Friday Archive Dive: Selling Prints

Today's Archive Dive comes from December 2009, when a reader submitted a question about selling prints.

I'm about to enter year 2 of my comic, and I've had a few requests for prints. So I'm planning on putting up a buy-this-print button and making it official.

Some specific questions about it:

1) Does anyone use their own printer for this instead of a print shop and find it to be high enough quality and cost effective given the cost of ink cartridges?

2) Poking around the various web comic stores that actually tell you how big the print is, the standard seems to be 11x17 or even bigger. That seems really big to me. Anyone doing standard letter size? Letter size seems so much more convenient and fits in standard flat rate USPS envelopes.

3) For the common, skinny comic strips, do people trim the extra paper off the top and bottom margin or leave it?

4) Do you (and should I) charge more for signed prints? Since I'll be handling these myself it seems kinda silly to charge more for a signature.

5) Do you ship in tubes or in envelopes with cardboard?

6) If you're getting a few orders every week, how often do you process them? I don't think I have time to go to a print shop and the post office more than once a week. How do you handle the customer service aspect of being but one person with limited time? (I'm probably over estimating how many orders I'll get.)

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