by successfulbob | art books, Guest Post, photography, photography books
The fifth, and final, installment of a five-part series on getting your photo book into print from my photographer friend Sara Frances. Start with Part One.
Getting your Book Out There
Thought you were done, once You’ve done a great design and edited away any little errors?! To make your book findable on the web, on Amazon, in libraries and stores you must have an ISBN (with barcode for the cover) and preferably also a Library of Congress number. The LOC is a free sign-up on line, the ISBN will cost $35 as of last report at Bowker.com. Don’t forget to copyright!
John Fielder is a star with his extensive line of fine landscape books and accessories; this image from Colorado Black on White. Note this is a chapter heading page, reading like a story.
Warehousing, distribution, wholesaling, fulfillment
You’re ready for the next part of the game: warehousing, distribution, wholesaling, fulfillment, and PR. Unless you have a huge garage, insured, heated to accommodate several pallets of heavy, bulky boxes, you need a distributor. And are you planning to take orders, pack and ship, take returns, vet stores for their business licenses and payment, collect and report sales taxes, keep track of inventory? Not a wrong answer; especially for a limited, short run doing this yourself makes sense.
Here’s the reason I enjoy John’s work so much: he writes little experiences about his hikes, the weather and unexpected things he encounters in nature. Not just picture books!
A possible distributor
My distributor, Thin Air Collective is run by Melissa Serdinsky (formerly of Perseus and Ingram). She’s decided to go the small business route to help artists, photographers, memoirists, and poets in particular. She’ll do it all the warehousing, order taking, credit card orders, store vetting, fulfillment, and accounting for you for a minimal fee, and I tell you she knows everyone and everything in this highly volatile industry. Both wholesaling (to an outlet that offers books from many difference publishers as a convenient on-stopper to stores) and special purchase sales (bulk purchase to a library system, non-profit, or corporate incentive gift) are under her purview as well. Tell her I sent you: melissa@thinairpub.com.
Early on, John decided to fill a niche with a series of self-published, regional interest books. He does everything, including high profile web sales and in-person appearances at special interest events, not just book stores. He’s a consummate promoter.
Promotion
But you can’t just rest and expect the orders to come in. PR on virtually all books, even by high profile authors, require a hands-on approach by you! Gallery events, gallery or bookstore or other venue talks (don’t expect a fee, and some venues require a minimum guaranteed book purchase or an organizer fee.) Facebook and Instagram are essential. Blog and postings weekly to lure readers with extra content are essential. No, you don’t continually ask, “Buy my book!” You give readers tips and anecdotes and insider information they can’t get elsewhere. Your public wants a connection. Start a mail list for your book: ConstantContact or iContact seem to be favorites. Offer gallery prints as a special deal along with a signed copy of your hard bound edition. Have links that make it easy for people buy. It’s a continuing job, but the public will love you for the value they receive!
Marty Knapp is another fine promoter. He emphasizes fine art print sales, but books and accessories help support his gallery. His email list is probably equal to John’s—and the model for the rest of us as we get started!
Sara Frances
Sara is a many-decades Master Photographic Craftsman out of Denver whose artistic focus has always been book making with images. Her albums won PPA merits starting well before digital capture, as well as for what is believed to be the first ever awarded portrait album. She has evolved from daily, shorter-term studio photography into exclusively special projects of long commitment. Her second hybrid photo/memoir art book, Fragments of Spirit, now published under her own mark, Photo Mirage Books, is available mid-December 2020.
Renewing her lifelong interest in creative writing, she was recently was accepted for Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Poetry Collective, graduating a year later with a forthcoming hybrid work marrying over 275 manipulated iPhone images with 120 poems: What to Wear to Paradise.
Her three-year quest to learn all facets of the art book industry has influenced her to give back with hands-on publishing classes. She is a judge for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and for Colorado Independent Publishers Association (CIPA.) She teaches for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Denver, for PPA Super One Day seminars, and also mentors hybrid image/text projects.
