Advice sought. The Photographers Toning Book reprinting options.

[csant]

PDFs. I have heard many tales of pirated copies from celebrity chef cooking books (I know people who have emailed them unsolicited to their whole mailing list including me) to academia. I also share the dislike of reading long texts from a screen, as mentioned by several.

I totally agree. Digital versions are the quick'n'dirty thing to still your hunger, but as far as practical usability is concerned, they rank low for me. I'd way prefer a printed copy. And if the thing goes PoD, consider me an early buyer, too…

c ("late" to the game like so many others)

 

[tim rudman]

Thanks everyone.
I know of many cases of widespread pirating of PDFs so I'm cautious of that route.
The question of colour fidelity is important I feel - also contrast for the step wedges etc. I have my Christmas cards made by a local printer, initially for our hospice fund. When they moved from press to digital for cards I immediately had to go through many proofs each year to get even close. That is for a single print!
Also, I was involved recently in a group PoD book and found that all our folios were seriously affected by the colours of other prints that shared each main sheet before cutting. This resulted in significant compromises when brilliant vibrant colour shared a sheet with subtle toning (for example). I know this happens with presses too but it appeared more of a problem with this particular digitally printed book.
I have also heard that some PoD books vary sustantially from book to book.
I would like to have this book in print again. I get many enquiries that I can't help with and I also think that information should be shared and available.

I quite like the idea of an upgraded version. I had planned some additional and perhaps more esoteric chapters but was understandable restricted for cost reasonswhen we reached around 200 pages. It would involve a good deal of work though and my feeling is that the bulk of an interested public have got the book and future sales would be small and hard to justify the extra work and time involved (I tend to be a bit of a compulsive retester & rewriter!).
I take it that no one has experience Createspace?

Mark L: Will do. Did you know he just got married?
Tim

 

[Chazzy]

Put me down as another who would much prefer a real book from a real publisher over a pdf. There just has to be a publisher for a 2nd printing. As I mentioned before, I think it might be possible to get enough pre-orders to make a publisher take notice, assuming that the price won't be astronomical. Why not take pre-orders on APUG, Photo.net, etc.? You might be surprised at the number of people who are willing to commit to buying a well-printed book at a certain price point. At least, you'll never know until you try.

 

[david James lee]

i would be interested in buying one if the price is right.

 

[George Collier]

Being in the printing business, I would agree that controlling distribution (and Tim's "equity") of a pdf would be difficult.
Re the printing - there are good quality digital printers, but quality is relative, from just having good saturation (crowd pleasing) to actually matching a known standard. A good printer might show relative color differences between sample illustrations, but none might look like it is intended, which, I think would be Tim's concern. This goes to color management profiles, which can be unique to each printer. The separations in Tim's digital master likely support the profile of the original printer (if color management was even used at the time of the original press run), and another printer might not output the same way (different color gamuts, reproduction curves, etc.) This is also an issue with pdf's viewed on hundreds of computer displays. It might be like giving a delicate cake recipe to two different bakers, with instructions, and expecting identical results from both kitchens - different ovens, raw materials (inks..) - you get the idea.
Part of the project of another printing with a different printer ("output device", as it is known in color management speak), would be tweaking all the separations to make them look like the original printing, if I read correctly Tim's comment about color fidelity.

 

[Gadfly_71]

The problem with POD services, first and foremost, is cost per book. Quality issues aside, you'd probably be in the neighborhood of $100 per book using any one of these services. And that's just the cost to print each one, you want to make any money off the deal? That price will have to go up.

I'm not saying that these services are bad, per se. I've used Blurb, Apple and SharedInk at one time or another. If I had to choose one, I'd say that, as far as quality and consistency are concerned, I prefer SharedInk. What I'm suggesting though, is that POD (in this case) would be cost prohibitive and that maybe a traditional(ish) publisher would seem to be a better fit. My best guess would be to try one of the university presses.

Cheers,
Andrew

 

[RalphLambrecht]

The problem with POD services, first and foremost, is cost per book. Quality issues aside, you'd probably be in the neighborhood of $100 per book using any one of these services. And that's just the cost to print each one, you want to make any money off the deal? That price will have to go up.

I'm not saying that these services are bad, per se. I've used Blurb, Apple and SharedInk at one time or another. If I had to choose one, I'd say that, as far as quality and consistency are concerned, I prefer SharedInk. What I'm suggesting though, is that POD (in this case) would be cost prohibitive and that maybe a traditional(ish) publisher would seem to be a better fit. My best guess would be to try one of the university presses.

Cheers,
Andrew

plus the cost of packing and shipping individual book orders from the UK. And, who takes the orders, writes the shipping labels and takes them to the post office, what, a thousands times?

