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Martin Miller
22-May-2006, 21:17
It's been a while since this topic was last raised so I thought I'd see what new insights there are to be had out there. I would like to self publish a small (9x9in, about 60 pages of photos, a page or two of print), softbound, short run (1000 books), b&w book of about the quality usually seen in books published by Aperture, i.e., not the high end 600-line work of Salto used by Michael A. Smith, but not the weak-toned, uncoated-stock end of the scale either. I am assuming (without any real experience) that print-on-demand will not give me the quality and consistency that I want although I would love to be wrong on this because of the convenience of the process for short runs and obviated storage problems. Anyone have suggestions for a printer, preferably on the east coast, that has experience with this type of book? I assume that I would need at least a duotone to match the typical Aperture book quality. In fact, I would like to know how to characterize the Aperture-quality book in terms of screen size, paper, ink gloss, varnish, etc. Also, any estimates of how much it would cost?

Frank Petronio
22-May-2006, 21:28
Most cities have printers capable of printing at the Aperture level. It has more to do with working with a good designer who will take the book through the process and proof and inspect the work. A photographer who has never published anything before may actually "get in the way" and either blow the budget by obsessively over-proofing, or they may miss something (like consistency being off) because they focus on the photos instead of looking at the project holistically.

A really good experience to have before doing your book is to help someone mess up their book ;-) Non-profits and community organizations often have book projects going on. It might be a good idea to volunteer to help produce one. And maybe print a small poster or brochure to further understand the process.

But as far as getting ink on paper, there are thousands of very good printers all over the First and Second World.

Print on Demand is getting very good and for the right subject matter, the right combination of paper, press, and inksets could be very promising. It looks different but not necessarialy worse than trad offset. (Can you sense another silver versus inkjet debate brewing?)

Experience - yours, not theirs - counts far more than anything else in this equation.

Oren Grad
22-May-2006, 21:50
Print on Demand is getting very good and for the right subject matter, the right combination of paper, press, and inksets could be very promising.

Can you be more specific about a scenario that you think might work well and why? I should say that I don't have any particular axe to grind here, I'm just very much interested in understanding better the potential and limitations of the new PoD technologies in this application.

adrian tyler
22-May-2006, 22:53
i have designed and produced many many high quality artists books, regular clients are the thyssen-bornemisza musum and the prado museum and i have also worked producing books for the metropolitan and the moma. i've authored 2 book of my photographs too, but i am tellng you all of this because my advice would be not to go the traditioanl route.

firstly 1000 book are very difficult to get rid of unless you have a distributor, so 200-300 may be better, in which case it would be worthwhile considering d-i-g-i-t-a-l printing system, you'll save a lot of money and the quality is great too, uses traditional papers and although designed for 4 colour work, my local place here in madrid make great tritones too.

another thought may be to do a really limited run say 50-100 on nice cotton rag and print yourself on an inkjet, you could get that hand bound by an artistic bookbinder.

good luck either way...

Miguel Curbelo
23-May-2006, 04:14
Adrian, would you be kind enough to let me know who your printers in Madrid are? -I live on Gran Canaria.

paulr
23-May-2006, 05:30
Friends who have done this report that the best bargains in traditional printers were in Italy a few years ago, and then in Hong Kong ... and possibly somewhere else by now. This is for standard printing in press runs of over a thousand.

My friend Anne McDonald has now sold over half of her 1500 book edition, acting as her own distributor, but if I were in her shoes I'd never have been able to do that. For one thing she has cultivated a mailing list of several thousand. For another she's indefatiguable, and spent close to a year doing nothing but distributing her books. No thank you!

The shorter run digital press Adrian mentions sounds like a more reasonable idea.

Printing inkjet and having them handbound is a whole other ballgame. I'm doing this for a small artists book project now, but my run is probably going to be closer to a dozen, and I'm planning to pre-sell them. Binding alone is a few hundred dollars per book. That's after shopping around and finding someone who is just starting out and doing it semi-professionally--the established shops charge even more!