To find Sara on social media search SaraFrancesPhotographer or email – imagination@photomirage.com
by successfulbob | art books, Guest Post, inspiration, photography, photography books
Number four of the five-part series on getting your photo book into print from my photographer friend Sara Frances. Start with Part One.
You are Designer and Editor
Paying outside services for book consultation, editing, cover, and design are the costs that put a book project out of reach to most photographers. Here’s the good news: your abilities with image making and with Adobe apps give you the tools to do this yourself. The power and facilities of Photoshop now provide almost everything you need; Both publishers and Adobe are noting that many books, including my own Fragments of Spirit, are now designed exclusively in Photoshop. Who better to select, sequence and design your photographic art into a beautiful book?
Cover of my own Fragments of Spirit showing both hard bound and soft bound versions. Note they must have separate ISBN numbers.
What do you need to know?
Once you’ve selected your eventual print house, query them about every detail of the specifications, and make a reference copy of all of this: file size and type, resolution, template, bleed margins, gutter, color space conversion, embedding images, vectors, layering, paper type and weight, cover stock, cover materials and debossing, single page or spreads, PDFs, FTPs, proofing, corrections, timing, delivery. You’ll be responsible for all of these, but it’s like paying yourself back for many things you already know how to do.
Three main pitfalls.
• Conversion to the specific CMYK required may make changes in your original file. Open the original and converted files side by side and compare as your monitor simulates that color space.
Go to View>Proof Setup>Custom and then a drop down menu. This is not sticky, so you have to recheck constantly, and it’s tricky to have two files open with different settings.
Where to find the Photoshop simulations of different color spaces. Click the Custom menu option for the long list, then save the ones you use most often lower down. Cover of an artist’s retrospective book I am currently designing for a museum.
• Different types of printing will require different contrast, saturation, and sharpness. This is an experience thing, and sometimes quite subtle. But you’re a stickler for precision, aren’t you? Ask (and pay) for a few pages in advance proofing to see directly what you need to do. Continuity is king. Sometimes proofing is with inkjet that will be similar, but not as sharp as the final printing, and possibly have a paper-driven color bias (this is not done on your studio Epson or Canon equipment.)
• Photoshop is a hybrid: not fully bitmap or vector in its file structure. Vector PDF submission is essential for all traditional offset printers I’ve encountered. I’ve found the easiest way to create the vector PDF is to open in Illustrator> convert layers to objects> save out as an Adobe PDF. Then Acrobat will take the single page or spread file and create one document. You’ll be uploading to the printer’s proprietary site.
Settings that make you look like a seasoned pro with type manipulation in Photoshop.
Sound like a lot?
Not really, because you are only adding a few nuances to the skills for every piece of commercial work you manipulate and enhance.
Want more detail? Sign up for my Zoom online 8-week class at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Denver, Boulder location. All teachers are unpaid volunteers. Next class starting 1/12/21.
Or, look for the next Professional Photographers of America Super One Day!
Sara Frances
Sara is a many-decades Master Photographic Craftsman out of Denver whose artistic focus has always been book making with images. Her albums won PPA merits starting well before digital capture, as well as for what is believed to be the first ever awarded portrait album. She has evolved from daily, shorter-term studio photography into exclusively special projects of long commitment. Her second hybrid photo/memoir art book, Fragments of Spirit, now published under her own mark, Photo Mirage Books, is available mid-December 2020.
Renewing her lifelong interest in creative writing, she was recently was accepted for Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Poetry Collective, graduating a year later with a forthcoming hybrid work marrying over 275 manipulated iPhone images with 120 poems: What to Wear to Paradise.
Her three-year quest to learn all facets of the art book industry has influenced her to give back with hands-on publishing classes. She is a judge for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and for Colorado Independent Publishers Association (CIPA.) She teaches for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Denver, for PPA Super One Day seminars, and also mentors hybrid image/text projects.
