How to Effectively Use a Folio

Posted on February 1, 2010
Filed Under Digital Photography, Marketing Yourself, Packaging = $$$$ | Comments Off

By (Guest Contributor) Allan Tyndell

Folios are an elegant delivery system used to advertise, market and highlight a photographer’s work. When folios are used properly, they generate revenue at no additional cost to the studio.

1. The folio gives the customer an ego boost and makes the images worth more.
2. A folio allows the student to share their photographic experience with friends.
3. Folios give the student instant gratification by the comments of their peers.
4. Senior photographs are a must have item. The need is created by the students. The more the students see their friends pictures, the greater the need to have their pictures taken.
5. Folios elevate the overall appearance of the product.
6. The folio is an easy to show item and can be easily transported.
7. The folio should always be imprinted with the studio name.
8. Folios allow the photographer to sell extra previews to the customer.
9. The extra previews that don’t go into the folio can be put into Royal Preview Packs.
10. Previews must be on your price list.
11. Photographers must sell their previews.
12. The cost of the previews with the folio must be less than just purchasing the previews.
Example: previews are $9.00 each, $72 for 8 or $69.00 for the previews and the folio.
13. The photographer should pick out the best eight photographs that they want to display to the general public.
14. After delivery, the customer is able to pick their favorite eight photographs from their original previews to put in the folio.
15. The customer receives a discount if they purchase the same folio that their previews were displayed in. Some studios lower the price of the folio by the amount of the purchase. The more money spent, the less the folio cost.
16. If the folio is purchased, the photographer can offer as a complimentary bonus, four low resolution images that can be posted on MySpace or Facebook. This gives the customer a feeling of satisfaction for their purchases.

Will Your Granchildren Be Very Upset With You?

Posted on October 20, 2009
Filed Under Digital Photography, Packaging = $$$$, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Author: Fred Molesworth, Salem, Oregon

I’m willing to bet your grandchildren will be upset with you. Here’s why. Imagine, 50 years from now, as your grandchildren or great grandchildren are going through the boxes in the attic. They are enthralled with the treasures and keepsakes they find and how they tie into the story of your life.

Amongst all the old items, they find a number of round silver objects. Some have writing on them, some are blank, but they resemble some kind of a small platter about 4″ across, with a hole in the middle.

Puzzled, they take them to their parents. “What are these, Mom?” they ask. “Oh, I think those are all of grandma’s photographs. Yep, here’s one labeled ‘My Wedding’. Here’s some more labeled ‘Family Photos,’ and some more labeled ‘Vacations’.”

“How do we look at them?” they ask.

“Well, I’m not sure we can. First of all, no one has the device that reads these anymore. Besides that, I doubt after all these years that they’re any good anymore. Being stored in the attic, the heat and cold probably ruined them.”

The kids are very disappointed. Nowhere amongst all the treasures are any actual prints. All that history is lost. Their connection with the past and all the wonderful stories that might have gone along with all those photographs are gone as well.

Along with all the wonders of our digital age come some significant problems that most people have never thought of.

Did you know that over 90% of all images taken on today’s digital cameras are NEVER PRINTED? I’m guilty of that myself. I have gigabytes of personal photographs that have never been seen other than on a computer screen.

In the old days, film went to the lab and everything that was printable was printed. Even if it was a bad photograph, it still was a hard copy, a part of your family history and it had permanence. Even if they never went in an album, they at least went into a box, to be discovered as treasures years later.

The same problem exists in professional portrait studios today. Many people are simply asking for the images on CD. “I’ll print them later” or “I’ll design my own wedding album” are common phrases. Usually this is done with the thought that they’ll save some money by doing it themselves.

But you know what? Most never make it into any kind of an album. Life gets busy and 20 years later they’ll be looking for some way to read those disks.

I bring this up only to point out the importance of what we, as a professional studio do. Our job is not just to create the images, to create wonderful story telling photographs about the people in front of our camera; it’s to create a final product, whether it be a professionally retouched and printed single image, a family heirloom wall portrait, or an incredible storybook album using a collection of the images that were created.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a wedding, a newborn baby, a senior or a family. Having the final product created for you is important. To do less is to leave the job half done and to short change the customer.

So, if you’re asked for a disk with all the images “so I can print them later”, that’s fine, just make sure your customers understand that if not printed, the conversation their grandchildren will want to have about their family history may never be able to happen.

