Well … it’s looking increasingly like we’ve managed to avoid a hurricane.  Still Fay is a large, nasty, slow-moving tropical storm and it’s bearing right down on us.  So given that, we’ll probably be closing the offices a bit early today as the outer bands of the storm begin to roll our way.  It’s also probable that the offices will be closed for most — if not all — of the day on Wednesday 8/20.

Not to worry, though.  Late last week (when we first saw this coming) we doubled up our shifts here in an effort to get ahead and cover the worst case scenarios … full blown hurricane, power outtages, days without being able to go to the office, etc.  So as of right now we’re about 2 days ahead at the top of the queue and by the time we turn off the lights today we should be at least another day ahead, which will allow us to spend the next day or so working from our home offices (assuming no power outtages) on the mid and lower queue … gathering files, validating, and sending invoices, etc.

This has come up a couple of times lately and so I wanted to add a quick note of clarification regarding the use of copyrighted images.

Ka-Blam Digital Printing complies with all US Copyright laws.  This means (among other things) we will not knowingly print any copyrighted images without the permission of the copyright holder.   If you are using artwork or photographs not created by you then you need the permission of the one who created them in order for us to print them.   Now this doesn’t mean that you need to send us a permission slip from your artistic collaborator.  We trust that you’ve already made some sort of arrangement on that end.   However it DOES mean that you cannot print a convention sketch or a commission from your favorite comic pro without his or her permission.   Ownership of the physical artwork does not mean ownership of copyright.  Unless specifically waived the creator of the artwork maintains the copyright.

Similarly, you cannot use photographs of celebrities or other public figures (unless you took the photos yourself) in your work.   It doesn’t matter that the person in the photo is legally considered a “public figure”, nor does it matter if your comic is a work of satire.   These things do not invalidate the copyright of the person who took the photo and/or of the company that paid for the photo to be taken.

Likewise, running a cocktail of photoshop filters over a copyrighted image does not somehow magically make the copyright on the original image go away.   By this faulty logic one could scan an issue of Spiderman, change his costume colors from red and blue to brown, rename the book The Brown Recluse, and then avoid Marvel’s copyright claim on the issue.

Just a reminder, folks …

When you place a new order with us you MUST include the file location information in the notes field of the order.    Any order missing that information runs the serious risk of missing their target ship-by date.

Also … if you use a third party service such as a sendspace.com please keep your links active until you see that we have gotten the files.  We’ve gotten a LOT better lately at retrieving files in a more timely manner, but occasionally links do expire before we’re able to get to the files.  So please be aware of your order status and keep the file links active for us.   And btw, please don’t PAY for file storage.   Sendspace.com is free and we can recommend some others to you as well if needed.

Thomas is completely recoding the IndyPlanet Submission area of the Ka-Blam User Control Panel.   So if you login and see something that looks a bit out of whack there — don’t panic.  No need to send us a message informing us that it doesn’t look right.   Bear with us.  The new and vastly improved IP submission and All New IP listing editing features — that will allow you to change the wording of an exisiting IndyPlanet listing, upload new and/or replace graphics — will be well worth the wait.

Also if you have a pending issue regarding an IP submission that didn’t quite come through right, then please hang on for another day or so and see if the new code doesn’t resolve the issue.

Our target date for completion is Monday August 18.  We’ll post here on the front page though when the new code is fully in place and functional.

The print quality issues I spoke of in the last update have been completely resolved and everything is coming out beautifully.

But the jamming issues have YET to go away completely (it’s maddeninlgy frustrating) which is why I’ve got the status of both machines listed at less 10.   Another service call and more parts replacements are scheduled for this afternoon.

Well it seems the problems we’ve had with jamming have improved a bit — though the jury’s still out on whether the problem is resolved or not.

I’ve actually dropped the status numbers a bit though because of print quality issues. We’re due for some periodic maintenance (the digital press equivalent of an extensive automobile tuneup) on each machines, but are awaiting some replacement parts that are on order but not yet received. It’ll likely be Monday before the parts arrive, so you likely won’t see any improvement in status numbers over the weekend.

For clarity’s sake, let me point out that when we’re having print quality issues that does NOT mean that the books we ship out are printed at a lesser quality than normal. By no means.