To find Sara on social media search SaraFrancesPhotographer or email – imagination@photomirage.com
by successfulbob | art books, Guest Post, inspiration, photography, photography books
Number three of the five part series on getting your photo book into print from my photographer friend Sara Frances. Start with Part One.
Limited Editions
Sometimes it’s just plain too scary to dive in with a 1,000 unit press run. Here are four kinds of limited edition printing, also called short run, appropriate for different needs. There will be fewer technical requirements, and turn around is generally very quick.
Totally handmade art books, perhaps an “edition” of just one to 10 that are highly original possibly with unconventional materials, just a few pages, often hand-sewn and assembled. This is mostly the province of fine art galleries or very personal projects. OK, this one depends totally on the photographer’s skills and inventiveness.
An immediate family history, portrait, event, or wedding book with as many as 50-100 pages, generally printed by a photo lab like Miller’s, a specialty house like Finao or Azura, or Shutterfly online (the most accurate of the consumer-oriented, but very professional printers—in my experienced opinion.)
Or Traditional Offset Printing
My one-off, personal project about rescued neon signs of Las Vegas. Shutterfly lay flat 10×10˝.
Photographers who don’t finance a typical run of 1,000 or more units, and instead choose “on demand” printing, (or minimum quantity initial purchase,) to sell in their galleries, studios, and to their mailing list of followers.
Cover of Marty Knapp’s gallery short run pre-paid order. BookMobile digital toner 8×8˝.
Pre-press proofing and review copies via a short run make it easy and cheap to take a last editorial dry run to revise minor faults in the complex printing concerns of precision color and content. This alone can save the heartache of simple errors discovered after the main print run is already in the warehouse and can’t be sold with confidence. I use this fail safe, intermediate step for all my books.
Big tip: Recommended examples of print houses that fulfill the last two needs are my favorite HFGroup.com (bookpartners.com) or BookMobile.com.
Money and relationship – full edition printing
When you’re ready to plunge into a full edition with a traditional offset printer, it’s about money and relationship. These two huge factors make it essential to choose a printer before you begin to design your book, seemingly putting the cart before the horse! It’s those niggling details that differ widely—the most costly error you could make is to design a 10×12” book only to find that 9.75×12” fits well with the printers equipment and would have cost $5,000 less. For me, the most important variant is the flavor of CMYK color space—the conversion to which may or may not mesh well with your original RGB files.
Time
The traditional route will take a good deal longer, but provide all sorts of quality controls along the way. Of course you’ll be footing the bill yourself for a large number of units, unless you can write a grant or raise Kickstarter-type funds. It’s true that the most economical book printers are off shore. Hong Kong, Peoples Republic, Turkey, Singapore, Korea, Canada. Fortunately there are many print brokers state side. Big advantage to deal locally, contract locally, and pay locally. You’ll easily save 60% or more and be confident that these companies are highly experienced in book printing. Of course you can also email with on-site tech to express your needs more fully—it’s been effective and prompt to ask questions of the actual factory. Totally exciting to partner and watch (even from a distance) the process unfold. For suggestions for getting bids, please email me at SaraFrancesPhotographer@gmail.com.
Sara Frances
Sara is a many-decades Master Photographic Craftsman out of Denver whose artistic focus has always been book making with images. Her albums won PPA merits starting well before digital capture, as well as for what is believed to be the first ever awarded portrait album. She has evolved from daily, shorter-term studio photography into exclusively special projects of long commitment. Her second hybrid photo/memoir art book, Fragments of Spirit, now published under her own mark, Photo Mirage Books, is available mid-December 2020.
Renewing her lifelong interest in creative writing, she was recently was accepted for Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Poetry Collective, graduating a year later with a forthcoming hybrid work marrying over 275 manipulated iPhone images with 120 poems: What to Wear to Paradise.
Her three-year quest to learn all facets of the art book industry has influenced her to give back with hands-on publishing classes. She is a judge for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and for Colorado Independent Publishers Association (CIPA.) She teaches for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Denver, for PPA Super One Day seminars, and also mentors hybrid image/text projects.
