Central Park Book (MyPublisher Deluxe)
I finally finished the Central Park book; just uploaded. It’s the 11 x 15 size (deluxe) which means heavy paper stock. It was more work than I thought, but I’m happy with the layout. My cost, with discount (MyPublisher) is $74 not including shipping and NYS tax. 41 sides. Mostly one image per side, but I did a few collages in the middle.
I could do the exact same book in the classic size (8.5 x 11) with the normal paper for about $35 (and frankly it’s just a push of a button using the same layout as the larger book).
The reactions I’ve been getting from people who have received the hardcover (classic) catalog has all been good so far.
I suppose that I could offer both sizes of the Central Park book.
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Dave,
We’ve all been following your publishing adventures. I’ve used My Publisher before and found them to be quite good, also. I’ve also wondered about selling these books POD, as you are, but the cost of purchase is high. Have you calculated a retail price for a book that costs $74 up front? Can you share your thoughts on this?
Brent
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Brent,
Frankly, I don’t think there’s any way to make any money from a book at this price point. Which is why you need to be slightly crazy to spend all this time doing it. But — my first idea is to offer the book at cost, and let the buyer order it directly from MyPublisher. So what does that do for me? Well, it helps get the book into some sort of minimal circulation.
If someone is a collector type (I have a few out there) then I sell the book signed for say $90 - $100. Believe it or not - when I was doing the SharedInk book - I sold about 15 @ $300. (I think my profit on that was about $30). Almost all of these were bought as wedding gifts.
On the other hand, I can offer the classic size version and sell that for $50 or so. In short - there is no profit in this - for me it’s just a way of getting a nice collection of my work into people’s homes.
Another possibility is to start sending the book to offset publishers and see if I can get any interest in it.
I suppose I can also get it listed with Amazon.
At any rate - if the idea is to make money from the POD enterprise - the only way I know of doing that is if you are a wedding photographer where you have built in buyers. If you or anyone else have any better ideas - let me know.
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Comments
Comment from charles sessoms
Time: May 14, 2008, 10:35 am
Hi Dave,
I’ve been following your publishing adventures too and I want to thank you for sharing all the information and your last post has stimulated a question. If there isn’t much monetary profit in the POD deal do you think that since the primary result is outreach to the public that a POD book might be a good project for a collective of photographers who share a similar philosophy and approach to their work?
Comment from dave
Time: May 14, 2008, 12:09 pm
I remember (I think) that one of the Leica groups did a POD book (they weren’t that happy with the results from the first one). The advantage is that the cost per photographer is less, but the profit (if any) is also divided up. The advantage is that if each of the photographers have some following (publicity) - then you should be able to sell more books. I’m not sure that the photographers need to be similar. Just good. And maybe related more by some theme or location. This way you could produce a bigger more substantial book - and divide the cost - but the total cost to sell the book is the same as if one person did a big book - ( a lot). Frankly - I can only see that being feasible if a couple of the photographers had some following. — What do you think?
Comment from charles sessoms
Time: May 14, 2008, 2:37 pm
I really don’t have any concrete thoughts on the idea. The thing that made me raise the question is that some photo journalist friends of mine formed a six person collective to show together and the collaborative effort has served them well. So I wonder if that might be true for a group of street photographers as well. The photo journalist group is called Metro Collective and they are based here in DC but most of the members income comes from magazine work that they get from the agencies that represent them so the collective is really an outreach tool they are employing to show some personal work and gain more name recognition.
Comment from D. Brent Miller
Time: May 13, 2008, 2:56 pm
Dave,
We’ve all been following your publishing adventures. I’ve used My Publisher before and found them to be quite good, also. I’ve also wondered about selling these books POD, as you are, but the cost of purchase is high. Have you calculated a retail price for a book that costs $74 up front? Can you share your thoughts on this?
Brent