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