Black and White Photography Blog, Vol. I

I’m spending most of my time working on books through MyPublisher. I just finished a collection of Central Park shots which I uploaded yesterday (60 prints) which I order in both the small softcover and the medium-sized hardcover. I’ve received the catalog book and the birthday book back - and both are okay. What I mean by that is that there is a slight magenta tone if viewed directly under a lightbulb - but they’re neutral in daylight. The paper is not as thick as SharedInk. The binding seems fine. What I like about them is the turnaround time which has been incredible so far. (I live in New York - and they’re located in New York) so the slowest Fedex gets here in a day, two at the most. Their production time has ranged from one day to three days.

One other benefit - you can pretty much start off with the middle-sized book, and save as a second book and then change it to a different size. (MyPublisher offers three sizes: small paperback; middle sized hardback; and deluxe hardback. The paper is thicker in the deluxe book; the price is three times as much as the middle size).

None of the books are as good as SharedInk - but they are acceptable quality - and I want to be able to turn out many of these on different subjects at a reasonable price.

I’m redoing the New York Mementos book (originally with sharedink) and adding more prints. So far it has about 100 prints. The MyPublisher software is good for me - i.e. - the layouts are simple - and stops me from getting too involved in the layout which isn’t one of my strengths. The point is - for me - turnaround time for Print on Demand is a big factor. I’ve had a few people buy the SharedInk books at $300 (my profit is about $85 but the turnaround time can take anywhere from 10 days to a few weeks. And yes - everyone who has received on these books has been very happy with them. But the price and turnaround time make them tough for me to use at this point. If I had a built-in client - a wedding - etc. I’d use them in a minute.

And yes - I’ve done tons of tests with the other major PODs (see the POD category) - but MyPublisher (for my needs) is still my best choice. They also (and this is a big factor) give a 40% discount for orders over $100. This means, for example, that I could do a fairly large paperback with them and given the discount, my cost is about $25. That is reasonable. So we’ll see. I haven’t received the paperback yet so I don’t want to comment on it.

The bottom line is that right now - I need the almost instant feedback I get from MyPublisher. The books at this point are still in what I’d call proof phase - and within a few days of uploading I can get a good idea of what worked and what didn’t. For example - MyPublisher says that for the template I was using there would be borders around photographs — at least on a white background I didn’t see this - so I went ahead and 1) ordered a book on a black background; and also added my own black borders to each photograph, since I’ll probably go with white anyway.

And I also really need all the help I can get in terms of laying this thing out. Right now I’m up to about 175 photographs - people / places. How to integrate them - this is the hardest part. The software gives me a good start at it. At one point I was going to separate the book into two sections - people, places. But that didn’t work for me. So there’s a sort of stream of consciousness thing going on now where I’m not entirely sure why certain images which sometimes bang against each other seems to work for me. Sometimes they compliment eachother. But whether the entire book can have an overarching theme - that’s beyond me right now. Working title is now: Composing New York.

And like the rabbit in Alice and Wonderland - I feel that I’m late - late for a very important date.