To find Sara on social media search SaraFrancesPhotographer or email – imagination@photomirage.com
by successfulbob | book review, inspiration, photography, photography books
Within the Frame – David duChemin
I’m a fan
I am a big fan of books. Well, not all books, but good ones. The book I wish to share with you is definitely better than good. I’ve been following David duChemin for quite some time. I enjoy his writing style and sense of humor. He has a way of sharing some big ideas in an understandable way without being ‘preachy.’
As you may have already guessed, I am particularly a fan of David and his writing. His latest book is Within the Frame – The Journey of Photographic Vision. It is a 10th anniversary edition and I’m glad he brought it back. This is a book that can be a help in getting your creative butt in gear whether you are a newbie photographer or a seasoned veteran such as myself. (I suppose you can read that as old, but I digress)
Within the Frame – The Journey of Photographic Vision David duChemin
Creativity and Vision
David talks about vision and creativity in most of his writing. I enjoy his introspection and dedication to the photography world and the creative vibe therein. He shares ideas on how to accomplish some inner thinking in bite sized pieces that can be practiced and digested in as small or large a helping as one would like.
An Example
Here’s one paragraph from the book that appears on page 79 in the chapter titled The Artist and the Geek.
“The first thing to realize is that the creative process is not so simple that it can be reduced to a formula-go here, wait for muse, shoot brilliant image. It is not a reactive process dependent on a magic fairy appearing and beating you with an inspiration stick. Creativity is something you can actively work at, and the more closely you know your own process, the more reliably the muse appears. Having said that, I think we all know that some days just do not got he way we want, and we often chalk that up to being uninspired, or bored, or lazy. Probably the latter two.” – David duChemin
Conclusion
The paragraph above has so much about which to think, you can imagine how much you will get from the rest of the book! duChemin’s book is a winner on so many levels. I think it is the kind of book that will earn a long stay in your regular reading table. And, will also have a place of honor in your permanent photography book collection for review on a regular basis.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – Get the book. you’ll be glad you did. Within the Frame – The Journey of Photographic Vision
by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, photographer profile, photography, photography books, photography creativity, photography education, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday painterly Photo Art – Karen Sperling
Karen’s exquisite work speaks for itself. I’ll let her tell ‘the rest of the Story.’
“My mother was an artist and my father enjoyed photography, so I’ve been painting and taking photos for as long as I can remember. But I never actually finished anything because I was never encouraged to paint or take photos. So I majored in English in college and after graduating, I worked as a writer and an editor for newspapers, magazines and book publishers, including McGraw-Hill. But I never forgot about art and photography. I minored in art in college and continued to dabble in painting and photography through the years and spent a lot of time in museums and galleries.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Kevin Kubota
“Little did I know that I was creating the perfect skill set for writing the first Painter manual, a gig I got through networking in the New York Mac Users Group in the late 1980s. And I’ve been writing about and teaching Painter ever since.
I never thought of myself as an artist and in the early days, I featured the work of other artists in my Painter tutorials, classes, and books. In 2001, after my talk at the national PPA convention, the editor of PEI, a magazine that was later folded into Professional Photographer Magazine, invited me to do an article about creating my art in Painter. When I said I didn’t paint, she said, “You could do it.” And I did! A little encouragement went a long way, and I use this experience daily teaching photographers to paint. I honestly believe if you think you can paint, you probably can, and I’m here to encourage you to try. It’s amazing how much you can do when someone whispers in your ear; you can do it.
© Karen Sperling -Photo © Karah Sambuco
“My involvement with Painter has opened doors that I would never have imagined. In 2003 I started to paint commissioned portraits directly for clients and photographers for their customers. And in 2007 I had my first gallery show in New York of my abstract art. More recently, I was named the exclusively commissioned painter for a TV cover manufacturer.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Don Ling
“So I went from not thinking of myself as an artist to being paid for paintings, which is why I truly believe if I can do it, you can, with study and practice, and I encourage you to try.