I’ve stated often that it’s rare that a print quality issue manifests itself on all print jobs. An issue that may be highly noticeable on one print job may very well be nonexistent on another job. It’s the strange nature of print quality issues. They manifest themselves in different ways on different jobs. We are still printing and still printing at normal quality levels. These issues do slow us down though as they force us to jumble our print schedule (which can be a huge headache) and look down queue in order to find print jobs in which the issues we’re experiencing are imperceptible in the final print.

This is a post I’ve written and deleted without publishing probably a dozen times since we’ve launched our business.  If you’re reading it now then that means I’ve actually managed to click the “submit” button this time.

You ready?  Here it is … if you –for whatever reason — feel the need to have a contentious, combative working relationship with your printer then please choose another printer.

Really.  We don’t mind.

I’ll even recommend some to you.

We try to provide a top notch product at the best price we can manage.  We try to respond to your questions and concerns as quickly as we can.   As creators ourselves (and as customers of other printing services in the past) we can understand and appreciate your concerns and apprehensions.   But please understand that if it takes us a few days to answer even a simple question or to resolve an issue you might have it’s not because we have malice in our hearts.  It’s not because we’re a fly by night organization that’s out to screw you over (and sending us nasty emails and messages accusing us of such really doesn’t help things much).   Thomas and I have both been working in the comics biz in some capacity or other for over fifteen years now and while everyone we’ve had dealings with might not consider us to be their BFFs, we’ve both established pretty good reputations.  Ask around.  We started Ka-Blam because we love comics and saw a real opportunity to provide a much needed service to creators.   Do we want your money?  Yes.  We’re a business … profit is the lifeblood of business.  But  Thomas and I both were making more money — a lot more money — in our previous occupations than we’ve made running Ka-Blam for the past couple of years.

We’ve tried to operate our business in as transparent a mode as possible.  We’ve taken a lot of hits for some of our shortcomings and many of those hits were justified.  We’ve made no secret of the fact that we’re a very small company operating on razor-thin profit margins.  Thomas and I each work here full time (often seven days a week) and at present we have three part-time employees.  For a company our size we are UNUSUALLY productive.  We put a LOT of comics into circulation and keeping the presses rolling is always priority number one around here which means that answering questions, comments, and feedback is necessarily job number two.   Could we hire another full-time employee to do nothing but handle customer support all day?  Sure, but that would necessitate a notable increase in our prices.   And while we’re willing to consider that option, we’ve decided that for now at least lower prices and sometimes slower support response  is preferable to higher prices and instant support response.   Maybe we’re wrong about that.   As in all things, we’re willing and able to change if another, better way presents itself.

We value your business and we value what you create.  We appreciate what comic creators do and what they have to put up with.  We are deeply appreciative of the good will that’s been extended to us by our customers and it makes us only want to continue to improve our business and our processes.

But dealing with contentious customers who take a combative stance from the very beginning and impugn our motives at every opportunity is something we’ve decided we just don’t want to deal with anymore.   Life’s too short and we’re too old.  We’ve got enough great customers who are an absolute joy to deal with that we can do without those that we can … well … do without.

I’m sorry if that’s a little too “Soup Nazi” for some of you, but that’s the way it’s going to be.

I realize that I’m preaching to the choir somewhat here … as most of you reading this have probably also familiarized yourself with our technical specs … but for some reason lately we’ve been getting an inordinately high number of orders with files that are out of spec. So whether you’re new to our service or a long-time customer, please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself (or re-familiarize) yourself with our technical specs (http://ka-blam.com/index.php?page=Specs).

We’re seeing a variety of spec problems, but the most common problem that we’re seeing is incorrect page dimensions. On a standard-sized comic ALL non-double spread pages MUST be a uniform size of 7 inches wide by 10.5 inches high. If your standard-sized comic page files (excepting double spreads) are not all 7 x 10.5 then your book is NOT in spec. Double page spreads should be sent as a single continuous image file with dimensions of 13.5 inches wide by 10.5 inches high. Please DO NOT separate your double page spreads into two page files.

A close second place among most common problems is files lacking necessary bleed (trim) space. Your comics are not printed to the final size of 6.625 by 10.25 (if you send your files at this size then your book is NOT in spec). They are printed slightly larger (7 x 10.5) and then TRIMMED to that smaller final size. Therefore all text, captions, word balloons, and relevant artwork MUST be contained within the live area (or the margins) of our template (http://ka-blam.com/comic_template.psd).

