any experiences of your own?

Hi there

Does anyone here have any experiences in getting your photo books published?

Here is the thing...
I'm seriously considering getting a book published locally. It would contain a collection of graffiti photographs from all sorts of places in my town.
I am unknown in this town, never had any exhibitions, so it would probably tough to get the whole thing started, and would probably have to pay more money than I'd earn, but that's another story..

what I'd like to know what are some technical requirements for high-quality halftone print work?

I've recently purchased Stephen Shores uncommon places, and the print is awsome, it is so sharp and smooth, almost like a photo print. I believe it was printed at around 200 dpi or something.

I'd also probably buy a 35mm scanner so that I can do the whole work myself

So I'd like to know, does any have any idea of how things are done in the print bussiness these days, what resolutions are used etc

Hi Ed,

Try here (not a recommendation...use at own risk...I haven't tried lulu myself) for a discussion about self publishing in small numbers...without going broke.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Murray

I know that some people on this site have strong feelings against Lulu, but I still think that for the money, they are the best option for self publishing on a small scale. I own copies of two photo books published through Lulu, one from the Rangefinderforum group and one from a Pinhole group, and they both look good to me. Sure, you can get better results if you want to pay for them, but again, for the cost involved, this is the best option in my opinion for small runs.

If you really want the absolute best results for the lowest cost per copy, bind actual prints into a book yourself. Ask your local librarian about books on book binding for help - it's really not that hard. A book of 8x10 or 5x7 hand made prints would look really nice and might have more appeal than a mass produced volume.

- Randy

And what about regular publishing? How much would you pay per one printed book if you did all the editing work yourself (the cover, pages and text if any) ?

Ed_Davor said:

And what about regular publishing? How much would you pay per one printed book if you did all the editing work yourself (the cover, pages and text if any) ?

Click to expand...

A LOT!!!

My most recent book cost over $25,000 to produce. My first book, softcover with only 16 duotones... over $10,000. That is printing costs alone. No design or pre-press.

As for unit cost, it depends upon how many you want to produce. Both mine were done in 1st editions of 1,000 costing in excess of 25.00 and 10.00 per unit. If you do 10,000 or more, you can drop your per unit cost substantially. However... considering say... several of the Kenna books are done in editions of 4,000 and some of THEM don't even sell-out, you might have a LOT of cheap books in your basement until you die. (I use Michael as an example because no one sells more books than him.)

Best of luck!

Bill

Well there is no way I could sell 10 000 books, so I don't need so much of them. This is a town of about 120 000 people, so about 100-200 book would be a realistic count of how much you can sell, and print. I'd go with 100 probably for the start.

But like I said, I'm not really in it for the profits, because I know on such a small market, I can't even get the investment returnet, I'm in it just to do something usefull of my photography. I know 100 books is probably not going to pay for the film and processing, much less for the printing, but I'd be willing to try it out.

I have actually self-published a 30-page postcard book last year in Japan. It's a CMYK four-color ink-print product with my B&W photo images originally scanned from my 35mm negs (300dpi) and Photoshoped in the same manner that I would do in a traditional darkroom.

Basically I wanted to make something with the good essence of both analog and digital media: It had to be small, tangible, and easily accessible for anyone who is not even interested in photography. This was my first attempt.

So, using four-color ink instead of two or single (black-ink-only) was really tricky: It does color-shift a bit under different light sources. But to leave the effect somewhat imaginative to the traditional photographic prints, like the use of warmtone paper with selenium toner for example, the four-color ink was the most ideal choice for me.

The quality of the paper used in this book is thick and glossy enough to remind me of the fiber-based photo paper in a way. It feels very nice, too.

The layout and the design were done on Illustrator. Quite simple.

The deal for the self-publishing was paying about 3k USD, publishing 1,000 copies (500 copies for me to keep, the other 500 for the publisher to sell in the market), and having a small book-publishing party/exhibit in the gallery space in Kyoto.

The book is in the Japanese bookstore market right now:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4860101030/qid=1143536780/250-6263382-9729063

It's priced 1,000 yen, which is about 8.50 USD. It's found in regular bookstores also, which was part of the deal. My royalty is 5 percent per copy, which is next to nothing. But those 500 copies I got to keep, I can sell them in my future exhibits, etc and get to keep the full amount from the sale of each copy. So that will eventually pay off the publishing cost and leave me a little cash to buy more film!

So far it's been good. Usually people take their 1,000 yen bills out of their wallets, pay for the book copies, and show some support for me and/or my photography when I have the book in my hand in public. It pays for the conversation, basically, but hopefully more than that.

Here's a sample from the book. See the attachment below.

I don't know if this happens so frequently in other parts of the world, but in Japan, since self-publishing has been a booming business for a little while, sometimes some people get ripped off by their publishers.

I mean the primary risk is to face the difficulty of finding an honest publisher in the first place. There are more than a few big name publishing companies that publish books for famous people, but they have grown big by sucking the money from some of their clients who didn't know any better.

There are a couple of ways that can be called self-publishing. First, you could do everything without having a publisher, but then you have to do the library registration and marketing all by yourself. You go to the printing plant directly and talk to the guy who runs the machine. It's the cheapest, but it's hard if you want to sell your books in bookstores outside of your area.

Meanwhile if you choose a service that the publisher helps compile and market your book because he or she already as a route and connection, you pay the cost, which is more than the cost of your book copies straight out of the printing plant. But some publishers have good package deals, and mine was exactly like that.

So do some research for the cost that's fair and meets your criteria in your area. I hope it's not as severe and harsh as it is over here.

