Earlier this year I made a commitment to produce 36 POD books over 3 years (one a month) as an output of my photography .
Appaloosa. 7 in and I’m still very keen on the medium although less naïve (oh way less) post epiphany.

POD providers (not exhaustive)
Lulu Blurb Iphoto

HCSP books
Ben Roberts
Hin Chua
Joni karanka
Dan Burbridge
Maciej Dakowicz
James Wendell

[updated link]

Stephen Shore has had his finger in this same pie for some time (with 60 + books). But instead of seeing a soiled pie, I see a pie worth sharing.

“I’m shooting the pictures thinking of how they’re going to relate to each other in the book. So each book is single a single work, not just a collection of pictures, and this form allows me to take these different ideas. It might come from left field. It may be an idea I want to spend a day pursuing but I wouldn’t be interested in spending a year pursuing”
Stephen Shore

“While these books utilize digital technology, they are also a reaction to it, countering the indiscriminancy and intangibility of digital imagery as merely memory by formulating and preserving it in a book format. A recent development in POD usage has been as a way for people to make photo albums of their domestic snapshots – a reaction to the view as a slideshow syndrome…stored on harddrives instead of as prints.”
Angharad lewis Graphik Magazine

This is the blessing and the curse of POD. The drag and drop ease of POD software, the affordability and rapid service can easily fool us into believeing life really is that easy. We are designers, editors, writers and typography savants “we are because we want to be”. Clearly this is wrong the naughty bedfellow to flickr, the cheap little floozy that connects us all in that proverbial ‘circle jerk’ we have all found ourselves involved in.

Or maybe not. If like here in HCSP the standard is raised to an altogeather different plateau of expectation. Not simply better than this or that. But at a standard that matches the layout and attention of our inspirations. The Fore mentioned skills are skilled professions but the literature is out there if we want to find it as part of our research.

A good place to begin is at 5B4 and I am inclined to believe this would be a good source book Photobook vol.1/2 although I haven’t had my hands on it.

Its value is massive as an exercise, as training much like the shadow boxing of the shoot Ways of working the personal flogging of the image ,image critique thread, or goals for our work such as competitions and galleries like la pura vida

The trick is getting the balance right.

[thanks, nice thread]

Nice job, Samulle.

Wonderful, Samulle, Thanks a lot for this. I posted a link on the front page of HCSP, as well as a much deserved link to LPV.

everyone's favorite blogger has been doing a fairly informative series on the pitfalls of p.o.d. as well as solutions and planned improvements by the publishers.

here
and here

Samulle... as books are added, I'm going to update your initial post. Hope that's OK. It will be more organized.

this is a great gift to the Group Samulle... there's been loads of on-line and off-line chatting going on with this topic over just the past three weeks.

It would be good to see this thread evolve as people can now create books with the same ease as slideshows, not totally good in my opinion, because at least with slideshow there's some style constraint; with these books you're given a graphic designer's latitude for decision and some of the results are pretty disappointing.

that being said, things finding themselves off the monitor is always going to be good!

:-)

ok, the final version of my first blurb book is ready, the title is "Sixteen Countries"



available at www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/342113

© Maciej Dakowicz
I didn't say anything at the selfpromo thread, but the title now is much better. Especially the typo.

Thanks everyone for the response. Flat5: great link.

and to fully exploit this thread a new book that brings me up to date. mua, ha, ha.
#08/Appaloosa:... Aug '08 By Samuel Bedford

Any recommendations on who to use for printing? Mostly interested in final product quality and ease of use. Price is a consideration too, but not as much as the other two.

Hmm. I just bought the softcover of Maciej's "Sixteen Countries", but after having read what J. Colberg wrote about the crappy quality of blurb's prints in the softcover version, I'm worried that I should have gotten the hardcover printing.

Can anyone confirm how the prints look in the softcover versions? Do they really use two different types of paper/printing? I had assumed that just the cover would be different.

Anyway, I'm still excited to see Maciej's book; I'll post here once I get it.

From the second article on Conscientious:

"Cost per book -- paper, ink, spray -- maybe $12-15...It should be noted that I don't make these book to sale. I use them for self-promotion ONLY. I show them about, and I send them to collectors, curators, my gallery, etc. If I sold them, I would have to charge $400-500 or so apiece for them."

Am I being really dumb - what's the reason for the mark-up? His time? The limited edition nature of the books?

Or does he mean; if I were to produce a significant number of these books, I would have to charge $400-500?

