Create Your Photography Bill Book for Shipping Effortlessly

Photography bill book for Shipping

Just over a year ago, I self-published this photo book, which I called ONE In this video, we’ll go through everything I did to get it out there we’ll talk about image selection, design, sequencing, printing, shipping of course, mistakes I made and much more before we get started, though, as you might know, ONE has been sold out for a year now and today I wanted to let you all know that I’ve received a few more copies of the book so if you want one, check out the link in the description down below to grab your copy unfortunately though, I’m only shipping to the US at this time we’ll talk later about international shipping and how difficult and challenging it can be Alright, this is what we are going to be talking about today, and the timestamps for everything First, we’ll see why publishing a book makes sense in today’s digital world then the process begins of course first by taking the actual pictures, then selecting the right images, and sequencing them we’ll see how to design the book how and where to print it promoting and selling it, and finally, shipping the book to the buyers after that, we’ll just wrap everything up with mistakes I made that you will want to avoid, and some final thoughts so, why publish a book at all? after all, today, most of photography is being shared online, and the vast majority of those photographs will never get printed and that’s probably a good thing for the environment but there’s still nothing like being able to physically hold your work on your own hands it’s a universal medium that everyone has access to and anyone can understand we don’t need a device, internet access, or an account on some social media platform to enjoy books no matter what the future will bring technologically speaking, a book will still be a book in 50 years prints are another awesome way to bring your work to life as opposed to a book, which will be closed on a table or a shelf most of the time, a print will hang on a wall, always visible, always beautiful that is… if we have the space, of course and if it fits in with the rest of the room, because even the best images might not be the right fit for certain spaces a book will almost always be a good fit on a book shelf, and you can have tons of them I like that you can put them away really easily and then bring them back whenever you want to be inspired or need to look at something beautiful even though the quality of a print is usually much higher than that of a book that makes them more expensive a book is more affordable, more approachable, something you are supposed to touch and interact with and lastly, a book tells a bigger, potentially deeper and more meaningful story than a single image does in putting a collection of images together, we are almost more filmmakers than we are photographers it makes you think in series, very much like a music album, right? it’s becoming more and more rare nowadays, but there’s something nice about listening to an album from the beginning to the end someone put some thought on that order, on that sequence there’s something that brings all of those songs together they tell a different story than they do by themselves coming back to photography, that’s what the book does to our photography it provides our images with a bigger purpose than the one they had when they were standing by themselves so through some selection and sequencing, we can make something totally new with those images and also, another benefit, as we work on the book we might realize we are missing some important images to tell a more complete story and that will push us to get out there and make them a quick note on money, because that could be another reason to publish a book: to make a living with photography yes, books can be a way to make money, but probably not the best one at least at a small scale it’s a complicated and expensive process, and if you are not careful, you might very well end up not just not making any money, but losing some we’ll talk about all of this later ok, so, taking the pictures this is the step we photographers enjoy the most, and where we spend most of our time obviously, getting out there and taking the pictures is a must, but it’s also just the beginning it can be very hard to have a clear big picture from the beginning of what we want to do more likely than not, we’ll have a rough idea of the images we’d like to make, the story we want to tell and then we’ll get out there with a mindset of creating one image at a time it is when we sit down to review our progress, when we start to put all the images together, that the big picture becomes more apparent over time, as we take more and more images, we might even see a theme, or some themes, showing up something we tend to photograph more often, subjects we are more drawn to perhaps, we’ll find some potential somewhere else and we’ll explore it even more by taking more pictures similar to those in my personal case, I did not have this book in mind when I was taking the pictures I didn’t know I was going to use those images on a book, a few years later I just photographed what I was drawn to what was around me, either at home or when traveling because I’m relatively consistent when it comes to style, mood, and even subjects, I could see my own journey as the theme of the book it could be about what I saw so I made all the images one by one, thinking first about telling a story with the single photograph putting this book together gave them a different meaning, though, as they became part of something bigger not better, not worse, just different as we’ve seen, you might find some themes or subjects showing up on your photographs time after time once you feel like you have enough images to do something interesting with them, maybe it’s time to sit down and do a rough first selection when I started to select images for my book, I had a bit over 1,000 of them I placed all of those photographs in one folder and let them sit there for a while over a period of several weeks, I narrowed them down to an almost final selection of around 300 of them this is when I knew I wanted a relatively big book I wanted to include most of those images, so the volume would be a thick one still, 300 were a lot, I prefer shorter books, and that amount would also compromise the cost of the book so I did my best and took it down to “just” 200 images there was a lot of going back and forth through the photographs on the computer but I decided to print them out to have a better feeling of what they’d look like when printed on paper I had these tiny prints I made on a regular printer not the best quality, but being able to play with them, seeing them in almost a thumbnail form helped a lot, not just with the selection, but also with the sequencing and the overall design of the book in the sequencing is where we transition from day-to-day single image makers, to somewhat bigger story tellers there’s a switch in thinking, a change in mindset when we work on a single image, we need to think about