Frank Petronio
23-May-2006, 05:38
The nice thing about Print On Demand is that once you have the book designed and all the images in place, you can print it on a variety of printers and/or presses to suit your budget and quality requirements. The same files that you can print one-off from your home printer will work with an Indigo or some other POD press. They'll also work on a sheetfed press in Iowa or Hong Kong.

(This is a great simplification on my part, but the concept here is the hard work is in content/designing/editing of the book itself. The technical aspects should be secondary (not that quality should suffer in the least, only that if the book isn't a good project to begin with, the best printing won't save it...)

Gordon Moat
23-May-2006, 12:01
Just a quick note about print on demand and new digital presses. Some people might think a digital press is just a laser printer, though most actually use a toner and oil based system, often with some heating phase to set everything to the paper. Such systems work surprisingly well for B/W images, though are limiting for colour images.

Anyone more curious can get a guide book called The Art & Science of Digital Printing. This was assembled by Parsons (New School) School of Design and Xerox. It is available from Xerox directly, or from their website. I don't have any affiliation with Xerox, and I don't run an iGen3 digital press, but I do think this is one of the very few good guides on this new technology. Just the printed samples in the book would be very helpful to anyone considering using this for publication printing.

My own preference is sheetfed offset, but newer print on demand systems could be more economical. They (digital presses) are not good solutions for all books, and some types of images will not turn out well using these systems. There is also an issue of consistency, since the digital presses require more frequent calibration than more traditional offset presses.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat

adrian tyler
23-May-2006, 13:35
i think that quality problems that gordon mentions occur in all forms of printing, offset or digital, are due to the philosophies and experience of the company and people who work there. the proofs that i have seen on new high end digital printing machines will produce work, given the operator skill and experience, on any paper stock, that 99 out of 100 people will not be able to diferentiate from traditional offset.

martin, this is lucam, i do not work for them nor am i affiliated to them, but i've worked with them for over 15 years, they are old school and great people to boot, you'll learn a lot, tell carlos i sent you, ojo, no hablan inglés:

http://www.lucam.es/

good luck

adrian

Miguel Curbelo
23-May-2006, 13:40
Thank you Adrian. Spanish is no problem -soy canario!

CXC
23-May-2006, 14:00
I had a one-off of Widelux images Printed On Demand, largely out of curiousity, and to judge the quality for myself. Hardbound, color, about $75. I was disappointed in the results, for a number of reasons, but I found the entire experience very instructive and fruitful (never having done anything like this before). Comparing the results with the original images, as well as with the images in my head, and my preconceptions of what it would look like, and how I would react to the book, and its imperfections -- all these sorts of issues were introduced to me, at a relatively bargain price, and in about a week. So for first-timers like me I would recommend it as a useful first step, to help define your goals and to realize the sorts of ways in which they will and won't be fulfilled, even if your final project may be executed via other means.

Gordon Moat
23-May-2006, 14:17
Just a quick mention on colour quality issues with digital presses. One of the biggest differences is that Yellow is much weaker than in traditional offset printing. Of course, with offset Yellow is weaker than the other inks, though there is an opportunity of doing a work-around by substituting one of the Pantone yellows, or even a flourescant ink.

Since the original poster mentioned doing B/W images, and the possibility of a duotone, this is something also not quite the same with a digital press. You can only use Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, or Black. On a digital press, the most interesting and effective combination can be a percentage of Cyan added to the 100% Black. There is a separate superBlack swatch book available through Parsons School of Design, if you think you might do lots of this. If you only anticipate doing a little, then that guide I mentioned earlier will show some quick combinations that might solve what you want.

A duotone done using an offset press could involve two Pantone inks, even metallic inks. Probably the best duotone B/W images book I have seen in print is the Albert Watson book Cyclops. Black ink only does not work well for images on offset; better results can happen through duotone, tritone, or quadtone. You (or your designer) need to work directly with the printing company whenever you go this route; getting the results you want could be difficult.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat

P.S. - I largely agree that most people will not know the difference between digital press and offset, at least when digital presses are operated to the best of their abilities.

paul stimac
23-May-2006, 15:03
I'd look into printing it where lenswork is printed in Canada.. .I can't remember the name of the place but if you email the editor of Lenswork I'm sure he'd tell you.