Not complaining, just interested, as doing it yourself (completely) is an option...

yeah, i'd say the time it takes.. a little bit every day for 3 weeks? at $500 for a book, that equals a little over $20 per day... even if he's only spending 1 hour per day, that's still only $20/hr...

looking at it like that, the cost only covers labor and he's making zilch on the actual photography...

my Israel book finally arrived, and looks good (I think so anyway), so it's now public:



:)

My copy of Maciej's book arrived today -- looks excellent. Prints are better than I expected.

www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/005154.html

I got my book as well. Looking good. I got both hardcover and softcover versions. The hardcover, compared to the soft, is a real piece of a book, the cover is thick and solid, also weights almost twice more. The softover is really cute though, the cover is so shiny :)
It seems they are printed on different printers. The cover image in hadcover is a bit hazy and not shiny, blacks are not black, the softcover version looks much much better. The colours of photos inside those two versions are slightly different as well. and the dynamic range of the print, if I can say this way, is not very wide, dark tones are shifted towards black, so photos look darker than were intended to. and the printers have some problems with resolving fine details, like grass or textures...
but in overall, I am glad to say that the book looks surprisingly good.

the dynamic range of the print, if I can say this way, is not very wide

Yeah. Much to my chagrin. I'm now awaiting the fourth test printing of my book. It's pretty damn hard to get a decent balance of contrast and everything-at-all-dark-not-disappearing.

According to the tracking info, while my first prints were made in Rochester, NY, my newest book was printed in Seattle, WA. (A bummer, because it means shipping is going to take a week.) I wonder whether this means that Blurb delegates printing to a number of different independent presses? Like farmed out in a lowest-bidder system? If so, I imagine some variation in quality is unavoidable.

ha, my copies were sent from The Netherlands. I guess they print the book at the nearest location to the shipping place...

I'm still waiting on my copy of your book... I got Ben's, and I got mine already... ordered them about the same time I think..

Seattle is +/- 3,000 miles away from me.

[4,600 km]

@ Maciej

"ha, my copies were sent from The Netherlands"

The Netherlands? My copy came from Switzerland (to England)!

The version I got (softcover) looks pretty good. Thanks.

Until the end of September you can get 20% off blurb purchases using the code: thankyou08 or blurblove - according to www.retailmenot.com/view/blurb.com
(of course, you could use said discount to buy one of my books ;P )

I may have done a lousy job announcing this, but it's now up here.

kramer, the inside of the book looks great, but i'm not sure about the front cover? it's such a brash design. wouldn't an image with a small, subtle title have been more suitable for the cover?

the opening title page looks like a more restrained and thought out design.

my 2 cents.

I was trying to avoid the more common blurb book look (big image, little type). Too much?

it is a little heavy... but don't judge a book by its cover... or whatever that means?

Well, it's more like the middle section of the book, well outside of the blurb preview pages (which look a little weird on my monitor, btw; the grain really does a job on the low-res preview. It's much nicer printed).

So it starts tranquil and gets toward something like the cover, then resolves. I think of the cover almost like a preview of where the images will be going. Sorta.

I agree with Ben. I'd have removed that grey block completely and just used the same font as your name at the bottom of the cover.

or remove the picture

Yup. Same cover and type as the first page. Or with the image.

Proud owner of the softcover of "Till Human". Actually quite impressed with the shadow detail overall, is it the same in hardcover?

Sweet! Thanks for getting that!

The hardcover was similar, although there was a little variation between the two different printers who did my test versions. I wonder where that one was printed...

So is the cover that far off?

I don't really like the text over the image look, you've got on the cover.. the back cover is sweet.. as is the title page (and of course, the shots in there!)


How did you do the double page photos?

Eh, you know; by dragging stuff around to try and match facing pages. I tried really hard to make the pages overlap, to compensate for the image lost in the gutter, but later test prints seemed to be offset in such a way as to minimize loss – they bound the books with blank space in the spine...this is hard to explain, dammit. Basically, I found that I wasn't losing much in the gutter, but I didn't have essential stuff on those edges, so losing a little wasn't a problem.

yup, back page is purty

I'll be ordering soon me thinks... if only blurb accepted paypal? the money in that account is burning a hole in my pocket.

so which version should I get, hard or soft?

Huh. You can now see the back cover; I guess they kind of switched up the preview tool. That looks a little better.

I like the hardcover, especially the printing on the spine. This book's too short to print the title on the softcover spine, so hardcover feels a little more like, you know, a "real" book. They are substantively the exact same thing, of course, so don't listen to me (and my ego).

And of course, now I'm all worried about the cover. Just when you're sure you're done...

I'm opening up a can of worms here, but...



?

see I like that much more... but do I really wanna miss out on this rare first edition with the dodgy front now! haha

oh my... another choice... I'd vote on the people less one for the cover

or maybe more like this:


too much democracy...