Yes, you can use the margins (the yellow area of the template), but we strongly recommend that whenever possible you keep all of your text and word balloons within the live area and use the margins sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. Your pages will have a more aesthetically pleasing look if you do this and your never risk the readability of our comic by having balloons or captions trimmed.

Everything within the red areas of the template is IN the bleed and WILL BE trimmed away. If you have text or word balloons WITHIN or adjacent to the red areas of the template then your book is NOT in spec.

Also … if you intend for your artwork to bleed off the page then your artwork must bleed off the page completely. The artwork must extend all the way to the edges of the pages. If your artwork stops at 6.625 x 10.25 and you have a band of black, white, or color filling out the trim area, then your book is NOT in spec. Our presses have engineered-in tolerances of approximately 0.125 inches per sheet. So you cannot count on perfect mechanical precision to disguise a spec insufficiency. If you leave a band of color around the edges of a full bleed page, in many instances of a given print run that band of color will not be entirely trimmed away and WILL be visible in the final product. So if you want your art to bleed off, then it must bleed off COMPLETELY.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be making some notable changes to our Customer Support system.   In an effort to cut down on some inner office redundancies and to help get you answers to your support related questions faster and more efficiently, we’re taking several major steps.

First and foremost we’re presently doing a massive (and long overdue) overhaul of our Frequently Asked Questions page.    There are a LOT of questions on a lot of different subjects that come up far more frequently than we’d anticipated when we wrote the FAQ.   We’ll be adding all of those questions (and answers) as well as some more detailed technical answers — particularly relating to file prepartion and transmission — and maybe even a few how-to videos.    We’re doing a comprehensive search of the Support Forums, culling the best answers and advice there to add to the FAQ.

We’ve also been continually refining our Message Center.  We’re very pleased with how that’s been working out and particularly pleased with some of the new features we’ve added to our admin side to help us track your questions even better.   Yes, we are aware that answers to your questions are still sometimes slow to come.   We have made great strides there, however the sheer volume of incoming questions still frequently causes slowdowns in response.    Still, the Message Center is almost at the point of being what we had envisioned it to be.   We’ve started a thread at our Support Forums seeking your advice and opinions on Message Center features and functions that you’d like to see implemented … things we might not have thought of, etc.  If you’ve got something please join in the conversation there or of course you can send us your idea via the Message Center.

And speaking of the Support Forums … we have decided that in the coming weeks — once the FAQ overhaul is complete and the Message Center is officially out of Beta — we’ll be shutting down the Forums.    Early on the Support Forums provided a valuable link between us and our customers, but increasingly there is little asked there that would not be better asked — and more quickly answered — at the Message Center (order specific information, etc.) and most of the technical questions asked are either already answered in the FAQ or should be found there (and will be soon).    We appreciate all of the help that many of you have given us there … pitching in and answering questions or offering your experiences to help out newbies.

We do plan at some point in the future to start a sort of social networking site where our customers can interact with each other and continue to share their experiences and promote their work, but once we’ve got the FAQ and the Message Center to the point that they both need to be the Support Forums will be somewhat redundant and unnecessary.

Some of you have no doubt noticed our menu link to the Pantone Huey Pro for sale at Amazon.com.   We’ve refrained from third party advertising in the past, but decided to make an exception in this case.  We bought Huey Pros for both our office and home PCs some months back and fell deeply in love with them.

The Huey Pro is a tiny monitor calibration device that plugs into a USB port and not only calibrates your monitor but measures the ambient light in the room and does on-the-fly adjustments to compensate for that ambient light.   They are simple to use and absolutely amazing!   We began recommending them almost immediately after experiencing for ourselves just how useful (practically indispensable) they are.  And as we bought ours at Amazon (and they had the best price we’d found) we were telling everyone to go there and order.  We realized somewhat belatedly (and stupidly) that if we’d had an affiliate store we could’ve been banking on all those recommendations … so we setup that affiliate store and added the menu link.

I don’t want to come off as too shilly, but if you’re serious about printing your comics digitally then you really do need some sort of monitor calibration device.  We get files all the time that are clearly coming from people with mis-calibrated monitors … files that are way, WAY too dark or files where the darkest point on the page is only around 70% black or files that are painfully oversaturated.

A properly calibrated monitor would fix all of those things.  You just can’t go wrong with the Huey Pro.  It’s only around $100 — which is a LOT less than some comparable devices — and you’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.