Publishing a book cooperatively

[r.e.]

For what it is worth, and at the risk of being repetitive, I would explore doing this as a hand made book for which the photographers provide original prints. If you are talking about something on the order of 50 copies, as someone suggested earlier, this works. Then I would engage a writer, designer and typographer/letter press printer to incorporate the prints into a book.

You would wind up with a book that contains prints made by, or under the direction of, the photographers themselves, a text printed in three dimensional type on beautiful paper and great binding. By three-dimensional type, I mean that printing done with lead type has dimensionality to it that digital type simply lacks. There are letter press printers around, at this point mostly artists and old-timers, but they are out there, and some of them do brilliant work.

In the end, going this route might actually be cheaper, and it would look wonderful.

[cyrus]

For what it is worth, and at the risk of being repetitive, I would explore doing this as a hand made book for which the photographers provide original prints. If you are talking about something on the order of 50 copies, as someone suggested earlier, this works. Then I would engage a writer, designer and typographer/letter press printer to incorporate the prints into a book.

You would wind up with a book that contains prints made by, or under the direction of, the photographers themselves, a text printed in three dimensional type on beautiful paper and great binding. By three-dimensional type, I mean that printing done with lead type has dimensionality to it that digital type simply lacks. There are letter press printers around, at this point mostly artists and old-timers, but they are out there, and some of them do brilliant work.

In the end, going this route might actually be cheaper, and it would look wonderful.

Hey I don't have any problems with that - can you investigate this and provide us all with details like costs?

[cyrus]

If this is going to be a group of photographers doing this all by themselves, without knowing anything about the book business, it might be easier to just hire View Camera to do it on a turn key basis.

Ahh, I see that Greg just had the same thought. Yes, or Lenswork.

And perhaps outfits like Ilford can help - technically, if not financially...

[r.e.]

Hey I don't have any problems with that - can you investigate this and provide us all with details like costs?

I could actually. It would be helpful to know:

Who is going to co-ordinate this?
Is there real interest in going this route?
How many pages and how many copies, roughly?

If I'm going to ask people that I know personally to spend time on quotes, I'd like to know who is in charge and have more concrete information on what people want as a product.

[George Stewart]

Why not have a small webpage where members could drop in a digital image and text. Then, all the members could provide input, to each other, from the editing perspective. Finally, the site could be harvested for the actual publication. Perhaps the best image by vote would become the title page. Self publishing might be the easiest. If it worked, then perhaps it could be a yearbook-type document.

I'd like to see it similar to AA's "Making of 40..."

[r.e.]

I'd like to see it similar to AA's "Making of 40..."

That's a really nice idea.

[Frank Petronio]

I really doubt that 70 photographers could ever agree on what "good reproduction quality" is. And 70 photographers all submitted 70 individually hand-made prints for a one-off edition, somebody would probably bitch and moan about so-and-so's crappy print quality compared to theirs and how if ruins the book, etc... That's just 20 years of design experience talking there, it is more about people-counselling than any great technical skill.

I think if you wanted to do a book and have one person in charge of the production then you could indeed get excellent results. But having seen the WIDE range of what photographers submit to such things, and listening to photographers bemoan this or that about reproduction, I just KNOW that you won't please all of the people all of the time.

But, I'll be curious to see how you do. If any online group could do it and still remain on speaking terms with each other, I think this group is the most likely. Could you really imagine the cast of characters at the other forums ever agreeing on anything? ;-)

Certainly not trying to throw cold water on it -- it is a sweet idea. But don't imagine that you aren't going to bruise a few egos or that the poor volunteer designer isn't going to have to put up with some prima donnas along the way.

[cyrus]

You said it yourself Frank - contributors will have to agree beforehand that they may not be happy with the quality of something or other. That's a given.

IMHO, something is better than nothing. A less than wonderful book is better than no book. The second book will be better than the first one. We're not going to get everything right the first time around. Who does? And really, so what if there is a screw up - the earth will continue rotating, and the Republic will still stand & our children won't go hungry.

[cyrus]

I could actually. It would be helpful to know:

Who is going to co-ordinate this?
Is there real interest in going this route?
How many pages and how many copies, roughly?

If I'm going to ask people that I know personally to spend time on quotes, I'd like to know who is in charge and have more concrete information on what people want as a product.

Well, for now if you have the contacts, why not take charge of the investigation of this particlar issue? I suppose each photographer will get 1-2 pages in the book. So, for a start, lets get a rough estimate for 100 issues of a basic 100-200 page BW photo book. Once we have the ballpark figure & we see if this is at all financially feasible, we can go from there and tweak things to firm up the estimate. The point is to start - the details will fall into place later. A rough ballpark estimate from an authoritative source should be good enough for a start.

[Blueberrydesk]

As regards the book and a prototype layout, what about having the right hand page being the photo and the left hand page being the photographer's name and a short bio, written in the third person voice?

While I love the idea of having a handmade volume, the impracticalities of it (I would think) preclude this option where multiple authors are concerned. You'd need some kind of uniformity such as everyone printing on the same type of paper, etc. and as Frank points out, some people don't have the printing skill of others (I'm thinking of me, here) and some don't have the option of printing with a wet darkroom. Digital files would be the best route to go imo, with color space standards determined beforehand.

I think r.e. is right, though. before we ask anyone to begin asking questions, we should know how many people are interested in participating. Perhaps another thread should be started with a poll question? With a time limit set of two weeks? That will at least give an idea of how many people we're talking about. Everything may be moot if only ten people want to do it.