Second in our blog-mini-series about self-publishing is an interview with esteemed photographer, best-selling 20x200 edition-maker and acclaimed self-publisher,Beth Dow. A few months ago, there was an extremely well done interview with Beth in Macworld UK, that covered lots of bases, but we sent her some burning questions of our own:
Tell me about your book.
I received a generous fellowship from the McKnight Foundation several years ago to make most of these pictures. I lived in London for many years, and grew to love the sense of quiet confusion, and occasional danger, of these unusual landscapes. I never think of gardens as pretty places. At least not the gardens I choose to visit. This book invites the viewer to lose themselves in landscapes that are confounding yet beautiful.
Why did you want to put together a book?
Every single photograph I have ever made has been with the hope that it would be part of a book. Yes, I know that's a little pathetic. Holding a book can be a much more intimate experience than viewing a photograph in a gallery. I love the physical nature of books, and they just smell so good! I was that freak in elementary school who sniffed the new textbooks.
I put together my Blurb book in very little time as an exercise in sequencing and curiosity about the software. I think I have a good eye for design, as well as some experience with typography, and was stuck on my ass with a freshly broken ankle. The Photography.Book.Now deadline was looming and so I gave it a stab. I was thrilled with the result. Like most photographers, I'm used to the letter that begins, "Competition was fierce this year, and we regret . . ."
It's no secret that print-on-demand has pretty weak profit margins for content producers and most print-on-demand books only ever sell a few copies or are created as promotional giveaways. Did winning the competition result in significant profits from the sale of your book?
I don't get a huge amount from a sale, but I have sold more books than I anticipated.
Who is your audience?
These garden pictures have different crossover appeal from my other work. I hope gardeners, Anglophiles, and other dark souls will understand the work, and that people who are not regular fans of landscape photographs will change their minds about what a carefully considered and articulated environment can be. Americans tend to think gardens are where we keep the pretty flowers. I'm not interested in such places, and flowers are rarely in my work.
How is putting together a book of photography different from putting together an exhibition?
It depends on the book, I suppose. A print-on-demand book can be re-sequenced and re-designed as often as you like. A published book is set in stone, and that finality must be deliciously comforting. My photographs have hung in many different kinds of venues, and I love how the special demands of each space affects the relationships between images.
Did you look at other options? Why did you choose Blurb?
What were my other options? I still want a publisher for this work, and all of my other projects as well! I chose Blurb because of the fantastic competition and its stellar judging panel. [I] then made the book as an exercise and love the resulting book. I'm still very open to completely changing the format and design, and want, most of all, for it to be printed by a fine press on gorgeous paper. How could I not want that? The original prints are handmade in platinum, on lovely paper. The physicality of a photograph is integral to my work, and I always say photographs are three-dimensional objects rather than 2-D images.
It seems like everyone I know has publishers falling all over themselves, and two more friends announced their new books just this week. I haven't learned that secret handshake. If you know it, please tell me. There is nothing I want more than for a publisher to express interest in my photographs, but I have yet to crack that code. My Fieldwork project was recently one of the top six finalists for the Critical Mass book award, so I was in with a chance for a little while, at least.
What was the process like? What took the longest?
This book design really was a fluke. It's more quiet and conservative than me, but I went with the requirements of the images. I spent most of a day putting together a completely different project (Fieldwork) but didn't like the way those square images sat on the rectangular page. No matter how I re-sized the images and moved them around, I just wasn't happy, and I would love those to be printed in a huge square slab.
Out of frustration, I switched to the garden pictures simply because they are slightly rectangular, and went with that. This was around 2 days before the entry deadline, so I had no time to second-guess myself. My design instincts are usually good, and I only run into trouble when I have a lot of time to over-think things.
What is your biggest problem with self-publishing? How long did it take to make?
My biggest problem is that people seem to assume it was my goal all along. Instead, it was an invaluable tool to mess around with sequencing and to make me feel I was actually getting somewhere. Absolute instant gratification. It took me 2 1/2 days, start to finish. Did I mention the Percocet from my orthopedic surgeon? Might have helped.
Do you plan to self-publish in the future?
Sure. It's a great way to throw together a sequence and see what happens, and I like that an artist can also just order a single book and not offer copies for sale. I also might shoot some pictures exclusively for a Blurb book project. I see those book ideas as tangential, however. There is nothing I want more than a publisher who really loves and understands the possibilities of well-made book to take a risk with me.
What's your favorite photo book?
That answer changes all the time, so I won't even begin to throw titles at you.
What things are important to consider when creating your own photo book?
Know what you like, but be willing to do what's right for the images. If your favorite picture doesn't play well with others, let it sit this one out. Decide from the start if the book is all about the pictures or all about clever design, and don't think one of those choices is necessarily better than the other. I tend to prefer books that facilitate my experience with the photographs and eschew noise.
Clever-clogs typography usually pisses me off, and I just dislike it when a book looks like it was designed by a hired [hand] that didn't understand the images. This isn't to say I don't like bold design, though, and a good example would be my friend Chris Shaw's stunning book, Life as a Night Porter, from Twin Palms.
from Life as a Night Porter by Chris Shaw
Attention-getting design that is a natural companion to the images is an amazing thing to see. Look at the stunning things John Gossage makes. Mercy me! And please don't forget that the cover is important. In some odd way, it can be the most important because it has the most power to lure a person to pick it up. Or, of course, to ignore it altogether.
What advice do you have to photographers self-publishing their own books?
First of all, understand why you want a book. There are so many good reasons, and not all involve aesthetic issues. For example, a book might function as a kind of catalog for a project. In this case, like the best web sites, the design will get the hell out of the way of the images.
Another kind of book might require a bigger experience, and use color, typography, scale or texture to transform the context of the images. Keep looking at books to learn what you like and dislike. Self-publishing through a print-on-demand house only costs you the price of a single copy. If you hate it, no big deal. Keep going until you get it right or accept it's a pile of crap and move on. If you're not confident in your design skills, find someone who can help you. Maybe you can barter some prints or copies of the book as payment. Just make something that you can love.
So concludes another post. Don't miss Beth's beautiful and award-winning book, In the Garden. Check back next week for an interview with Alan Rapp.