We’ve mentioned this a few times in the past but just as a reminder, everyone, please do NOT use yousendit.com for sending files to us. The downloads are too slow, the download limits are too small, and the links expire too fast.

We try to pack your order as tightly and as a safely was we can so as to insure that your comics or books arrive in crisp, sale-able condition, but from time to time a box will arrive with a crushed corner and dinged or damaged books inside. We’re sorry, but it happens.

The good news is …

We’re processing dozens of payments a day and there are at least a few payments every day that reference no order number and often the names and/or email addresses attached to the payments are not the same as those attached to the order …

When assembling your files for submission to us please, please KEEP IT SIMPLE. Keep it intuitive. No creative file structuring or creative file naming please. No pagination guides are necessary. Succinct — and sequential — file naming works beautifully.

The front page here at Ka-Blam is not just about us … it’s about YOU as well! Don’t forget that we’ll happily post your latest news and information.

If you’re not listing the books and comics you print with Ka-Blam at IndyPlanet, then you’re missing out on the greatest advantage of digital printing — print-on-demand order fulfillment!

Did you know that you can get a 5% discount on most orders simply by putting one of our Ka-Blam created button or banner link on the main page of your website?

If you’re ordering a square-bound paperback book of over 80 pages, then don’t forget to include a spine file with any text or graphics you want printed on the spine to be included.

While we always send out a link to a digital proof of each new item ordered, we strongly recommend that you order a physical proof — a quantity “1″ order — whenever possible.

Wear your Ka-Blam promo T-Shirt to a comics con — any comics store event such as a signing or FCBD, etc. — send us photos, and we’ll add $10 of print credit to your Ka-Blam account!

We never promise that you’ll have your order in hand by a certain date … only that we’ll get the order into the hands of the shipping company (UPS or USPS) by a given date. That’s what ship-by date means.

Are you selling your comics from your website? You should be … and we can make that process a breeze for you! You don’t have to buy in advance or stuff any envelopes or take anything to the post office. We can do it all for you … at no additional cost!

Here at Ka-Blam we don’t charge you anything for building a printable document from your spec-compliant files … however, we DO charge for making customer-requested changes to that document once it’s already been built.

You can avoid expedited printing charges by working from a schedule. Know when you’re going to need your order in hand and then set reasonable deadlines for when you can have the job completed and submitted to us.

The best way to avoid moires is to be sure that your tone or dot pattern renders are always done TO final print resolution. If you render your pages at less than final print resolution and “rez up” then your chances of generating moires are greatly increased. Similarly, over-rezzing your renders (rendering at higher than print resolution) and then re-sizing down will also likely create moires.

For example — for a standard sized comic the canvas size of the files you send to us is 7 inches wide by 10.5 inches high. That’s a 2 parts to 3 parts ratio.

Monitors tend to skew brighter as the calibration gets off. So on an uncalibrated monitor the actual color values are most likely DARKER than the colors you are seeing on screen.

Have you ever really stopped to consider why you’re putting a cover price prominently on your front cover? If you haven’t then your thinking is still analog, but the world you live in is now digital. Consider this …

“Print Runs” are a term that applies only in traditional printing. With digital printing the whole idea of a “run” is meaningless. Digital printing makes true “print-on-demand” not only possible, but practicable.

Digital Printing is really a paradigm shift from the traditional method of offset printing. The limitations of offset printing have over the years shaped the way comics are produced, distributed, and merchandised.

We download dozens of file archives every single day (mostly Jenni and Wayne do the downloading) — zips, rars, sitxs, etc. — probably 90% of which are named “kablam.rar” or ‘ka-blam.zip” or “print.zip” or “kablam-print.zip”, etc.

Digital printing means open-ended print runs and the ability to reorder with ease any item you’ve previously printed.

Crop marks are really a relic left over from another age. In offset printing they serve a function, but in a digital printing environment where almost everything is done in an inline process they really have no relevance …

LZW compression is your friend and ours. Unlike jpg compression, LZW compression is non-destructive and completely lossless.

We got lots of ‘em. We have them for comics and paperbacks — manga-sized, magazine-sized,
standard-sized — as well as for hardcovers.

If you want your images to bleed off of the edges of the pages then that tiny bit of extra, expendable artwork (the bleed) is CRUCIAL.