Frank Petronio
23-May-2006, 17:51
Besides all the other factors, the choice of a printer depends on the size of the run and the size of their presses. Printing 20,000 issues of Lenswork on a 30x40 sheet is different than printing 1,500 nice duotone monographs using a 18 x 24. Or printing 50,000 copies of a popular coffee table art book. All require different presses and workflows, and I would likely send the jobs to three different printers.

Of course printers will claim they can do it all, just like most photographers. But when you get to know them, you find out which press their best people are on and you aim for their sweetspot.

In Rochester, I would follow a good pressperson to a new printer, rather than the other way around.

paulr
24-May-2006, 09:17
I haven't seen what prints from modern digital presses look like, but I want to point out that you can't count on good quality from any kind of press--you're in the hands of the people who run it, for better or worse.

My friend who printed her book in Italy had an epic dealing with printers. The first press she contracted could not come close to matching her silver prints. Their work was poor quality and inconsistent, and they didn't follow her directions. Finally, after a third or fourth round of her rejecting their attempts, they rejected her!

She then found another press, and hired a printing guru from New England--not Richard Benson, but someone with similar skills and passions. He flew with her to Milan to supervise the printing, and the results were beautiful.

But she'll never get that year of her life back. Anything you can do to avoid a situation like her first press run will be worth your while.

Michael Rosenberg
24-May-2006, 10:45
I have been looking into publishing a book of my black and white American Tobacco Factory prints for the past 2 months. It is not a trivial undertaking identifying the printers who are capable of printing photographs. There are a lot of questions you have to answer before contacting them to get a quote - and a lot of side considerations.

The cheapest quotes I have received have been from China and Italy. But there is a languague barrier, and if you want a really good job done you have to sit on press at the final proof and printing. It is not trivial to do that overseas. I would recommend identifying photography books that you really admire the quality and seeing where they were printed. I would not recommend considering having less than 300 line screen done, and deciding whether duotone rather than tritone (saves a lot). Hard bound may not save that much over soft bound.

One photographer described like giving birth, agonizing during the pregnancy and when giving birth (I imagine giving birth to a 1000 books), but a relief once it is done.

Regards,

Michael Rosenberg
24-May-2006, 10:58
Here is a good resource for book publishing with many tips and suggested questions to ask.

http://www.janealdenstevens.com/

Frank Petronio
24-May-2006, 11:14
The 300 plus line screens are a pretty high end subset of the art book market, mostly used to reproduce duo and tritones B&W images. Meriden Stinehour is famous for using really fine screens with nice cotton, uncoated paper. Of course these books are wonderfully tactial and done well they are art objects. But they are also going to cost a multiple X over mainstream methods. So choose wisely...

Most commercial printers shy away from such fine screens because they tend to "plug" and create blocky shadows. Of course having good equipment and a watchful, skilled press person is the key, but that also increases your prices dramatically.

Most commercial, popular coffee table books are printed in color (CMYK) with 175-200 line screens. The proofing and printing workflows are well established and it is easier to predict what you'll get from wide-spread CMYK printing versus the relatively rare "fine-art" doutone type printing. For example, there is no inexpensive or easy way to proof duotones short of doing a proofing run on a real press. $$$.

There is a lot to be said for sticking with the most popular established proven predictable workflow (commas left out on purpose!)

The books I've done in China were proofed on a proofing press, then on my approval printed for real. IMHO, seeing sheets from a proofing press beats seeing digital proofs. The only real problem with overseas printing is the waiting (3-6 mos) and sending our dollars overseas on principal.

At this point it may be cheaper to print CMYK with a varnish than it is to print something in duotone black and grey. And it is certainly more predictable.

Printers that specialize in hardbound books can do them very inexpensively, so if I were doing a short run I'd just get hardbound, offset CMYK with varnish at 175 line screen from a good commercial printer - there is one in every mid-sized city - or go to DaiNippon or some other overseas printer.