I was gonna mention that I felt it needed more seperation between your name and the title...

this stuff could go on forever tho. are you happy with the front page you have at the moment? cos who are we to question it?

I was pretty happy with it, especially because it's different from the typical photo book cover. And distinguishing yourself is good (right? theoretically?). It's definitely design-y more than most photo books I've seen (it was made by a book designer, so there you go). I was surprised it was so roundly rejected, though.

Hi Kramer,

Just my two cents, but I think any of those last three cover proposals is far and a way better than the earlier version. If I had to choose, I'd pick the last one.

In any case, it looks like an excellent book!

i'm going to get crucified by the prevailing wisdom, but i still like the grey opaque block print for a photography book, not for a poster, or a promo ad, but for the cover of this book.. but maybe that's what the cover is... a promo ad...i think the more the cover turns into a photo the more it seems like a typical written novel...

the first option made me think this was a book of photographs and it was bold with a strong literal statement suggesting exactly what the images 'might' be that lived inside, but not giving away the sweet shop in doing so, remember the product of this book is the photographs, to put a strong one of the cover is like putting a line from chapter three of a novel on the cover.. i just think it's not necessary and deflates a bit.

sorry if its the wrong opinion, but it's my honest one.. :-(

Joe: Agreed.

There must be some reason for the popularity of the simple-image-on-front design, though. Maybe it's that photo people – as a group already enthusiastic about the stuff – don't exactly need to be "sold" on the idea of a photo book. They just want a decent representation of what will be in there.

I don't know whether this is a point for or against an alternate cover, but that wave actually is not inside the book; I took a bunch of wave shots with the back cover in mind. So maybe it would be like false advertising, although there's plenty of waves to be had in there anyway.

...and I'd gladly make a print of that one as part of the gallery show (wink! gallery owners!).

I like the original cover, but I'm certainly willing to leave this one up to the marketplace. The "Second Edition" is now available here.

[The only change from the first edition is the cover.]

I like that a lot more, Kramer. It looks great from the preview.

I would have the picture of the guy in the sea on the cover with the text like the above version. Just my opinion, but it's much better now anyway.

like the new suggestions a lot more.. I think it was the font on the original that I didn't go for.. somehow it reminded me of font-art a little... clean crisp fonts are nice..

who said you can't have everything?

ok, thanks all, i am done.

Custom covers! :D

Charge a premium price.... :-)

Just ordered one.. went with the one with the dude on the cover :)

(someone needs to update the O.P. btw)

Mine came out OK- Unfortunately , the long lead-in means there's not much of the colour content on the preview. You'll get the idea by looking at the set link.
www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/318203

www.flickr.com/photos/99953214@N00/sets/72157605786830742/

In addition to calibration problems that we found quiet everywhere..I tried blurb and lulu to publish a project portfolio and both made same result with the pages, after opening it more than 10 times pages start to fly by themselves... I don't know if hard cover is stronger? Do you experience the same with hardcover?
At the end it's seem to be cheaper to self publish with real publisher system..
In france we have that one who is quiet expensive (1 euros = one page) but formats, and quality is definitely better:

www.e-center.fr/

Also they seem to start a real edition line that should give a real plus to the book sell...
boutique.e-center.fr/epages/219244.sf

edited. ad the last link.

The hard cover is a lot more solidly-bound, in my experience.

the current issue of Ag Magazine has a really in depth 10 page article with a workflow for producing a book from blurb, including some great colour management tips.

www.picture-box.com/current.html

Note: Was a hanging out with a fabulous girl and she had a blast looking at Kramer's book in bright sunlight. The softcover pages are so thin that the pictures bleed through. This amused her for minutes on end.

sweet–i'm pulling that endorsement for a blurb on the second edition. magnum, here i come!

Can you get that on newsstands? Or will I have to buy you a pint in order to read a copy? ;)

findo - borders.

Ta!

My 2007 archive book arrived today..

Has anyone else noticed some jaggies on some sharp (but not straight) edges? Perhaps they add another level of sharpening to the images?

My Second book from a year ago. I use it as a leave-behind and the small size is perfect for that.

Life is easy when working with a square format. The other books I've done have had a real mix of horizontal and verticals and it's very tough to find a page size that works for both.

@Findo, I'm not sure I notice additional sharpening, but I do notice JPG artifacting in high-contrast areas (like type) with blurb.

Apparently, I've been told that Blurb will be offering a heavier weighted paper soon, so it may be worthwhile holding off buying stuff from them for now.

Your book arrived today.. great shots!
(there seems to be a bit of colour noise in the printing though..?)

