Publishing a Photo Book

Here here, I second. I’d really appreciate any insight on this topic too.

Finding a publisher in Australia is difficult, the market is not depressed just small and cannot sustain a bevy of books. Australian publishers/editors want a well known name not a book as the buying pubic is not kind to unknowns. Your royalties will be squeezed and are no longer generous as they used to be. Printing in Australia is outsourced to Singapore, Honkers and now China as it is cheap and quality for photographic books has suffered. Overseas you are an unknown as well not easy but possible
I ended up writing for the Asian market but that was texts
Good luck in your quest

Do see if you can track down Issue #60 (Sept. -Oct. 2005) of LensWork magazine, the one with the cowboy on the cover and read the article: “Some Unvarnished Truths About Book Publishing”
(Preview at: http://www.lenswork.com/lwq57s.pdf)
While not totally bleak or even totally oriented towards addressing the profit-making aspects of book publishing, it will give you a healthy dose of the realities involved.

Jim

Lots of praying Tanya…!!....All depends on what you are trying to do and where you are aiming to place the book in a wider context….all too easy to fall into vanity publishing…..
As always, a great and/or catchy subject matter, with solid/great photography and lots and lots of work/networking/pushing should win you through…...
Forget about making money (or what any sane person would see as money) direct from the book, you wont….unless you are shooting earth from the air or something, and even then you have to sell the branded bottle of water with it…..
I disagree strongly with the coment above re. issues of quality in relation to the source of printing…there’s many reasons why the big boys such as Phaidon et al are printing increasingly in Asia, not just money, and some excelent printing I am seeing is to be found there – although you’ll still be hard pressed to surpass the Italians when it comes to B/W…!
I’m not familiar with the Australian publishing world, but I would imagine its ‘narrow’ for photo books…?...I should think European/U.S co-editions would be the way to go….

All the best…!

The big boys have total control with colour seperation, if you have the controls no problems. We self-published two books, had to rely on Hong Kong for colour, one somewhat disapointing the other great, a bit of a lottery. Went over and did my own on some texts later in Singapore.
3 years before I saw any money

These days it’s about distribution not printing. You can do all that yourself and for a very reasonalbe cost. You just have to know how to prepare an as near to perfect PDF as possible as regards colour. When you can do that try LULU.com and get the basic ISBN distibution option. After that it’s up to you. They do fine work there. At least try it and if it’s not to your liking, then continue your search. But bare in mind that it’s ideas like Lulu that has the publishing world terrified. It still needs to be excellent in order for a distibutor to pick it up. It’s like making an independent movie maybe. Make sure your project is very well edited.

So right about distribution Paul….and that applies to publishing houses too…! Its all well and good to have the ‘perfect’ book, but if no one can see it, its worthless…....I have one horror story of an award winning book, but no one could buy it because it wasn’t on the shelves for months due to a shambolic distribution situation with the publishers, and even now its like finding hens teeth…....Distribution and marketing would probably be the first questions I would advise be asked by any aspiring photographer…...

How’s the quality with lulu I recently did an iphoto book and thought the quality was pretty bad.

Steve(Coleman) I sent you a PM last Friday did you recieve?

Mark

Here I am trying to go about Publishing a book on Varanasi too. Fine Art and Editorial Mix. I would love to get more information on how to go about publishing a book. Any info is greatful.
Chiru

Pusblishers are really approachable about submitting your work but naturally established names take preference even if the work (like Magnum photographer Donovan Wylie’s book on The Maze prison) is really not inspiring or even interesting (sorry donovan…). Find books you like or that fit in with what you’re doing and hit up the places that published them first. Steidl, Trolley, Powerhouse, Dewi Lewis etc. are all pretty good about accepting submissions. After that there are a bunch of smaller houses like Soft Skull, J&L books who might take a shine to what you’re doing and think that there’s a market for it. Self Publishing if you can afford it is great but you might get a friendly editor to check out your work (even if it’s a mock up on inkjets) before you commit to spending the dough yourself. These guys in holland are looking for submissions at the moment: www.veenmanpublishers.com

cheers

ross

Hi Tan!

You know about MOMENTO already, so I’ll just share this with the others in discussion.