Better yet, come to Rochester where there are half a dozen good commercial printers that are IMHO better than most of the country's average printers thanks to having RIT having the best printing school plus a 150 year plus tradition of printing (it's kind of like Switzerland with grime).

You can save a lot more money by paying an experienced designer $5 to 10K to do it right...

paulr
24-May-2006, 12:16
(Sorry to keep bringing up my friend's experience as if it's my own ... but i spent enough time hand-holding during the whole ordeal that it feels like i lived it)

She had to make some tough decisions based on price. One of the big ones was acid-free paper. She ended up not using it, because it would have practically doubled her cost per book, and she was paying. 100% cotton paper would have been dramatically more still.

Be prepared for choices like this. Nice art books cost a bundle.

Martin Miller
24-May-2006, 20:45
Thanks to all for your thoughtful and helpful comments. I have a better appreciation for the challenges that lay ahead. Print-on-Demand has obvious appeal to a self publisher so I encourage you to post your future experiences with the process. I confess I am still wary of the quality and consistency issues and probably will start by pursuing conventional offset to start with and leave the trailblazing to others. If you are interested, the portfolio I want to publish can be seen at www.worldwarworks.com.

As for distribution, some may already know this, but Amazon will list and distribute your self-published book (after being accepted) in what they call their Advantage program. At the Amazon homepage, click on "Sell Your Stuff", then "Advantage" for the details. They take a hefty 55% of list price and you must pay to ship your books to them, but their market power is awesome. This is obviously not the way to get rich, but, if I can achieve the right mix of quality and price (yet to be demonstrated!), I think the book could be a worthwhile multipurpose marketing tool.

Again, thanks for sharing your experiences, and don't let me cut this thread off if you have more to add.

QT Luong
27-May-2006, 12:31
The Amazon discount may looks helfty, but my understanding is that any bookstore takes a standard 50% off list.

paulr
27-May-2006, 13:54
How does it work with amazon ... do they just sell on consignment, and you take care of the shipping?

tim atherton
27-May-2006, 14:29
I did have a whole article somewhere about selling through amazon for self-published books - but of course I can't find it now...

tim atherton
27-May-2006, 14:31
ha - I'd posted it on your list Pual

don't recall where it actually came from....

Small publishers say Amazon.com has opened big doorsTuesday, August 16, 2005
Updated at 10:17 AM EDT

Associated Press

Seattle - Cellular biologist Bruce Lipton holds no fond memories of his
early struggles to get his book published.

One by one, the big houses in New York looked at Biology of Belief:
Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles, but eventually
said no, suggesting his theory that signals outside cells control genes was
too radical for mainstream readers.

"I wasted a whole year with them," Mr. Lipton fumed.

Then he signed on with an independent press that relies heavily on
Amazon.com Inc. Since then, he and his publisher say, more than 42,000
copies have sold in six months.

"To go in and end up using Amazon as a way of getting out there and jumping
ahead of a lot of the big corporations ... that was really fun," said Mr.
Lipton, a former University of Wisconsin medical school professor who lives
in Santa Cruz., Calif., about 100 miles south of his publisher, Santa
Rosa-based Elite Books.

With its limitless shelf space, Seattle-based Amazon has helped countless
other authors and small publishers earn the same bragging rights in the past
decade, giving readers throughout the world instant access to books they
might never have found.

"Book publishing at one time was clubby, and that really has changed," Al
Greco, senior researcher at the Institute for Publishing Research in
Bergenfield, N.J., says

Using data Amazon has collected about what its customers buy, considered
buying, browsed but never bought, recommended to others or even wished
someone would buy for them, the bookseller is able to recommend more
purchases and direct searches toward products it thinks a customer is most
likely to want.

In the process, it has essentially made the buying public part of a
marketing machine that's driven up demand for books that once might have
been much harder to find.

Ask small publishers what they like most about Amazon, and they'll say it's
the global reach. Another huge plus, they say, is that Amazon pays its
bills - and on time.