Because of my many years teaching Painter, I have many different painting styles because I’m always interested in showing something new. One of the things I like about Painter is experimenting and inventing new looks and styles. I know having a lot of different styles goes against the grain of most photography experts who say you should promote one style, but I look to Picasso, who had many styles during his career. So we’ll call my style eclectic so that I can keep painting in any way I like at the moment.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Felicia Tausig
“I find offering different styles helps sell commissioned portraits to a broader base of clients and photographers. I also offer a variety of styles in my books, videos, and classes. I encourage students to try all the different styles I teach. In this way, they can pick and choose elements to include in their own paintings to create their individual style. Too many times, students paint exactly like someone they studied with instead of finding their own voice and vision.
© Karen Sperling – Photo © Don Ling
“If you’ve been thinking about learning to paint, I encourage you to try, and if you’ve been thinking about offering paintings based on your photos to your clients, I urge you to try that, too. And I’m here to either paint for you or to show you how to do it yourself!”
Biography
Karen Sperling is an Elite Corel Painter Master and the original Painter expert—she wrote the first several Painter manuals when the software was first invented, and many published Painter books, including her newly published Painting for Photographers Volume 3, currently available at Amazon.
Karen wrote one of the Forewords and was a featured artist in Cecil Wiliams’ book, Painter Showcase.
Karen has been interviewed on radio and in many podcasts, including Michael Coy’s Cashtography.
Sperling has taught photographers to use Corel Painter at just about every venue there is, including the national Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and WPPI conventions, local PPA affiliates and PPA schools. Photographers travel to study with Karen in Los Angeles from as far away as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and South Africa, and from all around the United States, both in classes and individually.
Karen is known for taking complex art and software concepts and boiling them down into easy-to-follow, thorough steps. Her concise, complete books, tutorials, and classes have made painting accessible to photographers who never thought they could paint, but always wanted to try. Karen demystifies Painter’s mysteries and photographers who study with her report being able to sell their works of art to commissioned portrait clients and in galleries for tens of thousands of dollars.
Clients and photographers alike commission painted portraits by Karen Sperling, an artist in her own right who minored in art in college and who has exhibited her paintings in New York and Los Angeles and during Art Basel Miami Beach.
Karen’s fine art and commissioned portraits are held in private collections around the world.
To study with Karen or to commission her to paint portraits for your clients, visit her website:
http://www.artistrymag.com/ Email at karenlsperling@gmail.com
Karen’s books at Amazon
Connect with her on Facebook
Subscribe to her on youtube
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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by successfulbob | art books, inspiration, photography books, photography creativity, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday painterly Photo Art – Julianne Kost Part 2
Julianne keeps pushing in new directions. In
In Part One of Julianne in this blog, we spoke of her Adobe Photoshop Evangelism which is her primary job. No that’s not a religious designation. She travels around the country sharing new features of the Photoshop and Lightroom programs with photographers.
While on her travels she creates art that many of us would not think to do until we saw it. I hear the chorus of voices now. “I could have done that!!” But you didn’t. Julianne sat looking out from the window seat of jet planes traveling 30,000 plus feet in the air a got a vision of how to use that vantage point to create art and share with others how that art was created.
Window Seat
Kost travels about 250 days a year, and, for better or worse, she’s required to fly to get to almost all of the places she visits. As a result, Julianne spends lots of time on airplanes in those tiny, cramped seats with little to do but try to work or read.
Window Seat Image – © Julianne Kost
Window Seat Image – © Julianne Kost
Julianne shares the genesis of the project, “
Shooting photographs allows me to stay sane during those long flights, because what most people don’t know is that I have a bit of a handicap when it comes to flying; I am scared to death of it. I’ve always been afraid of flying, but during one particular 20-minute bout of turbulence in the middle of the Andes years ago, I found myself white-knuckled, fingers embedded in the hard plastic armrests. It was in that instant that the camera became a comforting buffer between the reality of that moment and my own thoughts.”