MOMENTO is a great option for photographers wishing to print a one-off, or short run book.

http://www.momentopro.com.au

For example as a “silver” member the cost for a 40 page hard cover A3 portfolio with dust jacket would be AUS$192.

$80 standard hardcover
$1.60×40 pages
$48.00×1 dust jacket

That converts to approximately US$150. It’s a really good option for printing portfolios and documentary projects.

Of course, it’s based in Australia, so shipping might be costly.

NB: To apply for member discounts, check out the “reseller” option. This is available to both professionals and students. http://www.momentopro.com.au/apply_login_pro.asp

Hi Tania:

I completely agree with Steve Coleman about the subject of ” making Money with a book”..Forget about it. Just think about having published a high quality one and with a good publisher. One of the most important thing about having a book published is that people ( over the areas in the world where you are able to distribute it) would be able to see and know your work, otherwise would be almost impossible. If it is a good quality on the work inside the book. The value of your work would get incredibly higher. I thing this is one of the profits you take out of a book published. They are some good printers on Europe (Italy/Spain) for B/W and Asia for colour. Self promotion ( if you can afford)is good but risky. Get into this website and try to get in touch about your proposal: http://www.percevalpress.com , they are pretty serious.
Good luck

Thanks all for your excellent insights. Now at least my journey has a pathway (or 10!) I will let you know how I go.
And good luck to all also on this sometimes bewildering adventure.

Oh, and a note on the MOMENTO bookmaking program. If you choose to use this option or similar bookmaking software, whatever you do, make sure the images you upload are all in the same folder on your laptop or computer (ie in “My Pictures” or something). I had two seperate hardrives connected to my laptop and when I went to upload the book for printing the program shat itself (undoing 6 months of working until 4 am) and temporarily deleting 5 years of my photographs on my hardrives. I say temporarily as I had to pay $200 to buy software to recover the pictures with help from a computer shop. (As they were originally shot on transparency I figured I needn’t bother backing up my hardrives. – STUPID!!) Anyway, when I spoke to the MOMENTO guys, they explained that the program is directed to search for each photograph along the pathway of drives containing it and if they are in different places the program gets confused.

So there you go! I am now working on attempt 2# (still with MOMENTO)... I’ll keep you posted…

Thanx for the tipoff about MOMENTO, Louisa. It looks interesting.

does anyone have any recommendations for photo book publishers in the uk that might be worth considering, especially those specialising in theatre, dance and other performance work?

dude one word www.fastbackbooks.com

camille, how was the outcome of your attempt with fastbackbooks.com ? I was thinking about that option as well. How did you get along with the provided tools and setups to design the book?

Regards Heinrich

camille, how was the outcome of your attempt with fastbackbooks.com ? I was thinking about that option as well. How did you get along with the provided tools and setups to design the book?

Regards Heinrich

Hi Tanya, I think we met at the Commonwealth Media and Advertising Awards (OPSO) a couple of years ago. You won a prize for a nice panning shot of your grandmother riding a skateboard, if memory serves.
Anyhoo, I have been researching self-publishing for a while now, as I am shooting a project that will be ready to hit the bookstore shelves late 2008.
Some of the other responses have been on the money for sure! The market in Australia is small and it would be hard to snag a deal with a publishing house. It may be possible but my research suggests that you will most likely be royally screwed with regard to the percentage of the takings you may receive from any published book.

I once heard Australia’s highest selling photographic author – Ken Duncan, describe how he was ripped off by the publisher of his first book. He set up his own publishing company and has now sold hundreds of thousands of books, and the only person to profit from his tremendous success is HIM!

You have to weigh up if you want to take a calculated risk on the commercial potential of your work.

I have heard alot of ‘arty’ pro photographers (especially press shooters) bagging Ken Duncan’s work, but regardless of what they think about the artistic merits of his work – his books literally walk off the shelves.
The general public don’t give a stuff that he hasn’t won World Press Photo or a Walkley or whatever; the pictures have meaning to them – if for no other reason than they are beautiful!
Take a look at this website: http://www.my100books.com/, I recently got a quote for my book from them.

Has anyone else heard of this site ?

Cheers Troy.