"I spent seven months trying to collect from a major bookstore chain. Amazon
drops the money in my checking account every single month without fail,"
says Cathy Stucker, who runs her own publishing company out of her home in
Sugar Land, Texas, and has sold hundreds of copies of her main title, The
Mystery Shopper's Manual on Amazon.

It's common for publishers to spend months waiting to get paid, then receive
a shipment of unsold books returned - often with an order for a new batch of
books. That makes cash flow a big problem for the little guys.

"Basically, they get your inventory on consignment," says David Cole,
founder of Bay Tree Publishing in Berkley, Calif.

By comparison, Amazon typically orders books in fairly small numbers and
rarely returns them.

Greg Greely, vice-president of the company's worldwide media division, says
Amazon sends back less than 10 per cent of the books it orders, while some
reports suggest that brick-and-mortar stores return up to half of their
shipments.

In 1998, when Amazon created its Advantage program for small publishers, it
touted the service as a way to help level the playing field in an industry
that has long favoured the big dogs. Today, many small publishers say it's
worked.

"All publishers are basically equal, because just about all publishers'
titles are on Amazon and can be delivered to your door in a couple days,"
says Kent Sturgis, president of the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Amazon keeps track of sales and inventory for its Advantage publishers, and
automatically reorders books when stocks are running low. Members pay a
$29.95 fee, and Amazon takes a 55 per cent cut of sales - about what most
wholesalers charge.

Amazon would not disclose how many members belong to its Advantage program,
other than to say "tens of thousands." It also wouldn't discuss details of a
separate co-op fee system that has generated grumbling from some small
publishers. Amazon started out selling nothing but books, but now sells
power tools, beauty supplies and virtually everything else. It doesn't
disclose how many books it sells each year. Nor do its major competitors.

Because those numbers remain tightly held secrets, no one is sure how many
books get sold on-line each year, though experts say it's a growing slice of
the publishing pie.

Internet book sales make up the bulk of so-called "direct-to-consumer"
sales, which also include sales from catalogues and toll-free numbers. While
direct-to-consumer sales have been rising in recent years, sales at Barnes &
Noble, Inc., and Borders Group, the nation's two largest book retail chains,
have remained relatively stagnant.

Researcher Greco's best estimate is that on-line sales account for 7 per
cent to 10 per cent of total U.S. book sales annually - up from virtually
nil 10 years ago.

"Without Amazon," he says, "I think it's safe to say there would've been a
larger erosion in sales."

Some experts say that Amazon hurts independent bookstores, which can't match
its vast inventory. Others contend that Amazon doesn't bear all the blame
because its rise coincided with the growth of giant bookstores and mass
merchandisers such as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Target Corp., and wholesale
price clubs.

Powell's Books, a chain of local bookstores in Portland, Ore., has seen its
sales increase steadily in the last several years. The company points to
both its own Web sales, which started in 1994 - a year before Amazon went
live on the Internet - and Amazon's success making millions of people feel
comfortable shopping on-line.

"Once they were converted and the idea was no longer scary to them, we could
market to them and position ourselves as an alternative," Dave Weich,
Powell's director of marketing and development, says.

Books, music and videos, which Amazon lumps into a single category, bring in
most of the company's money. But as part of global revenue, the media
division is shrinking slightly. Last year, media products accounted for 74
per cent of $6.9-billion in revenue - down from 79 per cent of 2002's total
sales of $3.9-billion.

Barnes & Noble's on-line division did $420-million in sales last year -
about 9 per cent of the company's total sales, and up from $151-million the
year before.

Many publishers say Amazon's benefits outweigh its pitfalls, but one gripe
is widespread: Amazon has driven up sales of used books - great for thrifty
readers, but bad, they say, for authors who depend on royalties.

"That's done more to hurt publishing, big and small, than anything, and
readers don't think about it," says Fran Baker, a romance writer who runs
her own publishing company, Delphi Books, in Lee's Summit, Mo., outside
Kansas City.

Amazon, though, has seen used books spur sales of new books. "We've found
customers that do buy used books are more likely to come back and buy [new
books] from that publisher or that author," Greely says. "It's a way of
introducing customers to new genres, new areas of interest."