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Effective with all orders received beginning July 9 we’re making a change in our page substitution policy.

Previously the page substitution fee applied only to changes made AFTER an order had been printed. From this point on the fee will apply to any changes we have to make at any point after you’ve been invoiced … regardless of whether the book has printed or not.

Because we assemble the printable documents from pages you supply to us we send a digital proof along with the invoice. This is so that you may check that we have assembled the document correctly. The digital proof is for pagination check purposes ONLY. It is not a representation of print quality (it’s low resolution by design) and the digital “trims” are an approximation of where the actual trims will be on the finished product. Our digital proof was NEVER intended to be your opportunity to proof your book for spelling, grammar, or any issues other than pagination. All of that should have been done BEFORE the order was submitted.

The files for all orders must be sent to us PRINT READY. This means that before you archive your files and send them to us that you have not only built them to the proper, provided technical specifications but that you thoroughly proofed them. We do not offer a proofing service. We’re not equipped to be a proofing service and yet we are receiving an unusually high — and seemingly escalating — volume of requests for page substitutions/replacements on orders we’ve yet to print. Some days we have two staffers doing nothing but page substitutions ALL day. This, more than anything else, bogs down our process, and adds to the cost of doing business. With the ever growing volume of orders we’re receiving we can’t continue down this same path. We’re not asking you to do anything that we haven’t already been asking from the beginning. The only difference now is that instead of asking we’re insisting.

So before you place your order and send your archived files to us you MUST be sure that —

1. Your files are all built to the proper technical specifications
2. All the page files necessary for your print job are included — including inside cover pages
3. Your pages are free of misspellings or grammatical errors or missing word balloons
4. Your page files are named using a logical, intuitive naming scheme
5. Your archive is extractable and your pages are free of any distortion

If we have to make any changes to a printable document after we’ve sent an invoice then a page substitution fee of $1 per page –with a minimum fee of $5 and a maximum of $25 PER book will apply. No exceptions.

Newsline »

I’m a little late on this one. Apologies.
This week Thomas Hall manages to mash-up two of my favorite topics: Heavy Metal music and quitting comics. If I don’t quit making comics at least once per week,…then it’s not a week. Here’s a snippet:

“Now, when I say “Make a Change,” it could very obviously mean one of two things- moving on from a specific project to do something else, and leaving comics all together to explore other pursuits. Everyone who has done the Indy Comics grind for any length of time has thought about the latter- throwing in the towel and planting a garden or something and never drawing or writing again. Those of us who are still here, however, have come to terms with the fact that making funny books are in our marrow. We have to make comics, and that is just that…”

You can read the whole thing right here!

Play Nice!
Tony