PRINT NINJA PRINTING
PrintNinja is a leading printing service, with everything from card games to comic books in their catalogue. Having recently opened a US based shop, their prices and turn around times have improved dramatically in 2024. With great control over product, and a quick-to-solve-problems customer service, here's our take on why PrintNinja is a great printing service
REVIEW
Why PrintNinja
​One of the most exciting parts about finishing production on a comic book is getting it printed into a physical format. Whether it’s a single issue, trade paperback or compendium, you’ll more than likely need to hire a printing company to do it for you. For the first issue of Hammerspace, I used PrintNinja; here is how it went.
I reviewed and interacted with a lot of printing companies prior to choosing PrintNinja, but my decision to use them was based on two factors: price and control.
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Price: In late 2023 when we started the production phase of Hammerspace 1, PrintNinja only offered oversees off set printing. If you’re unfamiliar with offset printing, its when large metal plates are machined for each color (CMYK) to be printed, and then rolled over the pages to produce a single image.
Ordering with PrintNinja
The process for ordering with PrintNinja is pretty straight forward. Their website is very good at directing you to their quote calculator, which will narrow down what you’re looking to print, how many units and then your specifics. It’ll give you a number that’s good for 90 days, and you can choose to continue your order.
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From there, you’ll enter your contact information and someone from the company (each time I requested a quote, it was Campbell; super cool, very nice to work with) will reach out to confirm your quote and project specifications. Once you have your document and everything looks good, that same email will give you a link to upload your comic art (.pdf works best in my opinion) so that their quality team can run a few checks and give you a digital proof.
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The proof takes about a day and gives you some insight about how the book will be printed and trimmed. The most valuable thing about this part of the process is the notes you receive from the representative who reviewed your work. They’ll discuss things like paper quality, small text expectations, color corrections and advise to produce the best version of the book you’re making. When I ordered for Hammerspace 1, I worked with Jen and she was fantastic.
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If you reject the first proof, they take another business day and provide you an updated one. Once you approve the digital proof, the project goes into production with their printer.
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For my first “proper” order of 50 units, from proof approval to deliver was about 2 weeks.
Quality of Product
As with any service, there are good things and not-so-good things about the product they produce. Just a reminder, this is anecdotal and I can be very much a stickler for quality so take what I say with a grain of salt.
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The actual packaging of the books was very good. It was a cardboard box about 1’ x 2’ x 1’ and the books were separated in chunks of 20, with packing paper around each chunk to keep them together. There was also additional paper providing protection from the box itself. All around, delivery was great.
Because of the technology, and because it was oversees, their only available service was both expensive (about 1200 for 150 copies) and had a long turnaround time (about 6 weeks).
However
During production, sometime early-mid 2024, PrintNinja revealed they now had a domestic office here in the US, as well as a way to digital offset print comic books. This means the price could be dropped *significantly* from 1200 for 150 copies to 427 for 150 copies. The turnaround time benefits too, going from a long production phase and freight shipping 6 weeks to a much faster digital print and domestic mailing 2 weeks. This was such a game changer for this company.
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Control: You’d be surprised how little control over paper most companies offer you when you realize just how many options there are for paper at all. This was a big factor for me. I’m personally not a fan of cover stock, I see the benefit, but it’s too “disconnected” from the interior text stock. When compared to other printers, who in my experience limit you primarily to 3 types of cover stock and 3 types of text stock, PrintNinja offered way more options for paper type/weight that was too important to me to bypass. Even with their new domestic office, they still had a good selection of choices. These options are so important to me that when my first order was incorrected, I contacted them to get the batch reprinted (more on that later.)
Pros:
Packaging: Very well done. The box used gave enough room that the books weren’t packed too tightly, but not too big as to let them ram against the sides during transit. The books were separated into packs of 20 and wrapped with packing paper. Additional paper was used as padding inside the box as well. No books were damaged from delivery, as far as I could tell.
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Color: A good replication of what was expected from the screen. The artist for Hammerspace 1 didn’t use very vibrant colors, so their range has yet to be explored but they were exactly what I was hoping to get from the printed pages. Text is readable, no noticeable ghosting from any color layer, the barcode printed well.
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Trim and Bleed: This was done well, and accurate to the proof. Everything that was meant to bleed to the edge is (there are no white stripes on the edges of pages) and everything that needed to be in the page, was.
Cons:
Paper type: For this run specifically, the paper type/weight information got a little lost in translation. Jen, who verified the proof, brought up that 100lb text uncoated was selected for the interior page which is not what I had chose (70lb text gloss). Her concern was that uncoated pages don’t hold up well, though it did allow me to correct it before printing. However, the cover type was changed from quote to machine (80lb text gloss to 80lb cover gloss) and the run had the incorrect paper type. This is a very minor detail, but something I did want corrected, I’ll go over how I got it resolved below.
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Cover Scuffs: 5 out of the 50 copies had some type of scuffing on the cover. This wasn’t damage caused by transit, it seemed to have been a printing error, perhaps the first few copies while the digital plates were “warming up” (?) though I am not sure. Slight imperfections are to be expected and realistically, only one of them was bad enough for me to keep out of product circulation entirely. Seems like a random event kind of thing, but something to be aware of.
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Stapling: This is probably the biggest “complaint” I would have about this run of prints: in more than half of the copies, the stapling was off center, causing pages to not fold properly and reveal sections of other pages. If you know how saddle stitched books are printed, this makes sense to you- hopefully the photo clears it up if there’s any confusion.
Troubleshooting with PrintNinja
So, as mentioned above, I wasn’t too happy with the cover paper type being off. That was one of the biggest factors why I chose PrintNinja: the control over paper. I did end up contacting their customer service about it, mostly asking them to check the quote vs the final product specifications and it was confirmed that the machine was told 80lb cover gloss.
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The representative I was working with (Margaret, also awesome to work with) got back to me a few hours later with two options: they would run a no-charge reprint with the correct paper specifications or they would give me a discount on a future order. I opted to get the order reprinted, as it would double my inventory (80lb cover is wrong, but it’s not a catastrophic mistake) and get me the paper I wanted. I was sent the quote for approval that day and that was that.
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The problem was resolved entirely over the course of a few hours and I’m very happy with how it was handled/taken care of.
Overall
I’ll definitely be using PrintNinja going forward. Until something comes along that outcompetes them, especially with the addition of the domestic office, these guys are the top on the market for affordability/quality in my opinion. I would suggest anyone check them out if/when you enter the realm of printing comics (they do more than just comics, but I don’t). They’ve got some good incentive programs if you run a Kickstarter and mention them or are willing to put their logo in your final product that are worth looking into.
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I’m sure I’ll be using other printing services for smaller projects, but for the actual books I’ll be using PrintNinja until further notice.