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Pro July/Michael Reichmann In Control Continuing the theme of self-publishing, when Michael Reichmann assembled a body of work that he felt would provide the basis for a fine art book, he had to find a viable way to bring it to market WORDS AND PICTURES: MICHAEL REICHMANN Early last year, after almost a year of planning, I led a group of a dozen photographers on a photographic expedition/workshop to Bangladesh. I anticipated that it would be a productive trip for all of us, and my expectations were more than fulfilled: Bangladesh turned out to be a photographic mother lode and, within a few weeks of returning, I found that I had more than 75 exhibition grade images. This led to a gallery show in my home town of Toronto a few months later, but I had many requests from people who wanted to see more of the images than could be shown in an exhibit. I considered preparing a book for commercial publication but the thought of having to shop it around to publishers and, after all that hard work, settling for less than a 10% return on what would most likely not be a best-seller, seemed something of a daunting outlook. At around the same time, however, I came across a business called the 100 Books Publishing Company. The proprietor Dudley Harris is based in San Antonio, Texas, and he works with high quality but reasonably priced printers in both China and India to put together a program that allows photographers to produce a minimum of 100 copies of a 100 page, 9x12in hardcover book for well under £7000. That’s a cost of around £50 a copy if just 100 copies are ordered. Seems expensive, doesn’t it? But, if you go to 1000 copies the price drops to just £8 a copy. The reason is that most of the costs are not in the actual paper and ink but in the printer’s setup. So, if you believe that your book has a potential market and you can accept the fact that the final cost for 1000 copies will likely be closer to £10,000 (£10 a copy) when dust cover art, spine printing and a few other extras are factored in, this is still a very reasonable price. Books like this sell at retail for £20-30 and so there's some hefty margin to be made, assuming of course that there are a thousand people who might buy your book. Or, if you’re feeling philanthropic and have a lot of friends, you might have solved your Christmas present requirements for years to come. Though Dudley was just starting up at the time seeing a sample book gave me confidence that this was a viable approach, and I soon found myself underway with a self-publishing project. My advantage, it needs to be stated upfront, is that I have an available means of distribution, namely my website, The Luminous Landscape. So, with someone to help with the technical side of preparing the pages as well as the printing, and a means of selling the books, the project began. Preparing the book Preparing a book is unlike just about any other project that a photographer might undertake. It involves a number of skills and disciplines that require years, if not decades, of skill to master. Among these are page design and CMYK colour conversion. Working with templates provided by 100 Books, however, page layout was quite straightforward. As the name of the company might suggest, you are provided with templates for 100 pages, including all of the various page layout types that one would expect in a photographic book. You are free to modify these templates within Photoshop, or to stick with them for a basic, though consistent and attractive layout. As a photographer used to working in RGB, the world of CMYK is a mystery. Though books such as Color Management for Photographers by Andrew Rodney, and Bruce Fraser’s Real World Color Management, provide insights into this world, pre-press image preparation is still something of an art form, and not one easily mastered. 100 Books does make the process easier by providing templates in the CMYK colour space, along with information on how to accomplish the conversion. I found that soft proofing in Photoshop was helpful, but so was producing prints on my Epson 4000 printer. Getting paper that comes close to the look and feel of coated book stock is difficult, and the one that I found comes closest is Epson’s Premium Semi matte, with its only drawback being availability limited to rolls and 17x22in sheets. If your printer call handle roll paper it’s reasonability priced and quite acceptable proofing paper for a project such as this. The greatest challenge and the part of the project that I enjoyed the most - and also the one that I spent the most time on - was settling on the sequencing of the images. The flow from left side page to right side, and then from page to page, is probably one of the most critical aspects of laying out a photo book. When the subject is a cohesive one, such as ‘Bangladesh – First Impressions,’ leading the viewer though the images in the appropriate order is critical, or at least it was to me. I arrived at a sequence I was happy with by printing out small 3x5in versions of each potential page, and then laid them out on a large table, moving the images around into the sequence that worked best. This process took several days, with frequent consultation with my artistic advisor (aka wife). Bangladesh – First Impressions does not contain a great deal of text. I felt that beyond a brief introduction and some technical notes the photographs should stand on their own. That saved a little time, but from start to finish this project still took close to six months. It could have been done more quickly, but it was a labour of love, not a commercial undertaking. Of course there is the inevitable wait while the books are printed and then cross the Pacific by ship, but I knew a few days after the press run that the project would be a success because the printer sent a few copies by overnight courier from China. Print quality was excellent. I have seen photographic books with more saturated colours, and, on occasion, finer printing. But for the price paid I couldn’t have been happier. There were of course the inevitable extras: creation of the artwork for the dust jacket was one and I also decided to go with foil stamp printing on the cover’s spine. The book has sold well through my website, and I learned a great deal from the project. You can read more about the process at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/100-books.shtml, and a copy of Bangladesh – First Impressions can be purchased through my site. Contact: Michael Reichmann: www.luminous-landscape.com, email: mreichmann@rogers.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 100 Books Dudley Harris at 100 Books is able to supply books to photographers anywhere in the world, since the final volumes will be despatched direct from China, and freight costs are calculated in advance so that there are no hidden bills to watch out for. “I got started in the photo book publishing business because I wanted to have a hardback book of my own work,” says Dudley. “I finally got my own book printed and decided to use the information I had gathered so slowly and painfully to help other photographers to print their work. “I chose four-colour press instead of digital press because of the cost-per-copy factor: if you work with digital press, the cost per copy doesn’t go down very much as the number of copies goes up, while if you use four colour, the price goes down significantly. “I went through the book production process and threw out all the steps that I felt weren’t necessary. Here’s what I came up with:
“Total price: $9500 US (around £6000), which is approximate, and the size, page count and so on can be adjusted to whatever specifications a person might like. Also such things as shrink wrapping, duotone printing, etc, is available, and I can also supply an ISBN number if required. This works out to around £6 per book, and if you can sell it for around £20 you will only need to sell around 300 copies to pay your costs. “I provide a template into which a person simply drags his image, and all they need to do is to type their caption for the image into the template. It is very simple and, although it does require Photoshop CS2 knowledge, anyone, even a beginner, who can use Photoshop can create a book, although it is usually a good idea to hire a professional designer to create the image/design for the dust jacket. “Colour management is fairly easy. You will need to get your computer monitor calibrated and to create the best images you can in RGB. When that image is dropped into the template, it is automatically converted to CMYK using the SWOP v2 profile, and no further tweaking is needed. There are a few important details involved in saving the file in a form that the printer can use. Specifically, it is important to supply the text in vector form. “Regarding distribution of the books, I have found that the Internet is a good way to go. To learn about book promotion, I recommend a book by Ross and Ross called The Complete Guide to Self Publishing (www.communicationcreativity.com).” Contact: 100 Books Publishing: |