how the viewer moves around the frame the transition from some areas of the image to others when we put them all together, we need to pay attention to the transition between images how they interact with each other how they fit in the bigger story we also want to keep the reader as engaged as possible through the whole book, offering some breaks here and there that’s why a change in format, for example from square to panorama, can help adding some text or leaving some blank pages will do the trick as well let’s talk about design I know that some artists can’t be bothered with what the audience thinks but if you are publishing a book that will be consumed (and purchased!) by other people, you should at least keep them in mind when designing it of course, the decisions you make will be ones that you agree with, after all the book is also for you but those decisions should be guided by how you want the viewers to experience your work you might have a good time looking at 500 of your own images, but others might find that overwhelming a giant book might show the quality of your photographs better than a smaller volume, but it might be unbearable, too big for most people and so on anyway, I wanted to keep the book as simple as possible it couldn’t be any other way, as I try to keep my photography itself as simple as possible too That applies to the cover and the back of the book all black, with an image on the front and another one on the back and the title, of course plenty of space to let the images breathe I thought about having two versions, a black one, and a white one the idea was to maybe have a premium edition, made with the best materials, and a cheaper standard edition again, I tried to keep it as simple as possible so I ditched the idea but it’s something I might want to try in the future — who knows you know I like to print my images small, with plenty of white space around them, so the viewer has to get close even my Instagram account is that way too this made the process much easier when it came to designing and printing, as there was no bleeding or anything that could go wrong because of this, I didn’t need to use any dedicated software my choice was Pages for Mac, which you get for free when you buy one of Apple’s computers but I could have used Google Docs, or any other word processor as the layout was very, very simple I let the images speak for themselves I included almost no text, not even captions that being said, I do have an index with the location or subject pictured in all the images available on my website it’s a PDF you can download for free the link is going to be in the description this is something you might want to include with your book, and something I regret not having done I think I’ll have some more text in my next book, though as it can be a nice way to separate different sections or to offer a break from browsing through so many images talking about sections, I divided the book in three acts I did not explain what those were or meant at all but you might have been able to see some differences between the images within each section the first act includes images from earlier in my photography journey most of them were made on medium format film actually on this beautiful piece of a camera — hey, I still have it and mostly here in the US the second act shows different images, as we moved to Europe and I started to shoot digital again which made my photography slightly different I was shooting more photographs, more often the lighter gear also meant I always had a camera with me so the subjects got more diverse, as I moved from capturing only nature to more urban landscapes the final third act is the shortest one all the images in there were made during the lockdown, during the pandemic in 2020 about the size and format of the book I knew I wanted something relatively small and light something you could read not just on a table but also on your lap a volume that you could bring with you but not so small that you couldn’t see the details in the images I thought about a square book but to be honest, that increased the cost quite substantially and it wasn’t a big deal for me anyway the landscape format actually gave me more space in between facing images, which I liked and it accommodates the rare panoramic image better yes, you have to think about the cost during the design phase it’s unrealistic for most of us not to do so especially when you are trying to sell the books to a small audience, and you are not a big name in photography also, the higher the cost, the riskier the whole operation becomes but more about that later anyway, other than the format, I didn’t compromise on anything else I thought about including a dust jacket but to be honest, I kind of hate them I have several books with dust jackets and they always get damaged very soon, very easliy it also made the book more expensive, of course, so this was an easy no usually the printing lab, if you use one, will let you create a digital proof to make sure everything is looking good before printing anything on paper check all the margins, and make sure the images are placed where they should that they bleed to the edge of the page and that they are in the dead center if that’s what you are aiming for even though these proofs can be very accurate, do not publish your book without seeing a physical copy in person! this is very important you need to order a test print or proof to get a feeling of the final product yes, they can be really expensive, but it can save you a lot of money down the road only when you see your photos on paper you’ll be able to tell if they need any adjustments it’s also another opportunity to spot typos, or any other design flaws I actually found all of them on my test print here, I want to show you a couple other books that two very kind photographers have sent me recently these are Graham Richard’s “Storm” and “Whangarei to Hikurangi by Rail” two very personal projects all the way from New Zealand all of the images were made on film and they look awesome and this is Mickael Pouliquen’s “AOD”, a beautifully printed book with images from Brittany I love the mix of the fabric and solid print on the cover the layout is very simple as well all the images were made on film, too, and a local film too so pretty cool these two publications are very different, but they both work I really like that both Graham and Mickael went with a simple layout, letting the images do the work and by the way, you’ll find a link in the description to Mickael’s website, just in case you want to grab a copy of his book next step is a big one, and it’s printing when it comes to printing, some photographers like to do it themselves at home if you know how to do it, and are willing to invest the time, this can be a very good option handmade books are pretty cool otherwise, you’ll have to find a place to print your book here, there are a few options, depending on how you want to sell your books the first option is to print the books on-demand, think of something like Blurb now, this option is risk-free, in the sense