APUG book

polyglot · Jul 24, 2014

You certainly could, especially in a smaller format and multiple images per page but I suspect that it would be counterproductive. I'm not a publisher, but I think it's the sort of thing that you see publishers doing only for very popular works, i.e. sell a hardcover first to soak all the keen and/or monied buyers for all they're worth and then go for the mass market with a paperback. If you lead with a paperback, you're not going to move any hardcovers.

Same principle applies to selling eBook copies. If this were a digital forum then I'd seriously consider it but I suspect that an eBook-only release would be highly unpopular within APUG.

MattKing · Jul 24, 2014

polyglot said:
You certainly could, especially in a smaller format and multiple images per page but I suspect that it would be counterproductive. I'm not a publisher, but I think it's the sort of thing that you see publishers doing only for very popular works, i.e. sell a hardcover first to soak all the keen and/or monied buyers for all they're worth and then go for the mass market with a paperback. If you lead with a paperback, you're not going to move any hardcovers.

Same principle applies to selling eBook copies. If this were a digital forum then I'd seriously consider it but I suspect that an eBook-only release would be highly unpopular within APUG.

I must have been unclear.

I meant more of the sort of "teaser" that you see on Amazon - where on the internet you get to look at a small facsimile of few pages in order to decide on whether you want to buy (or in the Kickstarter case, support) a larger work. In addition, the POD could be circulated to try to build up other word of mouth "buzz".

analoguey · Jul 25, 2014

Not a big fan of Blurb books. Got two of them recently - bad, bad, bad quality printing -with the more expensive pages. And customer service hilariously ignorant or condescending.

Before one gets to launching books - have we tried having an APUG monthly or quarterly newsletter?
That would set and test some of the curatorial and production issues, and possibly a little while later, we can attempt a book?

Sent from Tap-a-talk

Eric Rose · Jul 25, 2014

I must be missing something, why do we need a Kickstarter campaign? IMHO a POD book is all we need. Why complicate things?

cliveh · Jul 25, 2014

Eric Rose said:
I must be missing something, why do we need a Kickstarter campaign? IMHO a POD book is all we need. Why complicate things?

I know some of us live in a world of acronyms, but what does POD mean?

pdeeh · Jul 25, 2014

Print On Demand

And I agree with Eric

cliveh · Jul 25, 2014

So is it possible to get an idea of the number of people on APUG who would buy such a book, or contribute to the production?

TheFlyingCamera · Jul 25, 2014

From past experience of this project, the most realistic (in my opinion the only realistic approach) is to go POD. Then you don't have to worry about how many copies get bought and who says they'll buy in the survey but doesn't buy when it comes time to put cash on the counter.

cliveh · Jul 25, 2014

TheFlyingCamera said:
From past experience of this project, the most realistic (in my opinion the only realistic approach) is to go POD. Then you don't have to worry about how many copies get bought and who says they'll buy in the survey but doesn't buy when it comes time to put cash on the counter.

Then ask them for a non-returnable deposit up front.

TheFlyingCamera · Jul 25, 2014

cliveh said:
Then ask them for a non-returnable deposit up front.

Asking people to commit ahead of time, WITHOUT doing a kickstarter where it doesn't happen if you don't get 100% of the money, pretty much dooms it to failure. You're welcome to try but if it were me, I wouldn't be willing to risk any of my own money on this project up front. The potential for loss is huge, the potential for profit is minuscule.

If you go POD, then there's no real risk involved in printing. You make and sell as many copies as people are willing to buy, and nobody has to be involved in ordering, storing, and shipping hundreds of books that might take several years to sell.

cliveh · Jul 25, 2014

TheFlyingCamera said:
From past experience of this project, the most realistic (in my opinion the only realistic approach) is to go POD. Then you don't have to worry about how many copies get bought and who says they'll buy in the survey but doesn't buy when it comes time to put cash on the counter.

Sorry, but I don't understand how POD works. Are these people who say they will buy, but then as you mention when it comes to it may not pay?

David A. Goldfarb · Jul 25, 2014

With POD, one isn't really in a position to get commitments until the book exists for sale. The book is made available for printing on demand once the PDF is assembled, and if there are orders for such a finished, ready to print book, books are printed.

Truzi · Jul 25, 2014

I would definitely save up the money for an off-set printed copy (preferably hard-cover). Not sure if I'd want a POD, though.

TheFlyingCamera · Jul 25, 2014

cliveh said:
Sorry, but I don't understand how POD works. Are these people who say they will buy, but then as you mention when it comes to it may not pay?

The way POD works is, you create the virtual copy of the book and send it to the publisher. They then make it available to anyone who wants to buy it. If you go to the Blurb website, for example, or to Amazon, and order a book that is printed as a POD book, once you have placed the order and Blurb has received your credit card details, they will print the book and ship it to you. Traditional offset printing requires you to order and pre-pay for a minimum of usually 1000 copies. The printer then ships these books to you on a pallet, and you put the pallet in your garage or your living room or wherever, and then you go through your list of pre-paid orders, address and ship the books one at a time. From past experience with the survey of what people were willing to pay for the APUG book, for someone to not get stuck with 800 copies of the book sitting in their house (and more to the point 800 copies worth of printer's bill in their wallet), you'd have to charge over $100 per copy for the book. At which point, nobody would buy it. So unless there's a multi-millionaire APUG member willing to front the cost for offset printing and doesn't care if it takes them ten years to move all the copies, going with Print-On-Demand is the best way to go.

