I found Comixpress after pursuing several dead ends while looking for a printer for my coloring books. The company I'd previously been with raised both their prices and their minimums, to the point that I could barely afford to retail the coloring books, let alone wholesale them!

Comixpress has great prices, and specializes in the staple-binding style that I was seeking for the coloring books. They are set up, as you might guess from their name, to produce comics and graphic novels. They also offer perfect binding at reasonable prices, but I have not seen their samples of this yet and cannot offer any recommendation on this aspect.

I have ordered three titles from them (Fishbowl Fantasies, Faeries of Victoria Griffin vol 2 and Rum and Ruffians), staple-bound, with full color covers and black and white interiors, and for this product, the quality is good. I was a little disappointed that the cover stock was not thicker, but it has proven sturdy enough, and the color cover and print quality is excellent. The trim sizing is perfect, and the page setup is excellent - none of the pages were mis-centered and they can do full-bleed.

The customer service has been excellent - e-mails were answered promptly and professionally, and I always felt important and personally served.

They also have an on-demand distribution system in place, and some clever cross-promotional options as well. They look worth a try, but I haven't poked at these areas yet!

Turnaround was my only major complaint. Their estimate of turnaround was not the next-day, or even next-week service that you may get at a larger company, and additionally, on every one of my jobs, they managed to blow that by an additional few days to weeks. I have learned to give them a generous mental lead-time (I double their estimates in my head) and then I can be pleasantly surprised when things get to me sooner than I expected.

It may seem like a poor time to review these folks, as they are currently suffering an equipment failure and are closed for printing right now! This is, however, the kind of hurdle a small business often hits, and as someone who has also suffered printer failures at inopportune times, I have a lot of sympathy for this kind of problem. If I needed books to distribute to a big book chain and had deadlines breathing down my neck, I may look elsewhere, but they continue to stay in contact while they are having problems, which makes every difference in my book, and they have been - if slow - very reliable. If you like the personal touch of a small company and can plan sufficiently for a long turnaround and possible delays, this is a great company to try.