The total cost of self-publishing or publishing varies depending on what kind of paper you choose, how big the size is, for how many pages for how many copies, and how many colors of ink you want use, where you want to use them, and so on.

To keep the quality of photographs as photographs, it can be high. If you choose a regular kind of paper that's used for publishing novels, it may absorb too much ink, and that makes your photos look like Xerox copies, though some people prefer that kind of look on purpose.

There was one photographer who used a copy machine to make copies of her photographs for book-publishing. The original images were color photographs, but she decided to do in black and white with more contrast, and the copy machine did a wonderful job, I guess.

By the way, you can submit prints if you like. It's better if you already have them. RC prints are good. Doing digitally is a lot harder unless you want to really experiment. The final output is the four-color channeling in digital production, but they can take scanned prints in the beginning.

I'm not an expert on this technically, so you can ask some graphic designer about it.

And one more thing, one of the ways to compensate the cost is to set the retail price of the book pretty high also. Then figure out the markup. There's usually a standard pricing, and if you can find a real trusty publisher, you probably won't have to worry about it. But still it's always safe to know how your money is going to be spent.

That will all affect how your book will appear in the market, too. So, do some research.

A postcard book sounds very intriguing. I will often pickup postcard packages from places I travel.

Here's another sample from the book. The color slightly shifts with my scanner.

The book comes with a hard cover. It's a diffrent kind of paper and has a plastic feel to it.

Here's the cover.

Well I have three books in print and another due out in June. They are not photo books as such: they are all about the ancient Romans, but are all full of photos, most of which I took and printed myself (almost 200 in the new one). I have never had any trouble getting published with decent royalties. It could be that having a definite theme, with a proper text to go with the pictures makes things easier. I publish with Tempus books, who ask for a higher resolution than you suggest, viz 300 dpi for photos and 600 for drawings. I don't know if this is advertising and/or against the forum rules, but if anyone is interested in such things, they are:

Hadrian's Wall from the air.
Roman Military Signalling.
The Roman frontier on the Gask Ridge, Perth & Kinross.

The new one is called: Rome's first frontier.

David.

firecracker, I really like the idea of a postcard book. Has it sold well? The problem I have with most photography books is just that they are too expensive for me to buy. Everytime I look at them in the bookshop, the ones I like are way out of my price range. I feel there is a bit of a niche for smaller simpler photography books, maybe sacrifice some print quality, keep them small and simple, and make them more affordable. Surely in this age of digital printing there are small run options that don't cost a fortune, but still look acceptable. I guess marketing and distribution then become the main problem, difficult to do without some sort of contacts in the publishing industry.

Samuel B said:

firecracker, I really like the idea of a postcard book. Has it sold well? The problem I have with most photography books is just that they are too expensive for me to buy. Everytime I look at them in the bookshop, the ones I like are way out of my price range. I feel there is a bit of a niche for smaller simpler photography books, maybe sacrifice some print quality, keep them small and simple, and make them more affordable. Surely in this age of digital printing there are small run options that don't cost a fortune, but still look acceptable. I guess marketing and distribution then become the main problem, difficult to do without some sort of contacts in the publishing industry.

Click to expand...

Hi. Since my book came out in the fall last year, I have sold about a couple of two dozens, but this is partly because I have not been so active promoting the book. In general it's hard to sell just the book copies, but it does better when there's something to go with, such as an exhibit, etc.

I didn't want to make a serious photo book yet, but for those who cannot come to see my photos at the exhibits (, which is almost everyone!) I wanted to leave them an option, not an online option for this purpose.

That's because I always think photography is like poetry, and each photograph is like a poem. Some poerty books that come in thin volumes and rather small sizes are easy to buy and carry, and they are usually priced about between 8 and 10 USD.

So, for me what was equivalent to that was the postcard book.

The size of my postcard book is about 10.5 x 15cm. The image size is about 4 x 6 inches, which is not bad. 30 pictures is a good number, too, not too many or too few as the volume of the book, and it's pocketable. I put it in my bag along with my P&S camera, and that takes no space.

And wherever people socialize, this book becomes a mini photo exhibit package of mine that I can hold out in my/their hands. Instead of handing out my business card and asking them to check a website or blog later, they can see (the samples of) my stuff right in the moment. It's very casual.

Also, since it's a postcard book, you can take pages off to use them as postcards. I would like to see them put on the doors of some people's refrigerators or their wall spaces shared with the clips of some magazine cut-outs and/or their friends photos.

That's where the life of poetry really begins, I think.

That sounds really cool. I often like to take home a small souvenier of exhibitions that I like, a small postcard book like yours sounds great.

About the connection to the book industry, that's the tricky one. I wonder if lulu.com has a huge network with actual bookstores and leaves the book copies in their store spaces. If it does, that's nice for its clients.

I mean online bookstores are good places to order, but first of all, people need to see the actual books especially when the authors are not famous or popular. So, having a few copies in actual bookstore shelves is an essential part of the game, I think.

firecracker said:

About the connection to the book industry, that's the tricky one. I wonder if lulu.com has a huge network with actual bookstores and leaves the book copies in their store spaces. If it does, that's nice for its clients.

I mean online bookstores are good places to order, but first of all, people need to see the actual books especially when the authors are not famous or popular. So, having a few copies in actual bookstore shelves is an essential part of the game, I think.

Click to expand...

From what I've read at lulu.com you have a couple of distribution options. The simplest is to sell through lulu.com and you get a percentage per sale. For $34.95 you can have an ISBN number and basic distribution, and for $149.95 you can benefit from the global distribution service. Also with the basic fee you get a year in Amazon.com marketplace. It's an interesting concept and fairly low cost by the look of it.