You're dealing with a combination of things that make me highly skeptical about the book-selling enterprise. People are naturally skeptical themselves when it comes to an unproven quantity - "why would I pay xx dollars for a book of unknown quality compiled by a bunch of (in my mind) unknown people, displaying photographs that A: are by unknown people and B: I can see on the APUG website for free any time I want?". If we produce a book through print-on-demand so that there is no up-front cost, then folks will eventually see what is produced and realize that it is good enough, and then the next one will be an easier sell because it will no longer be an unknown quantity.

TheFlyingCamera · Jul 25, 2014

The comment about people who say they'll buy the book was not related per-se to Print-on-Demand, but rather to the general phenomenon of psychology. You can post a survey asking people, "would you buy xxx if it cost yyy?". Two thousand people will respond and say, Yes, I would buy xxx for yyy dollars. So you go produce xxx, send an announcement to those two thousand people telling them that xxx is now available for yyy cost, and three hundred of them will buy it. Most of the rest you'll never hear from again, and some of the remainders will tell you, "oh, my priorities changed, my budget, etc etc etc" is why they didn't buy it when they said they would. THAT's what I'm referring to.

cliveh · Jul 25, 2014

I understand, but if members of APUG really believe in what they are doing, it needs marketing in the right way. What that way is I'm not quite sure.

polyglot · Jul 25, 2014

The problem with Print on Demand (POD) is that the quality is basically awful. There are a lot of people on APUG who are good photographers and who care about quality. If we go straight for a POD book, it's likely that we will lose some of the best contributions.

The point of crowd funding is that it removes the financial risk of doing an offset printing. No way should one member be responsible for collecting deposits and then being liable for significant losses when people don't pay up like they said they would. If we get sufficient buyers, an offset-printed book is both higher quality (printing quality and likely quality of submissions) and lower cost than a POD book. If the crowd funding fails to make an offset printing run economical, we can fall back on POD with no one incurring a financial loss.

Anyway. There was once a book committee that got most of the way towards making a book. Are they willing to restart, either on the basis of their previous decisions and/or incorporating the crowdfunding concept?

Eric Rose · Jul 25, 2014

I have seen many very well reproduced POD books from Blurb. The photographers who produced them spent time experimenting with papers and how their files had to be prepared to look their best once printed. If you just send an image that looks wonderful on your screen to Blurb and expect it to look the same your doomed. If you learn what contrast etc. you need to submit your images at then things look really good. It's like in the old days when I was doing newspaper photography, the print we sent off to the offset department was not the same print we would print to show people. Once the newspaper came out though the image looked perfect.

TheFlyingCamera · Jul 25, 2014

As a former member of the book committee, I'd have to say no.

The signal-to-noise ratio on that project was just too lousy.

Bill Burk · Jul 25, 2014

I think a lightweight approach may be appropriate....

Look at what ESC4P started, they are publishing the "Looking Glass" magazine, electronically, for 6 issues $19.95 or purchase current issue for $3.50 - a free preview is available.

Haa, just as I refreshed, The Looking Glass sponsored ad appeared here on APUG...

Patrick Robert James · Jul 26, 2014

The only way for a book project like this to work is for one person to be responsible for the book. Perhaps another can do the layout, but image selection has to be essentially non democratic. Anyone worth his salt would not want one of their images next to a hack's cat, which of course would hurt the feelings of the hack when he is told it isn't good enough.

Invitation only would be the best route.

cliveh · Jul 26, 2014

Patrick Robert James said:
The only way for a book project like this to work is for one person to be responsible for the book. Perhaps another can do the layout, but image selection has to be essentially non democratic. Anyone worth his salt would not want one of their images next to a hack's cat, which of course would hurt the feelings of the hack when he is told it isn't good enough.

Invitation only would be the best route.

+1

removed account4 · Jul 26, 2014

Patrick Robert James said:
The only way for a book project like this to work is for one person to be responsible for the book. Perhaps another can do the layout, but image selection has to be essentially non democratic. Anyone worth his salt would not want one of their images next to a hack's cat, which of course would hurt the feelings of the hack when he is told it isn't good enough.

Invitation only would be the best route.

yeah , this is sounding like a few years ago

guest curator is good
but a website full of lot of sour grapes
when someone's " great photographs"
dont make the cut for whatever reasons the guest curator might be

fraction did a curated show a handful of years ago and people whose work didnt make it
didnt whine or display ill feelings when their work get in ... it was very good,
and people acted like adults ..
that was a long time ago, a lifetime ago it seems .. apugs membership has changed a lot since then
and unfortunately i think if it was curated people would get pissed if they didnt get in ... or it will be
accused in being " clickey "

speaking of clicky .. unfortunately people confuse post views with quality
for example a half naked person with 4000 clicks and t&a comments gets confused as quality...

ill watch from afar, thanks ...

ME Super · Jul 26, 2014

I think good quality is doable, whether offset or POD. I was, up until May 2014, on the board of a local community-based organization. We have approximately 200 calendars printed each year. One person accepts submissions, and decides which images go in the calendar. We sell ad space on the calendar (3 ads/month) to local businesses, which actually pays for *ALL* of the printing costs (around $800). Calendars are then placed at local businesses (and each business who placed an ad gets one for free). The selling price of the calendar is $5, with all of the proceeds going back to the community-based organization to use to plan activities for the community throughout the year.

I realize we probably would not want to put ads in a fine art photography book, and that a calendar is quite a bit smaller undertaking than the APUG book with generally only 12 images accepted (the 2013 calendar was an exception, when we were doing a historical themed calendar from roughly 1900-1950, so some months had two images). But this is doable.

Bill Burk · Jul 26, 2014

I think 2 pictures isn't enough, and the upload to galleries quality is too low for print.

I'd also like to see some writing.

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