Books

Self-Publish Your
Own Photo Book

By Andrew Hudson

Books

There's nothing like seeing your photography in a book. A high-quality, hard-bound book gives your work an impressive finality -- it's a true accomplishment, a real achievement in your life. Fortunately, with the advent of "on-demand" printing (see below), you can do this. I can do it; you can do it; we can all do it.

Finding a traditional publisher for your first book is a real challenge. The up-front costs are so high, and the profits so elusive, that publishers are unlikely to make a big bet on a photographer who doesn't have previous books. It's a Catch-22 problem. If you want to explore finding a publisher, please read this article.

Self-Publish

Why waste your time and ego finding someone else to publish your book? If you think your work is so great, you publish it! That's what I did. I've self-published 14 color photography books, winning the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best First Book and the Grand Prize in the National Self-Published Book Awards (just had to drop that in!).

Self-publishing takes a lot of time, talents, commitment, and resources. It is also expensive, often prohibitively so, requiring lots of money up front, before you get any revenue. But if you really want to see your work in a high-end product (it's difficult to find a publisher), or if you're very particular about how your work should be displayed (I am), then this is the way to go.

With digital photography and computer-to-plate printing, it's getting easier and cheaper to print your own projects. An excellent resource -- and the book that got me started -- is Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual.

Traditional "Offset" Printing

The biggest issue with offset printing is the high cost of making the plates. The first book is very expensive. Just doing the "pre-press" work (preparing the book for printing) and starting the presses for a color book can cost $10,000 or more. That's a "fixed" cost, since you pay it regardless of the quantity printed. The "variable" or per-book cost may be $4. So the first book, in this example, costs you $10,004. Unless you can sell a copy for $10,005, you're going to make a loss on the first book.

The high cost of the first book is actually a benefit to existing publishers, as the high "barrier to entry" reduces competition and prevents the market from being flooded with books. But it is a significant hurdle for start-up publishers.

The trick then, to traditional book publishing, is volume. If you can sell 10,000 copies, then that fixed cost becomes only $1 per book, bringing your total printing cost down to $5 per book. ($10,000 + ($4 x 10,000) = $40,000. For 10,000 books that's $5 per book.) Now you can make money. In general, with a color photo book, you need to be able to sell 3,000 to 5,000 copies just to break even on the printing cost. This can be quite a challenge for a new publisher/photographer. Fortunately, once again, technology rides to our help.

On-Demand Printing

The advent of color "on-demand printing", or "print on demand" (POD), allows photographers to economically publish a small quantity of photo books. Whereas, in the example above, the first book using offset printing cost $10,004, the same first book with on-demand printing may cost $20.

This digital technology doesn't use plates but prints each book individually, just like your inkjet printer. The unit (variable) cost is higher (so it's not good for high volume) but the start-up (fixed) cost is negligle, making this cheaper for quantities less than around 500 copies.

The image quality, paper sizes, and binding options are not as good as offset printing but they're getting closer. The process, however, can be easier, as many printers have Web sites and software that enables easy layout. And several sites allow you to sell your book online -- displaying the book cover on a Web page, printing the book when a copy is ordered, and giving you the markup.

Some places to try:

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"To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization."
--Bertrand Russell

"I would say to any artist: 'Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.'"
--Edward Weston to Ansel Adams

"Every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor edge of danger and must be fought for."
--Thornton Wilder

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