Part 5 of S D Coleman’s There Will Be Ink is now available (I wrote about the earlier posts in Books To Go? a few days ago) and throws some interesting light on the current state of photographic publishing and on self-publishing.
Coleman talks about the well-known names in photographic publishing, and the fact that they will only consider publishing a photographic book if it can be guaranteed a sale of a thousand copies or more – or if the photographer will stump up “between $30-50K. Which makes them glorified vanity presses.”
While I’m sure that imprints like Aperture will exercise at least some kind of basic quality control over what they publish, this does seem to me to explain some of the less enthralling titles that have emerged in recent years. Back in the past there were some rather odd publications that made their way into print, but either these had some kind of celebrity link or I put them down to a particular obsession by an editor, and possibly one with little connection to photography.
Obsession isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and can lead to very worthwhile publications – Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans‘ comes to mind, but more often the results can be disastrous, or even embarrassing.
The publishing business is now largely run by the accountants, who have little interest in a book’s content but only whether it will generate the beans. And they don’t care if that comes from Joe Public actually buying the title or from Jack Photographer putting it in their pockets up front.
But although it might be nice to have your book published by a well-known name in the business, photographers will surely increasingly ask – as Coleman says – if it is worth paying ten times over the odds to have someone else publish your book when you could do it yourself through print on demand. Is it worth paying tens of thousands of dollars extra just to have a well-known publisher’s name on your work? And how long will those names remain valuable if they keep on publishing for hire?
He is perhaps just a little optimistic when he suggests that print on demand can produce comparable quality – it certainly cannot yet match the best that modern high-end printing can provide though it can already match the run of the mill.
What Coleman has to say about e-books is perhaps largely stating the obvious, but it’s something many in the photographic world are still blind to. And it isn’t just theory but he intends to put some of it into practice by bringing out much of his own work in e-book or other digital formats. As he says, others are already doing so. Like me he intends to make some of the work available only in digital formats, while others will have the option of print as well.
I rather like his idea that a publisher should bring out e-book versions of some of the classics of photography, selling at reasonable e-book prices. Like him I’d happily buy copies, at least of those titles I don’t already have on my shelves.