Fred Molesworth

In addition to running a full time portrait studio in Salem Oregon, Fred Molesworth is a small business teacher and advisor, and the author of the Portrait Studio Marketing blog (www.portraitstudiomarketing.com). He’s also a nationally known business and marketing speaker in the portrait industry, and past president of the Professional Photographers of Oregon.

Photo Books . . . How Do I Decide?

Posted on September 24, 2009
Filed Under Digital Photography, Photo Book | Comments Off

Author: Glen A. Clark

I was recently asked the following question, “I’m looking to create a coffee table book. I doubt I’ll be making more than 200-300 of these. From what you’ve seen, do you have recommendations?”

I guess the short answer for deciding how to select a photo book fulfillment partner these days is . . . It depends!

But my “probably too long of an answer” was this . . .

Today there seems to be an almost endless number of options for printing photo books (and many more if you’re looking to produce photo “albums”). I am personally familiar with only a handful of them but I do have some suggestions to consider.

I think some of the key points to help you make a decision about how to produce a book are:

1. What is the content balance of your book?
a. Your book will contain mainly photographic images with just a small amount of text?
i. Intro, Captions, Credits, Acknowledgements, etc.

b. Your publication will have both significant copy and photo images.
i. Storytelling, How-To Information, Anecdotes, etc.?

c. Your publication will have mainly written copy and some photo images.
i. Text books, Novels, Theses, Reports, etc.

2. What are the most important elements of the book?
a. True photographic reproduction (silver halide) or near photo quality digital press printed reproduction
b. Continuity of the written content
c. Two-page panorama printing
d. Hard or soft cover options
e. Size of the publication
f. Cost per book
g. Total Investment (capital expenditure)
h. Retail price of the book
i. Overall presentation and packaging

There are many elements to creating a quality photo book including printing, binding, finishing and packaging; and, there are significant differences between photo book publishers and photo quality book manufactures.

3. Are you going to select a producer first and then design the book to their capabilities or are you going to create a very specific design and look for someone to produce to your specifications?
a. Size selection
b. Available cover materials and styles
c. Selection of page papers
d. End sheet options
e. Binding and finishing options

4. Are you planning to do things like page layout design, editing, and copy writing yourself or will you outsource the work?
a. If you are going to undertake laying out the book are you going to do so with the tools provided by the book producer or utilizing other programs to create your page layouts independent of the provider (i.e. Photoshop, InDesign, etc.)?

5. How are you planning to market and sell your book?
a. Are you going to print an “edition” of a certain number of copies up front or will you “print on demand” per order?
b. How will you process, package and ship each order

Here are a couple of scenarios to think about.

If you’re looking to sell photo books to your imaging clientele a professional service such as f•stop books www.fstopbooks.com enables the uploading of images and provides design tools to create photo book layouts online. They also provide a “completely packaged” photo book by delivering a finished publication in a high-end presentation box. This type of value-added presentation can help support premium price points for professional photographers.

The “Completely Packaged” Photo Book Presentation - fstop books™

If you are considering selling books to a broader market a “publication” photo book website, such as Blurb www.blurb.com, offers additional services for page numbering and robust options for extensive text, as well as online e-commerce tools to post the publication on their site and accept orders for printed copies. This allows you to create and sell photo books (or almost any kind of book publication) without having to pay the up front costs of producing multiple book copies in advance. Like www.fstopbooks.com they print, bind, package, and ship the actual book “on demand” (when it is ordered) so you don’t need to do any of this work yourself.

The upside of this type of publication includes very low upfront costs and outsourcing of order fulfillment and payment processing (i.e. labor). The downside of this type of service may be things like reduced margins due to fees charged or not being able to check every one of the publications individually or offering hand-signed autographed copies of the books.

There are also companies that will help you “self-publish” your book by offering services such as financing an initial print run and even sponsor and/or non-profit support

Another consideration should be professional alternatives like Shared Ink’s (pro) Photographer Program which offers information and options including lay-flat pages and offline coating that can add snap to a pro-quality photo book (http://www.sharedink.com).

Like I said before, when it comes to deciding how to select a photo book fulfillment partner these days, I guess the short answer is . . . It depends!

For more information about photo books download a FREE copy of “On Demand Book Basics”

Glen A. Clark
Vice President - TAP Custom / Professional
Cleveland, OH 44114-2184

E-mail: gclark@ChilcoteCompany.com