So, you want to publish a book with your own photographs in.

So, you want to publish a book with your own photographs in.
Another common question I am regularly asked is
“I am interested in putting out my own book with various pictures that I have taken, what would I need to do?”
This idea can be good for you as a photographer but a more important question is what subject would people be interested in buying a book of photographs about?
For example, you could be the best photographer in the world, you could have
the best pictures of photographs of a particular subject, and lets take an
example subject, like sea birds. You could have the best collection of sea
bird pictures man has ever seen, you may have spent days and weeks, hiding
and climbing, building special lookouts and hides, you could have
spent thousands on travelling to the Galapagos islands to shoot pictures of
wild sea birds nesting on cliff sides.
The big question is, how many people do you think would be interested in
buying a book full of pictures of sea birds, even if they are stunning
pictures? My guess would be not many. But don’t let that put you off.
Photography is so diverse that I could be completely wrong, maybe your new
big photo book of sea birds is what the world has been waiting for!
So how do you find out, how do you know if your chosen subject matter is
worth pursuing, shooting and publishing? I say this because you may not be
able to find a book publisher that would be interested in publishing a book
on your material, but there is nothing to stop you publishing a book your
self, of course you take a much bigger risk and a great deal of costs in
advance of making any sales. Many people have self published, not all have
been successful, so be warned about get excited about publishing your own
book.
So how do you find out? Firstly as with all business ventures good research
is vital, as they say, failure to prepare means that you should be prepared
to fail. Anyway, a good place to start is to decide what your chosen subject
is and research just how many publications there are that are related to
that subject. You can then look at the demographics for each publication and
see exactly how many subscribers to each magazine or publication there are.
Demographic information usually also dictates what type of person each
reader is, for example, male, female, age group etc.
Often the bigger the circulation numbers for any given publication then you
can get more demographic information as well, not always but often.
If we take a look and find that there are only two publications about sea birds and that each publication has a readership of only 1500 people, do you still think that it may be a good business venture to create and attempt to publish a book containing sea bird pictures? That would be a personal decision, but I would say it was not one of the strongest ideas I’ve heard.
Please do not be put off by this either. On the other hand if your research showed you that there were 27 publications across the USA and Europe about sea birds and that circulations were all in the thousands of readers for each publication, then straight away you know that you are onto a winner, you
know that for starters , before you even push the shutter button that you
have a good strong market that already has a demand for this information and
images. Do you understand this principle?
Let me give you another angle.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with re-shooting what someone else has
already done. I don’t mean literally copy someone else”s work, that would be
pointless. I mean that if material has been published, then there is a good
chance that the subject covered is interesting enough for book publishers to
warrant taking a chance and publishing the information or pictures. There is
one crucial, key point here and is very important, so listen
carefully…..
You must try to find a new angle to the subject. I don’t mean a picture angle
, don’t go thinking you need to get lower or higher to shoot from, although
always mix your shots, but approach the subject as a story and not just an
image. After all there is a story behind every image (remember, a picture
can paint a thousand words).
Here’s an example of what I mean. Take the most current of world events,
Hurricane Katrina, bless those poor suffering people. I can guarantee you
that there will be thousands and thousands of images already by now,
winging there way onto photo agency picture desks from all sorts of places.
We have a seen the images in all our newspapers. But what about the animals, the wild life, has any body photographed that and their plight and troubles, how have the animals been interacting with humans, you just know that rats and vermin will be dominating the area by now, has anybody photographed this event? Or the impact of what the vermin are doing or have done to the city as was.
The oil companies and other business”s must have hit where it hurts, what
has the storm done to these business”s. Think about the picture
opportunities that arise from these sort of events and think about how life
is affected.
From a marketing point of view a book full of just photographs is rarely a
best seller. It does not mean it cannot be successful, but you must think
hard about how you are going to approach the subject. There have been many successful books that are largely photographic in their content but are maybe a story of a photographers journey from or through a strange or unusual place.
Another very current story in the news is the plight of the big apes and the
demise of the ape populations around the world. I have many wonderful big
ape, gorilla and monkey pictures myself, but they have all been seen
before, so a new approach is needed. How are these apes interacting with
humans, if they are being hunted for food, what types of dishes are being
served? are they restricted to tribal foods , or are they foods readily
available in market places? Can you see picture opportunities here yet?
A recent news report detailed that deforestation, roads and city development
was partly the reason for the demise of the great apes, can you see other picture opportunities here?
The problem though still remains, is there a demand for this type of
photographic collection or photographic story book? Your research will tell
, if not completely , then at least give you hope and cause for further
investigation.
Another good source of investigation is the internet. With today’s technology
we can find out exactly what type of words and search terms people are
looking for on the internet. For example I can tell you that there are 360
searches per month for the term “funny frog picture”. Now this is quite
possibly due to the crazy frog ring tone adverts that we have all seen all
around the world, I think I have seen them in at least three different
countries that I have travelled through in the last month alone. 493 people
searched for “funny puppy picture” but over 16000 people searched for “funny
animal picture”.
Can you see that simple research shows where your target photographic market is or indeed is not. I my own home country, The United Kingdom, there have been massive sales of a recent photographic book that contained nothing but aerial pictures of various parts of our capital city, London. Highly detailed images, clean and clear on a books pages, the book was A3 size and the images were printed across a double page spread. These book sold thousands, so it can be done, just make sure you are onto a good bet first.
It will also help if you can achieve some sort of credentials first as well,
having some pictures published in a publication will help in a big way ,
especially when you walk into a book publisher and ask for a deal. To be
able to say that not only are you a photographer but that you are a
published photographer will help give you a good deal of credibility. You
can easily do this by selling photographs of stories to local papers, you wont
make a huge amount of money , but your name will be under the picture when
it is published and you should get anything from $50 – $100 for your
image/s. This is easy since most local papers are crying out for good stories
and don’t have big budgets to pay for high end photographers.
There is a book that details how to sell your images many, many times over and make a very nice living do so and is available online if you would like more details. The author of this book is Billy Bonds, he has been a Professional freelance photographer for more than 14 years and shares a great deal of knowledge with anyone wishing to become a professional photographer or just improve on their existing photography business.
Copy write Billy bonds,