lazer printer etc there is no quality checking or control and I think a total of ten books had me complaining as their computer rearranged a couple pages or the printer had not been cleaned and gave out very low quality printing.
The thing is that if anyone buys a Black Tower book he/she (I do not exclude the possibility of any aliens) is supporting my business and giving me their money so they deserve a good product.
So, excluding getting the creator(s) to complete the project -only the anthologies have occasional To Be Continued stories and all over books are self contained and absolutely no cross over into multiple books- by the time the book appears on the store front I may have put in 2-3 weeks of work on it.
British Golden Age reprint books are far more labour intensive as the Golden Age strips/books we find are usually in a heck of a state.
Different qualities of paper were used -none of them of a high standard. Inks and the quality of printing varied and you’ll find orange, blue, green, purple and even red inked pages. Now if you are converting that to black and white, or more accurately grey-tone, it’s a nightmare!
Then you get the foxing, mold or spattering of ink (from printing). And worst of all the pen scribbles and tears repaired using sellotape (AAARGH!).
Some people who have seen an original scanned page do not believe it is what the printed version comes from. I’ll demonstrate but I want to share a funny story first.
It could be that this particular book was damaged during printing and several copies were affected. Whatever, it’s weird.
Anyway, this is the sort of original page I get:
It’s dis-coloured and there is that tear and the yellowing-brown tape. First thing to do is get rid of the colour from the scan so I get this:
It’s a sort of off grey. So my next move is to up the contrast and get this:
Which means pushing up the brightness, saving that and then upping the contrast to get this:
You can still see the tear so a bit more fine tuning and….
This is close to the finished item but on this I would enlarge the page to around 400% and then deal with the tear in Paint Shop. One page like this can take up to 2 hours to tidy.
One thing I will not do is re-panel. The whole point is to show the original strip and how it appeared. Some artists draw crooked panels. I learned a long time ago to leave these! I ‘straightened’ a page in photo-shop to correct the tilt on a page but then realized something else was crooked. I corrected it…uhh, not that wasn’t right…I then stepped back and realized most of the panels were just very faint lines (as in the above page). So I left it.
You have to remember that William Ward, Jock McCail, Glynne Protheroe and others were writing and drawing their own strips -a huge number of them. As far as Gerald Swan was concerned the comics were throw-away entertainment for kids so as long as his books were filled and he raked in the coppers or brass or silver he was happy. And the books end up battered or chucked in a box in an attic, a cellar or even under an old bed. we’re lucky that not all “mums” threw out “those silly comics”!
At times I might need to enlarge a page up to 400 times to correct or replace lettering that either vanished over time or were not printed correctly -no one notices the mends! At the same time I will use the 400 x size to remove ink or dirt specks -"Who is going to notice that?" I was asked. Well, it may be OCD but if I can clean a page so that the reader gets nice clean art why not?
When people say to me “These aren’t very good quality print-wise are they?” I say they should buy an original Swan comic and check the quality….oh, wait, very few appear for sell so they can’t. Also, I’ve had one purchaser of the Ultimate British Golden Age Collection write that he thought he would never see the comics he read as a kid again (he’s 75 years old) -“and in a lot better quality!”
THAT makes the work worth it.
Which brings me back to the original point which I almost forgot. By the time these books go onto the store front I am completely sick and tired of seeing them -rather like someone I once knew who had a job at Cadbury's chocolates and sweets Bristol factory. He soon got tired of eating and seeing sweets! But up until 0230 hrs I checked. The stories are good. Art good. Printing and paper quality are the best you can get and the thick covers are tough so won't tear. They are the best anyone can produce and in the past I've been told at events my books look too slick and professional for small press events -so I should produce low quality books? If those sell then I will! But if I'm expecting people to buy books they should expect a good quality product that will last and I have always kept the lowest possible prices on books -the Golden Age books are basically a work of love so the prices they are at do not make me much money at all.
There is also a guarantee if you buy from the store front and I'll give an example.
Someone emailed me that they had purchased a certain title from the store front but the printers had (I cannot find a rational explanation other than computer cock-up) put the wrong cover on it. What the person should have done was contact the POD company since printing is handled by them. I suggested that he do this and I would also speak to them. The purchaser got his correctly printed book and "It seems slightly better printing".
Then I got another message out of the blue from someone who had ordered a £20 book but not received it after 9 days. I checked -no such order.I asked when he had purchased the book as it was not showing up in orders listed. He then told me that he had purchased his copy from an online book service. At that point he lost all sympathy. He had seen the book on the store front where the cover price is clearly stated and you can even check postage (3 different methods/costs) before ordering. On this occasion, from my store front the book would have cost £25 and reached him in 3-5 business days.
He had paid £33 "because it was post free"....if there was even a minute amount of sympathy from me it vanished there and then. Firstly, if you check any online sellers Ebay or the book services they DO NOT offer free postage. The £25 with postage book will cost you £33 because you ARE paying postage as well as extra profit from them.
Pricing and Creator Revenue:
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The Ultimate British Golden Age Collection will cost you £25 which is the minimum I can charge for a 400 plus pages book. Look at this from the POD site: Which shows you that Amazon et al get the books post free and for a book that took decades of work and a lot of money to put together they pay me £2.64: it's the deal they get because POD and other companies are desperate to please and get on big online retailers. So the online retailer charges the customer £8,00 more for a book that cost them literally nothing for a bigger profit AND the postage.
The loser at the end of the day is me because I get £2.64 instead of over £6.00 -because some greedy fool decides £33 is cheaper than £25 and he'll cheat me out of some profit to keep the business going.Also, as I made clear after explaining all of this, any problems he has are out of my hands because he ordered through a third party who have to order the book as he would have had to order it so they wait 3-5 business days too. They then post it off to him which is why in some or most you'll read "takes 7-14 business days".
The purchaser loses out at every point and get no support from me as the publisher as they went elsewhere to buy.This particular person did get in touch again to let me know he received the book after 14 days and he was quite happy with it. Moron.
So, you will receive good quality printed books within 3-5 business days (I always say 3-7) at the lowest price and any rare problems will be sorted out quickly -no muss no fuss.and I can get involved. There are also free interior views for each book.
Just remember that and keep supporting Independent publishers.
The loser at the end of the day is me because I get £2.64 instead of over £6.00 -because some greedy fool decides £33 is cheaper than £25 and he'll cheat me out of some profit to keep the business going.Also, as I made clear after explaining all of this, any problems he has are out of my hands because he ordered through a third party who have to order the book as he would have had to order it so they wait 3-5 business days too. They then post it off to him which is why in some or most you'll read "takes 7-14 business days".
The purchaser loses out at every point and get no support from me as the publisher as they went elsewhere to buy.This particular person did get in touch again to let me know he received the book after 14 days and he was quite happy with it. Moron.
So, you will receive good quality printed books within 3-5 business days (I always say 3-7) at the lowest price and any rare problems will be sorted out quickly -no muss no fuss.and I can get involved. There are also free interior views for each book.
Just remember that and keep supporting Independent publishers.
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