Print shops in Europe

I've just come back from AniNite (A convention in Vienna). I had a lot of fan during the event.

I've been invited from some conventions, US and Europe, but this time there was something special for me. 

I printed a special manga for AniNite, Moon and Blood Limited German edition. 

I sold some copies of the manga (English books) at Animuc(A convention in Munich)  in this April, and they were sold well. I asked my publisher more copies to do same thing at AniNite. But they couldn't because all the copies were in distributions, they had no copies at their office anymore.

OK, then why don't we print German Edition? My publisher agreed with it (private 100 copies). Then, where do I print them? I thought I print them here in Japan then brought or send them to Vienna. If you sent them the cost would be very high - when I talked about it with ppl from AniNite, they suggested to print in Germany or Austria.

In Japan, I know some good print-shop, and how do I make the files for print. But I had no idea in overseas - in Europe situation. They helped me, and found a print shop which could handle Japanese style print (the book spine is on the right side, opposite from Western style). The shop is in Vienna, and their friend are working as an internship. She instructed me very kindly, so I could make the file somehow. 

The system in West is different from in Japan, you need to compile the image files in one PDF. Here in Japan, many print shops accept tif, psd, jpeg files, all you have to do is trimming the file size and numbered them. This is much easier, and the quality is nice, even it was small copies (like this time, 100 copies)

I've heard that it is very difficult to get good print shop in West, but my friend (crews of AniNite) said that you could get it if you search on internet well. They searched lots, I guess.

The Vienna print-shop did very good job too, it's very neat.

Just one thing, the paper - in the old days,we only have similar type paper for Dojinshi print. It's think so the backside print can be seen. It disturbs the drawing. I remember how we were excited the print shops started to offer manga-paper for Dojinshi option. 

Unfortunately, the print-shop doesn't have the paper like "manga-paper" 

Still, the quality is quite well, that's because my friends AniNite crews checked it very carefully. Thanks a lot!

The price was 15 Euro, it's not cheap. But all the profits went to the charity AniNite held. It's not bad, right?

Relevant articles

Typesetting of Moon&Blood German edition.

Moon&Blood Limited German Edition