Hi everyone, I'm new to tapastic and I'm set to post some of my series on here, I just wanted to chime in. I've used both ka-blam and createspace, I would say that quality wise ka-blam is definitely a great option, covers and interior pages are beautiful imo but they were so expensive that it wouldn't be feasible for me to use them for POD especially when I get ready to start selling my books directly from my website or at conventions, so I switched to createspace and they:
1)have better prices. I've gotten two books published through them (one 34 pager, one that is 86 pages) for about 4-5 dollars less per book than what ka-blam charged and i am pleased with the quality and how they turned out, and the cover quality was excellent. ka-blam's page quality imo is definitely better especially when it comes to color pages BUT you won't be disappointed with createspace's interiors either.
2)have pretty decent customer service, they helped me to get my book approved
3)Here's the catch...ka-blam pretty much does everything for you once your submit your .tif files, createspace has VERY strict specifications and they will reject your submission if you do not meet them. I learned a lot about book formatting while going through the process, and honestly after I got my first pdf approved it was easy getting my 2nd book approved due to knowing what is expected. It did not take long for me at all once I made a few adjustments, and I will give this one piece of advice: make sure ALL sfx, word balloons, text, etc are within their specified margins. Anything that even remotely looks like text or a "live element" has to be within the margins or they'll reject it. It can be frustrating to you if you don't want to make any adjustments to your format, I resolved any issue that I had by placing some of my pages with elements that may cause an issue on a black border so that everything fit safely within the margins.
4)Createspace makes a kindle ready pdf file for you once you are approved, i was able to use the pdf they gave me and it worked like a charm in Kindle's comic creator so now I can also offer .mobi files when I am ready to start selling the volumes of my series
I took pics of one of my books, sorry about the crappy pic quality the camera on my phone stinks:
my series is mostly black and white screen toned color style but i do have color pages and they came out pretty decent. If you don't mind a bit of extra work and cheaper prices, createspace is pretty good but if not or if you aren't experienced with getting your book printed i'd definitely go with ka-blam, despite their cost their quality is excellent to me. Cheers everyone,
-Starlightcitypro
www.ilpersona.com