Panel Haus How do you get a comic you made online actually printed?
Export a print-ready PDF and order it through the app. Three sizes are printable, and whether your book is stapled or spine-bound is decided by one thing: the page count.
· Panel Haus
You order it from inside the app. Panel Haus builds the print-ready PDF, sends it to a print-on-demand printer, and the copies ship to you. There is no separate file to prepare, no printer to negotiate with, and no minimum order.
The parts worth knowing before you start are the size you chose, and the page count, because those two decide almost everything else.
Not every canvas size can be printed
The print sizes are these:
| Canvas | Prints at | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Portrait | 6 x 9 inches | US Trade, the standard book shape |
| Square | 8.5 x 8.5 inches | Art books, gift books |
| Comic Book | 6.625 x 10.25 inches | The traditional single-issue comic size |
The landscape shapes have no matching print product. They export perfectly well as PDF and PNG, they simply cannot be ordered as a book.
The practical consequence is that the size you pick when you start decides whether a physical copy is possible at all, and it is much cheaper to know that on page one than on page twenty. Whichever of these your canvas picker offers, choose from those if a printed copy is any part of the plan.
The page count decides the binding
This is the rule that surprises people, and it is not a setting you choose. It follows from how many pages you have.
- Under 32 pages: saddle stitch. Folded and stapled through the spine, like a single-issue comic off the shelf. Works from 4 pages up to 48.
- 32 pages or more: perfect bound. A flat, glued spine you can print on, like a graphic novel. Works from 32 pages up to 800.
So a 24 page comic comes back stapled and a 40 page comic comes back with a spine, and there is a band in the middle where either is possible. If you specifically want one or the other, the lever is your page count.
Everything is full colour throughout. There is no cheaper black and white option, which is the right default for comics made this way.
What it costs and how long it takes
The price depends on the size, the page count and how many copies you order, so the app quotes you before you commit rather than making you guess. Shipping is chosen separately:
| Shipping | Speed | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Mail | 10 to 15 business days | $3.99 to $5.99 |
| Priority Mail | 5 to 10 business days | $5.99 to $8.99 |
| Ground | 5 to 7 business days | $6.99 to $9.99 |
| Expedited | 2 to 3 business days | $14.99 to $24.99 |
| Express | 1 to 2 business days | $24.99 to $39.99 |
Those are the shipping tiers, on top of printing. Note that these are business days after the book is printed, not after you click order, so add production time on top if you have a deadline.
What to get right before you order
Choose the print size first, not last. Every page in a project is locked to its size when the page is created. That is deliberate, because it means nothing shifts underneath your artwork later, but it also means switching from Square to Comic Book late is a rebuild rather than a setting.
Keep important things away from the edge. Anything within a few millimetres of the trim can be cut off. Printers trim a stack of books at once and the tolerance is real. Text especially: a caption that touches the edge on screen is a caption that might lose a letter in the box.
Look at the exported PDF before ordering. Not the editor, the actual PDF, at full size, on the biggest screen you have. Almost every problem people find in a printed copy was visible in the PDF and nobody opened it.
Order one first. A single copy costs a few dollars more per unit than ten copies, and it is the cheapest possible way to discover that your gutters are too tight or your black is muddier than it looked on a backlit screen. Then order the ten.
Why print at all
A comic on a screen is a link. A comic in a box is an object, and people treat those differently. It gets put on a shelf instead of scrolled past, it can be signed, and it can be handed to someone.
For most people making a first comic, the printed copy is the point at which the thing stops being a project and starts being a thing you made.
Related
Export & Publishing covers the export formats in detail. If you have not made the comic yet, How do you make a comic if you can't draw? is the place to start.