Window Seat – The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking
“I discovered that shooting pictures out of the plane window allowed me to view the scenery in a different context: not as the earth some 30,000 feet below, but as an immense, constantly scrolling image. As long as I could see the world as an image through an eyepiece rather than as a harsh, physical reality, the threat was less real. I became a spectator – an observer of the scene rather than part of it.”
Julianne Autographed my copy back in 2006 – The book is still valid today as a learning tool
Passenger Seat
Passenger Seat Image – © Julianne Kost
Julianne referred me to the Adobe blog site for more information on her Passenger Seat project where she was interviewed by Lex van den Berghe who is a Principal Product Manager on the Digital Imaging team at Adobe.
This will get you started on Lex’s interview…
Tell us more about how you got started with the Passenger Seat series. Where did the inspiration come from?
Passenger Seat, the project, started as a purely personal one as I traveled through the northeastern United States to view the leaves in fall. We drove all day looking for iconic New England landscapes, and between the small towns, I started taking images out the window of the car. At the end of the day, the images that I had made “in between” were the images that resonated with me. I found myself capturing a distinct yet ephemeral moment that was not entirely apparent or observable when the image was made, yet these photographs conveyed the mood, colors, and transient notion of fall better than anything that I had mindfully composed.
Passenger Seat – Creating a Photographic Project from Conception through Execution in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
With photography so often about the obsession of capturing perfect moments and frames in crystal clear focus, can you explain what it was like to create images that seemed to deliberately go against the grain of all technical and aesthetic conventions?
It was fun! I believe we need to constantly explore different techniques and subjects in order to stay healthy and not atrophy. This project helped me continue to look at things with a new perspective, photograph what I could not see, learn how to make technology work for me, and “let go” and lose myself in the process of making images.
Passenger Seat Image – © Julianne Kost
Continue reading the rest of the Passenger Seat blog post here…
Kost Bio
Named one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” Julieanne Kost is a Principal Evangelist at Adobe Systems, responsible for fostering relationships with customers through meaningful and inspirational Photoshop and Lightroom instruction. As a highly sought-after speaker for the industry-standard Digital Imaging franchise, she devises and presents motivating and educational training sessions, sharing original techniques and tutorials worldwide — via live events, Adobe.com, her own website (jkost.com) and blog (blogs.adobe.com/jkost). She is also the author of “Passenger Seat—Creating a photographic project from conception through execution in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom” and “Window Seat — The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking”, (I have an autographed copy: Ed) an accomplished photographer and fine artist, and creator and host of the popular Photoshop CC Essential Training, Adobe Camera Raw Essential Training, and the Art of Photoshop Compositing for Lynda.com.
Kost is well-known for her unique approach to instruction, infusing practical tips and tricks with an equal amount of humor and creativity that keeps audiences entertained and engaged. She often serves as a guest lecturer at distinguished photography workshops, industry events, and leading educational institutions around the world. She’s a contributing columnist and author for a variety of print and online publications and has created over 500 instructional videos as the host of Adobe’s “The Complete Picture” featuring Lightroom and Photoshop, serves as producer and instructor of the “Lightroom Getting Started” and “What’s New in Lightroom,” training courses, as well as the “Revitalize your Workflow with Lightroom” seminar on CreativeLive.
Kost has been recognized for her outstanding service and contributions to the professional photographic industry, winning the Gerhard Bakker Award from the Professional Photographers of America, the Honorary Educational Associate Award from the American Society of Photographers and was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.
The combination of her passion for photography, mastery of digital imaging techniques and her degree in psychology, makes her photographic and fine artwork familiar, yet surreal with inventive and mysterious worlds where things are not quite as they seem. Her work has been exhibited numerous times and featured on Behance.net, PetaPixel.com, thisiscolossal.com, photographyserved.com, and Photoshop.com.
Kost holds an AA in Fine Art Photography and a BS in Psychology.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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