Senperfect

Just in case you have the idea for a photo book this video might be of interest. I haven’t paid much attention to the Blurb blog as most of it seemed mere promotion, but found via Blurb on Google+ that Daniel Milnor however is giving a great lecture and really compressed tour de force through many aspects of creating a photo book.

Photographer Martin Bailey has a long podcast interview about a fascinating self-publishing project titled “Self Publishing Sky Crystals with Don Komarechka (Enhanced)”

Most photographers are very occupied with the technical,numeric standards of their work. They always want the super top printing quality and best resolution and reproduction of their files and fiddle with their colors specs with no end. After having assembled a book on Blurb they find out that the price tag on a 200 page landscape format in colour is way too expensive for the market.

As a result Martin Bailey and Don Komarechka come to the conclusion that self-publishing for photographers is not possible with Blurb unless you just want to go for a small edition or a personal project, an exhibition catalogue or portfolio book to hand out to clients for example.

I question that printing an edition in a conventional way is cheaper in the end unless you print a rather big edition with the risk of selling only a fraction. In fact Komarechka admits that after having sold about 1000 copies he is reaching break even now, i.e. the cost for a book copy are at ca. 35$, I guess about half of the costs of a paper publication on blurb. However I do not know whether his calculation includes not only the costs of shipping the books to buyers worldwide, but also the time and effort spend on communication with buyers,handling payments, packing each and every copy ,wrapping it taking it to the post office and so on.
The hard copy is one thing, but Blurb as other POD companies offer also the e-book version, which I would consider the most important version of a high-resolution photo book in colors these days.

Another cost factor is that all the time that is spend with administration and physical handling of a mail order business is lost for the creation and development of new work. That are the real bad costs.

I like publishing my projects in relatively cheap paperback form, if possible in black and white. The idea of the cheap artist book goes back to Ed Ruscha and his notorious 26 gas stations. I always have that in mind and ask myself when planning a new book: Is this possible as cheap (black and white) paperback?