This thread has got me thinking about the quality of prints in professionally edited books as well. I just received my copy of Bendiksen's Satellites, and, after being blown away by the images, I started to notice how a lot of the prints had an almost television-still appearance to them. Grainy and a bit blurry, especially noticeable in people's faces.

My question is whether this is due to film/iso/camera shake issues, or to the way in which the images were printed in the book. I'm assuming that the issues are more related to the former category (probably higher grain/noise because of all the night shots), but it almost seems as if it is the print job (inkjet?) that play a role in this.

Anyone with a better knowledge of these things care to inform me?

high grain due to extreme pushing of slide film. probably some of it is ISO100 film rated at 800 or 1000ISO.

that's an educated guess by the way...

I think you're right, ben. From a short interview in the guardian last year, talking about the shot of three people waiting at a snowy bus-stop:

"When I arrived in the small town of Birobidzhan in the far east of Siberia, I didn't speak any Russian and I hardly knew anything about photography. It was the winter of 1998-9, when I was 20, and I had moved out there to begin what was essentially my first big body of work. I had very sensitive slide film with me, so for the whole nine months I was there, I didn't see any photograph that I had taken."

Carnival By Ben Roberts Book Preview


two days deep in the heart of the notting hill carnival. beer, dogs, costumes, garbage, urine, chicks, hoodies, sweat, skin, and a fat girl who punched me in the face.

I'm re-doing my Israel trip book.. and some of the b&w shots in it, while looking fine on my calibrated monitor, are too dark in the blurb book.. so I'm going to have to dip my toes into the abyss of colour management!

I did a bit of googling and found the colour profile for the printer they use:
www.bonsai-photography.com/

My question though, is when soft-proofing in PS, should the black point compensation box be checked or not? Unchecking it makes things quite dark - perhaps more than in the print.. so I'm not sure if I should correct the levels with it unchecked or not...? Anyone got a clue?
If it's any help this is the shot in question: www.flickr.com/photos/finden/2653704495/in/set-7215760688...

Thanks

A.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/nygus/3017963050/]

My new photo book.


"Sahel : Mali and Niger"

A story about dry lands.

Pictures from Niger and Mali, countries on the other side of Sahara desert.

Wanderings with the Tuareg.
Crossing Sahara in truck.
Tenere sand desert and Air Mountains.
Kidal town and desert blues bands.
African hip-hop.
Zinder, Hausa city in the south of Niger.
Tribal women.
And more. 120 pages, all photos in colour.


www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/412670

Pretty sure not going to get many instant fav's on these puppies, but very glad I made 'em so shoot me.

#09/Appaloosa: The Agent

Which can also be seen on flickr The agent (Flickr)

#10/Appaloosa: Basic experiences in Culture

40 pages on that one... WOW!

Update - so I got my book carnival through the post this morning.

slightly disappointing, but it's fixable.

it's mainly lay out problems. some of the double page spreads work really well, but many of them are ruined by key details being lost in the gutter.

this is one of the strengths of Print On Demand - you can get a proof through for relatively little outlay, and then adjust as necessary.

Not very street, which the last one was. It's free and shipping is cheap.

www.stuckphotography.com

redesigned..

Carnival By Ben Roberts Book Preview

Photo Books Present Greatest Growth Opportunity within U.S. Photo Merchandise Market

According to an in-depth multi-client study, InfoTrends reports that photo books offer the largest growth opportunity within the photo merchandise market. Based on a consumer survey of 1000+ photo merchandise buyers in the U.S., InfoTrends projects that this market segment will grow from $377 million in revenue in 2008 to reach $1.2 billion by 2013. What’s more, respondents reported spending nearly double the amount on photo books over the past year than what was reported in our 2006 study.



David Haueter, Associate Director of InfoTrends’ Photo Printing Trends Service, commented, “While considerably less respondents indicated that they had never heard of photo books in this year’s survey than in our 2006 study, awareness is still a significant issue. The results of this study confirm that consumers that have purchased photo books are quite likely to purchase again, so educating the remaining non-buyers could greatly increase the revenue opportunity for vendors.” In fact, none of the respondents that had purchased a photo book in the past stated that they would never do so again.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Amateur photographers are going to be riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiich. motherfucking rich!!!!!!!! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!!!!!

In your face Steidl!!!!

what? what did you say? i don't believe you.

yes, people will buy my fancy art photography book. yes they will!! fuck you! they are not going to spend their money on books filled with their vacation pix. fuck you! no kittens!!! Nobody really finds LOFL animals funny. It's not true!!! Noooooooooooooooooo! They will buy art books!!! Not prom books!!! Not cute baby books! ART BOOOOOOOOOKS!!!!

