Free Comic Book day?

Spectre_General · Post by **Spectre_General** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 11:48 am

I posted this at the Keenspace sampler 2 thread, but I was just wondering if anything was happening about a keenspace book for Free Comic Book day.

Anyone?

Pimpette · Post by **Pimpette** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 4:36 pm

Try here:

Keenspace Sampler Volume 2:
viewtopic.php?t=63317
Submissions are due April 1, I believe, so it should be ready for Free Comic Book Day.
There's also Volume 1, which is already finished. This thread has details for printing it:
viewtopic.php?t=63228

Mr.Bob · Post by **Mr.Bob** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 4:36 pm

Well there always has been. I guess people will get to it when that time comes around again.

Spectre_General · Post by **Spectre_General** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 6:15 pm

So then is the Keenspot Sampler THE free comic book day book? I wasn't clear on that...

War · Post by **War** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 6:35 pm

No it isn't. There hasn't been any news about a sampler this year.

KeenCrow · Post by **KeenCrow** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:18 am

You mean something like this? I stumbled across that doing a pointless google search the other day. Apparently, pages are still open for last years!

Dotty · Post by **Dotty** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:39 am

KeenCrow wrote:You mean something like this? I stumbled across that doing a pointless google search the other day. Apparently, pages are still open for last years!

Interesting find o.O

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:56 am

I believe the free comic day comic was called Pixels to Paper. You had to pay to get involved in that one. I created the sampler so anyone could get in but since there was no money for printing and distribution, anyone who downloaded it had to do that themselves. I can't say much on the actual distribution since people aren't posting in the old thread anymore, but I will say that it's a lot less than Pixels to Paper.

Dotty · Post by **Dotty** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 11:05 am

Maybe for the next one we can pool a little bit of money together? What would a small amount printed cost us?

Terotrous · Post by **Terotrous** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 11:37 am

I suppose I should help clarify this, as I participated last time.

The Keenspace book was called "From Pixels to Paper", and it was distributed free across North America and maybe parts of Europe on "Free Comic Book Day" (May 3rd) as an attempt to promote Keenspace and Keenspot entertainment as a whole.

It was also referred to as the "Keenspace Sampler", but it isn't related to Faub's book at all.

In order to participate you had to pay $50.

I'm not sure if it's going this year, I haven't heard anything yet.

KeenCrow · Post by **KeenCrow** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 12:01 pm

Not really on topic, but in the same random google search I found this, which I also didn't know existed. It's amazing what you come across just doing a random search for "keenspace," or somesuch.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 2:35 pm

TdotOdot2k wrote:Maybe for the next one we can pool a little bit of money together? What would a small amount printed cost us?

I don't know the actual distribution size for From Pixels to Paper but it's probably something on the order of 10,000 to 50,000 copies, none of which made it all the way to Columbia

The cheapest cost per comic I've seen is comixpress.com, $0.85 per issue or $8500 for 10000 issues. Around half the price is because of the color cover. Since it's a digital print job, the cost does not go down with large numbers of issues.

http://www.speedcolor.com/booorder.asp?Header=Books
This site returned a quote of around $5000 for a 10000 issue offset print job.

The next cost requirement is shipping those 10000 copies to different locations.

UPS's shipping costs are nearly indecipherable unless you have a specific package to send to a specific address and can use their cost calculator. Assume between $5 and $30 to ship a package within the united states, though. Assuming a package of 10 comics shipped to each of 1000 locations, you're looking at more than double the cost to print the comics in shipping.

USPS will ship "Bound Printed Matter" for the cost of around $2 for a 1lb. package. Not bad, but that's still $2000 in shipping costs.

All told, the best price is probably around $7000 to print 10000 copies and get them where they need to be. Considering 19 people contributed to the last comic, that's over $368 a person and makes submitting to From Pixels to Paper look cheap in comparison.

The really nice part about digital distribution is that shipping costs $0. Printing can be done on demand for between $1 and $2 a book. 10 issues per person will cost between $10 and $20 (less than half the cost to submit to From Pixels to Paper). The distribution may be smaller, but the book can also be continually distributed. From Pixels to Paper is just gone. Unless you got a copy when it came out, you have little chance of getting one now.

Now you see why we did it this way. 8)

ZorroandEster · Post by **ZorroandEster** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 3:36 pm

I'm so all about free comic book day if we can do it.

Risky · Post by **Risky** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:31 pm

ZorroandEster wrote:I'm so all about free comic book day if we can do it.

It has a yahoogroup, I believe "keenspacebook", but it hasn't had Any traffic this year. I posted something along the lines of "so... when are we doing this" a while back. So far, the crickets aren't being very helpful.

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:51 pm

dunno. Maybe they decided we took over or something.

Pockybot · Post by **Pockybot** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:53 pm

They still have print comic books?

Risky · Post by **Risky** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:55 pm

faub wrote:dunno. Maybe they decided we took over or something.

Last year's was pretty awesome, the cover was genius. I definitely made sure to get one.

Mr.Bob · Post by **Mr.Bob** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 5:36 pm

I couldn't find the Keenspace one last year. Only the keenspot one.

Komiyan · Post by **Komiyan** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 5:43 pm

Ditto what Bob said.. Only went to a tiny comic shop, though.

Maboo · Post by **Maboo** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 6:52 pm

I picked up the Keenspace one last year, in the UK. Didn't even see the Keenspot one.

Very interested in the costing - I didn't realise it worked out as SO expensive!

Tell me - did you guys think that $50 to be in the book was a fair price? My reaction was that the content of the comic was EXTREMELY mixed - just like Keenspace itself - and with the exception of a bunchl of really stellar submissions, a lot of the context was very up and down in quality.

It did give the impression of one of those "vanity publishing" works that will accept any random crap and print it - which really didn't give the right impression, I have to admit.