The BLDGBLOG Book by Geoff Manaugh and Library of Dust by David Maisel, edited by Alan Rapp

After last week's flurry of announcements, there is very little that you don't know about Alan Rapp, the newly minted Associate Director of Hey, Hot Shot!

What you may not know is that Alan, a self-professed "book geek", can never turn down questions about publishing. At the top of his response to my questions was a disclaimer: "I have lots of opinions on this." Alan's experience in the world of what he jokingly refers to as "old school" publishing lends a unique perspective to anyone considering putting together their own book.

Tell me a little bit about your background with publishing and photography.
Like many people in book publishing, I am a lifelong book geek. For people like us, every aspect of a book—the weight and smell, the quality of the stock, small production details like head- and tailbands—are like a mysterious language that we keep striving to master. Books were all around me during childhood, at home and at the library, and I worked at several bookstores throughout high school.

In college, I had the privilege of working at the legendary art and architecture bookstore Hennessey + Ingalls in Santa Monica. I was an English major, but art books, in a way, became my second major. I knew I wanted to pursue this for a living somehow. I moved to San Francisco after graduation and started in the publicity department of Chronicle Books, a premier visual book publisher. After a few years as a publicist, I moved to the editorial department and managed the art, design, and photography books. So my interests converged in the perfect job, and I helped bring approximately a hundred books into being over the course of ten years.

What role did you play at Chronicle in putting together a book of photography, such as David Maisel's beautiful book Library of Dust?
Well, thank you for the kind words, that's a special project to me. I started attending photography portfolio reviews such as Review Santa Fe, Fotofest, and Photolucida, in order to keep apprised of the diversity of photographic work today, and also to help educate photographers about how they could adapt their work into a book and create effective book proposals.

At one of these reviews I met David, who had just published The Lake Project with the excellent Nazraeli Press. We bonded over numerous mutual interests, including an obsession with the artist Robert Smithson, and since he was also based in the Bay Area, we stayed in contact. I was gradually pushing Chronicle's photo book list in a direction that could accommodate strong fine art work, and by the time David was creating the work that would be Library of Dust, he felt there was an opportunity to publish it in a more ambitious way than his previous books had been [published]. I was honored to work with an artist I admired, who was also a friend, and I think the book benefited from a great level of collaboration. It was also one of the last books I worked on at Chronicle, so it felt a fitting end to that phase of my publishing career.

It's a given that with self-publishing, the creator has more control over their book, but what are some of the aspects of the traditional publishing process that self-publishers miss out on? How can self-publishers compensate for this?
I am not sure that it is a clear given that self-publishing affords authors more control over books, though in principle that seems right. As with many things, it depends on the author's level of education and awareness, because total control isn't worth much when your knowledge, imagination, and other means are limited. And the flip side of the "control" consideration is, now that you've created the book, you have to distribute it. Have fun—that is arguably the hardest part of the process, no matter if you publish with an established trade publisher or [if] your book is waiting for orders to get printed with a service such as Blurb.

But back to your question: for all the possible flaws in the trade publishing model, one thing I always liked about it is the collaborative process. It defies the auteur model; the author is almost never the sole creator. I suppose that this could sound like the ex-editor making a case for the value of his role in an industry that is really undergoing massive and fundamental changes, but I stand by the principle: all content benefits from editing. The author, whether a verbal or visual one, is almost always too involved with the material to see how it can be best adapted to another form. And the design and production processes are also critical to making the best book possible; one thing [that] I think is in danger of getting lost in self-publishing is the production potential. The physical aspects of books make important, and often subliminal, effects on the reader, but we are getting a much more homogenized offering through the current self-publishing models.

Where do you see self-publishing heading?
I can't see the exact shape of it, but I see self-publishing services taking on more traits of the traditional publishing house, and trade publishers incorporating more of the self-publishing model. They are going to keep meeting in the middle. With primarily verbal, or at least one-color, books, this is getting more and more refined—more books republished on demand through Lightning Source-type services, and even bookstores hosting printing and binding machines like the vaunted (and terribly named)Espresso Book Machine. It's visual books that are still the big question mark to me. They require more intensive design and production than non-visual books, and the material costs are high (and ever higher). They also tend to be for a smaller and more select audience—take that all together and you get a really delicately poised product profile. I think everyone who creates and consumes visual books wants to figure this out and keep quality publishing alive regardless of the model.

The Espresso Book Machine can print and bind a book in just a few minutes at the push of a button, while you wait.

You were the editor of the BLDGBLOG book, which, as its name suggests, is a blog-turned-book. What's so special about print?
It's fairly common publishing practice now to harvest book content from blogs, and this has been done in various degrees of success. When I started talking to Geoff Manaugh, the author of BLDGBLOG and the new BLDGBLOG Book, I wasn't thinking in terms of let's flip blog content for a quickie book. I was foremost a fan of the site. BLDGBLOG is exceptional among many blogs in that it is very writerly and the posts are rather long-form; Geoff is a very book-oriented person as well. He wanted to explore the possibilities of the book, from how he wrote it, to the design and production features. So, we were in agreement that the blog is the blog, but the for the book, we wouldn't hew to those conventions; there are enough creative possibilities in books. It worked out great, I think, though I know I am biased.

We've talked to two artists who have submitted to Blurb's Photography.Book.Now competition, so, we know a bit about what that's like, but what's it like to judge those thousands of entries?
Thankfully the level at which I was judging, I did not go through every single entry. There were several categories, and then a core group of judges tightened the selection further before we got to it. That said, there were still a lot of books, and we were evaluating ten different qualities of each. I try to "read" visual books with attention, which means it can be slow going, but the entrants all put a ton of work into these and so it's attention befitting of their effort.

What do you look for in a photo book?
The first level is almost always the photos themselves, of course. But that doesn't mean I must have a personal predilection for the kind of work to appreciate it, and everyone's work can be put in the best light through the particular framing of book conventions. That sounds heady and wordy, but I mean basics such as the edit, the sequence of images, how the reproductions lay on the page and work on the spread, how the other components, like text, interact with the art, and the physical qualities of the book. At workshops I call books "machines," which sounds kooky and sci-fi, but I really mean that they are still unparalleled technologies for presenting content, and every part of them makes them behave differently. All that to say, I try to look for everything in a photo book, and when all the components work together in a compelling way, you have a great book.

Cape Girardeau, Missouri 2002, from the series Sleeping by the Mississippi by Alec Soth

What is your favorite photo book?
That's the ultimate question, isn't it? I'll venture my first edition of Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi. I met Alec before he published it and, like many people, fell in love with his work. But I also think that the book is so strong because it conveys the concepts and methodology behind the photos exceptionally well. The geographic journey Alec made for that body of work is a conceptual echo of the journey the reader takes through the book.

What advice to do you have for photographers who are self-publishing their own books?
Know thyself and know the field. All decent work can make for a good book, but there may only be a few ways to make the "right" book of your photographs. If you are confident about your own work then you will have a much clearer understanding of how it can adapt to the book form. But also do your homework about photo book history and conventions; start paying attention to every aspect of your favorite photo books, and learn from them.

So concludes another interview. Next week we will wrap up with a reflection on our interviews and the state of self publishing today. Stay tuned and let us know how those books are coming along, everyone.