With a base price equal to that of well-printed books by famous, better photographers (better than me at least), I'd say owning a POD business is the way to go. We're the unpaid help in their kitchen.

Thank you bryanF for my first laugh of the day.

@Kramer: Right. We're already enslaved by Flickr, why let Blurb get a piece of the action too?

Yeah, I'm not advertising very well for myself here, but blurb has made a wonderful deal for blurb, by cutting the creator out of the profit loop. Yeah, you can tack a few dollars onto their price, but damn, I just got Satellites and White Sea Black Sea (an insanely well-printed book, a thousand miles ahead of blurb) for roughly the cost of my blurb book. If you live in a decent-sized city, I recommend finding a local printer you can work with to make a limited run, then sell them yourself. It will look better and may be cheaper, too. Everything else is a racket.

@Kramer: Bingo!

I did a test run of BW with Blurb and was appalled. I've no problem with POD, but if you're going to charge those prices, then you better deliver the quality. Why would you expect anyone to fork out that type of money for an inferior product?

You're much better working the quality-scarcity principle in my estimation. Or, go the DIY route and create crap, but charge nothing for it. There's simply no rational reason why a mild to serious book collector should buy a shitty product for the same price as a superior product. Makes no sense.

A few of us have looked into a local printer and found that the price is comparable to Blurb. The rub being that you have to order at least 20+ and have to shell out the cash ahead of time.

I plan on going this route and if I make a Blurb copy available, it'll be at cost.

"go the DIY route and create crap, but charge nothing for it"

That's my route for now. Distribute a bunch in coffee shops, sell a few through the interweb... now I just need a list of marketing tips.

yeh my experience with blurb has been hit and miss. I've only tried with b&w photographs and always get different results.... sorta like printing at a mini lab.

First one had a red cast, 2nd one was dark, 3rd time was a charm, but the cover was better on one of the other ones before.

I havnt tried the new premium paper... whats that like?

I give the new paper a thumbs up. Ever confident in the enterprise as an avenue to take things off the HD Its an interesting method for me not as the commodification of photography Im working on but as an experience in book making. You would'nt gain that easily from indy printers.

Saying that, blurb printing is at the arse end of creative methods - its there for the creative consumer ready to buy into life made easy. we are capable of finding new and interesting methods of disseminating work that stretch our imaginations more, and for the love of god off a screen some day ( hats off to Chris).

oh for an easy life.

ok, so my copy of satellites has just arrived and I am in total awe at the ability of aperture. how they can make a book so well printed, feel so nice and yet people be able to sell it at prices comparable to DVD's is beyond me. seriously it cost me £15... I can't see how blurb can even compare to this.

I've been considering self publishing two of my projects via blurb for a while, but now I just don't know what to do??? I don't have the money or confidence to pay up front for a custom job with say a local printers and I really can't be bothered to print it all myself!

are there any other serious alternatives? wasn't there some self publish printers thing aimed at magazines? im sure i got an account for them but I just can't remember anything about it... they did offer free proof copies tho... anyway, I'm thinking that is a more viable route at the moment

£15!!!!!!!!

OK I'm buying that now. Amazon, JD?

Does anyone know what color space Blurb uses? CMYK, Adobe RGB, Pantone....

Some inspiring examples of photography gone to print.
Nice work fellas

annie, yes it is:
www.amazon.co.uk/Satellites-Photographs-Fringes-Former-So...

sign up to their premium service (I forget their lingo for it), they are offering a 30 day free trial and you can cancel via their site.
gives you free next working day delivery ;)

So for all of you that have made your own books via a POD press, how have promoted them or publicized them? This is my weakest area.

www.analogintelligence.co.uk/hot_shots_launch/

Lomokev has recently published a book, looks really cool, and there is a lot of reading, not only pictures.
it is published not by blurb, but by some proper publishing company. and you can buy it on amazon... cool

just got my second edition of "carnival" through, its an improvement but still i am losing detail in the gutter. has anyone really nailed how much allowance you have to make when printing across the gutter? I thought i had it down on my "one more night" book but this time around it just hasn't worked out. frustrating.

would be interested to hear peoples techniques for this...

Stories Retold By Book Preview

My first Blurb book:
The Great Mystery By René Collin Book Preview
I hope you'll like it!

street theatre By charalampos kydonakis Book Preview

Ubyu, a new online printing service has just launched here in the UK as a beta version. Early impressions seem quite positive as they offer more sizes and options than Blurb such as coloured endpapers and foil stamping or debossing. Although they are more expensive than Blurb, they're not as expensive as I thought they'd be.

www.ubyubooks.com/