 

[naugastyle]

No, POD orders would be shipped/labeled directly from the publisher. If it were Lulu/Blurb, that would the US.

How much did the book cost originally?

 

[Gadfly_71]

No, POD orders would be shipped/labeled directly from the publisher. If it were Lulu/Blurb, that would the US.

Depending on the publisher of course. LULU and Blurb do offer an online marketplace and handle everything on the fulfillment side (provided that you offer it for sale in their marketplace). Other POD houses, not so much.

 

[Ian Grant]

Look at alternative publishers, some Analog photography books have been selling well.

Ian

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Look at alternative publishers, some Analog photography books have been selling well.

Ian

I also think that this is the best option. Tim has a good reputation and his valuable books have sold well in the past. He is a very small risk for any publisher to take on. He is an established author, and there is no need for him to go into self-publishing at this point.

This thread had over 800 views already, and that might be all a new publisher needs for evidence. Or, was that the idea to begin with?

In any event, Tim, don't risk to cheapen the quality of your publications. You don't need that. Forget PoD and find another publisher.

 

[Ian Grant]

The Darkroom Cookbook, 3rd Edition is selling well into a similar market, and I'm sure Ralph's book will do equally as well. There's still a niche for good technical books, but I think they need to aim higher than the plethora of how to books that used to be around once in vast numbers.

Ian

 

[dfoo]

Tim, I just bought your "The Photographer's Master Printing Course"; great book, thanks very much!

just a note on the PDF piracy issue. Yes, it is an issue. However, not publishing a book as a PDF is hardly a guarantee that the book will not be pirated. Books can be scanned very simply and PDFs produced if someone is sufficiently motivated. Also it is worth considering that by selling PDF versions of your book you can make money from each and every PDF sold. Furthermore, you can get a much higher percentage of the sale (most likely all of it!). For a hard copy book, once the copies are all sold, thats it for the money, and your percentage is much less.

 

[MenacingTourist]

I have a little experience in publishing and would like to give my 2 cents as well...

This is a great book that is a proven seller and most of the heavy lifting has already been done. All you have to do is find a publisher who sees this and will get on board. The simple solution is to start beating the pavement and find that publisher.

Personally, I don't enjoy the selling aspect of anything but this is just one of those things that has to be done. Set a goal to talk to 100 publishers and let us know when it prints. It really is just a matter of when.

Good luck, I know you'll get there.

Alan.

 

[tim rudman]

Thanks everyone. (sorry about the scrambled messages earlier. 0ne went half way through somehow).
I have meanwhile been investigating the proffered Creatspace package from Amazon and it clearly isn't suitable for many reasons. I think I will have to hunt for another publisher.
Thanks Ralph for your 'post count' suggestion, I hadn't thought of that.
Tim

 

[willrea]

As someone who has been trying to get a copy for quite a while now, I'd buy a couple copies if it were published again.

 

[eclarke]

WOW I was already happy that I have my copy, now I'm ecstatic...Evan Clarke

 

[RPippin]

Put me down for a hard copy as soon as you can get it published, whatever the cost. I know at least three or four other photographers here that would like a copy.

 

[Robert Hall]

If I might make a suggestion, how about a spiral bound to make it a bit easier to mix the formula while in the darkroom?

 

[3e8]

I will certainly purchase a copy in whatever form it is released in.

 

[Toffle]

Thanks everyone.

I take it that no one has experience Createspace?


Tim

Just out of curiosity, I checked out the CS community forum. (always a good place to start) This is excerpted from the first post I read...

"CreateSpace's low costs mean substandard production quality compared to, say, Lulu. Get over it."

"...As a test, I ordered the same book through CreateSpace and Lulu a while back, and Lulu's was far better in quality."

The poster lists a litany of errors in printing and shipping. Granted this was in a thread that was approximately three years old. Newer posts report better results.

I hope you find a solution that will allow you to reissue this valuable resource.

Cheers,

 

[johnnywalker]

I have the book, but would not like to see the standard lowered in future editions. I do like the idea of the spiral binding however!

 

[naugastyle]

Spiral binding is an excellent idea. And it's cheaper!

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Sorry, but I don't like spiral binding at all. In my opinion, it cheapens a book terribly. Reminds me of college binding. Good for cook books but not something for a high-quality reference book like this one. Maybe an alternative would be to supply the chemical formulae additionally as a pdf, to print and take them into the darkroom, but leave the book alone.

 

[tim rudman]

Thanks again everybody. I am really encouraged by your comments to pursue this further.

PS Ralph: how do you know how many views a thread has had?
Tim