Shades Of Men - Getting over Print

Hey there,

You might have been wondering where's that Jrej guy at...
Well... it must have been the busiest week working on my comic since this adventure started 9 years ago.

I totally underestimated how much time this next step would take me. However I can proudly say I drove through the storm at maximum speed.

Yes the art was done! So what was this huge task left to accomplish?

Freakin'

.

.

.

fonts.

Three things were bothering me:

First, I changed font along the way because the ipad app I came to use didn't allow custom fonts.

Second, the ipad font looked quite bad to be honest, so it had to be changed.

Third, both fonts were under copyright and could not be used for commercial usage.

Going through every page to change the font was quite tedious. If it wasn't for the copyright issue I would have probably gave up and changed the first chapter to the ipad font.

I spent every evening of this first week, carefully going through this process.

All the way to the 135th page... So many...

I chose a copyright-free hand writing font that fit the comic. I took this opportunity to correct some of my english mistakes and a few sentences along the way.

After that came formatting time...

Getting used to InDesign did take a bit of time but I managed to do what I wanted. Only wish there was a "select all" tool across several pages.

As I had planned to print through Lulu Print on Demand, so I formatted my document using their template. I discovered eventually, at the end of the process that they would charge 30$ for printing and they would be listing the book on amazon for 55$. Even I, was reluctant to buy my own proof copy at that price...

So At that point I actually changed my mind and went with KDP print from Amazon...

This time the printing costs were about 10$. Such a big price different that I'm now worried the quality will not be as good. I guess, this we'll see soon enough. Rest assured, Amazon does take a big chunk to distribute the book so I earn less than 2$ per copy on their platform. What is nice is the option to buy "author copies" at print cost 10$ to sell yourself, so that would probably be my way to go if anyone wanted a copy. (I haven't forgotten you fundition pledge @bryan-imhoff!)

Amazon did request a few minor changes (3mm more in page width... Arggg) so I'm waiting on approval. I'll be sure to let you know when It's finally ready and that I receive my very first copy.

It was a lot of work, but it certainly was worth the effort.
I'll keep you posted on what's next.

See you on the other side,

Jrej

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