that you only print the books you sell it can be a hands off approach, as the whole process can be automated so you don’t even have to do anything once everything is setup the downside to this approach is the cost printing books one by one is usually significantly more expensive in the case of my book, the final price would be around $100 not accounting for shipping or profit margin that’s why I chose to go the other route, and to print a bunch of books at the same time when you print a lot of copies, the price comes down quite a lot here, there are also different approaches you can take, and different options with each one of them last year, I decided to take pre-orders I set a deadline, and by that date, I placed an order for the amount of reservations I got this meant every single book I sent to print was already sold, so there was less risk but it wasn’t risk free you see, when I set the price of the pre-order, I was expecting a number of shipments the demand exceeded my expectations so that worked out pretty well, as the cost of each book went even further down but, if demand is lower than expected, the cost can and will go up to the point where you might be losing money with each book so you might have to cancel all the pre-orders altogether, and start over if you don’t give up by then if you decide to go the crowdfunding route, with pre-orders it’s always a good idea to request extra copies just in case some of the books are damaged during shipping or come with any flaws some of the books I got were damaged, and some of them were upside down, among other very weird flaws yes, they printed them again for me, but that can take a while the buyers will be waiting in the meanwhile, which only adds to the waiting time from when they did the pre-order the downside to this approach is that you can’t take more orders so I’d recommend you to get additional copies, on top of the “just in case” ones, to cover for the bad ones to have some left, to give away, and to sell, of course. the other way to do this is to buy copies ahead of time, and then sell them that’s what I did this time around, because I think… I have better sense than last year I think I will eventually sell all the copies if I don’t, though, I will end up having a pile of books in my closet of course, both approaches mean ordering a lot of books, heavy packages, paying shipping to wherever you are just to give you an idea, I had to pay $500 in shipping to get the books over here last year you have to package them, and ship them to the buyers mixam.com was my choice for printing I think they have one of the best price to quality ratio I’m pretty happy with the results but I should warn you that I did run into some problems with them as they took much longer to deliver the books I got quite a few books with flaws and customer service… let’s say that it was a bit lacking I’d still use them again, though and I did, in fact, to get these new copies selling I sold the books on my website exclusively I use a third-party publishing platform, which charges me a fee with every sale then there’s the credit card or payment processing fee on top of that those are costs you have to add to the actual production of the books, and shipping which, as we’ll see later, can be the most expensive part of the whole process you could host your website yourself, and process payments in some other way I decided to not make the whole thing more complicated than it needed to be offering payments with regular credit cards and paypal should cover most cases while transfers and other apps that might not have fees could push away some buyers understandably so, by the way When it comes to marketing, I published a video here on my channel, showingwthe book I sent a newsletter and I posted about it on my blog and social media platforms this is where a bigger reach online will help quite a lot the more eyes you have looking at your work, the more sales you’ll make I happened to be in Montana on a road trip when I made the announcement so I took some promotional photos of the book in different places around Glacier National Park that worked out pretty well, I think shipping, the most painful step of the whole process there are two shipments here the first one, from the printing location to you depending on your volume, this might be unrealistic I got almost 400 books shipped to this house last year and they were a lot of boxes, they took a lot of space I can’t see this approach working out had I sold more than, say, 1,000 books in this case, you might want the company in charge of the printing to ship the books to the buyers for you for an extra charge of course you might even want to travel to the printing location to make sure they all look good and to sign the books, too anyway, I did get the books here, I signed them and packaged them, one by one I tried to protect them as much as I could, while keeping the size and weight of the package reasonable it is also very important that you pack your test print or proof to make sure you have the accurate measurements and weight to make the right assumptions about the shipping costs especially if you ship internationally this was one of the biggest mistakes I made last year I actually ended up losing some money with some of the books I shipped, because I didn’t calculate the costs correctly more about this later first, I covered the book with some film wrap, to prevent light damage then, I wrapped them in bubble wrap, to protect them against bigger damage during shipping lastly, I used cardboard corners to protect the most vulnerable part of the book, the corners and then I used foldable boxes to complete the packaging this time around, I’m not using the cardboard corners for a couple of reasons they are very expensive, and they probably don’t protect as much as simply leaving some space in between the book and the edges of the box so this year, I bought slightly bigger boxes, and I’ll just fill the sides with some bubble wrap cheaper, and safer or I hope so most of the books arrived safe, as far as I know despite the mistreatment these boxes get from the couriers, throwing them around and putting them under much heavier packages I had a handful of them arriving with some damage thankfully, many of them were covered by the insurance I did get insurance in some cases, though, the refunds came at the expense of profit because insurance kind of didn’t want anything to do with it talking about insurance, I have mixed feelings about this yes, having insurance gives you peace of mind… until you have to deal with them they will ask for everything they can ask for before giving you the money back but, you should refund the buyer as soon as possible so there will a period of time where you might have to assume some costs until you get the money from the insurance if you ever do I had some cases rejected, and again, I ended up losing money on those books shipping domestically here in the US is pretty simple and affordable shipping to other countries is more of a nightmare, especially these days I used Stamps.com for all my shipping because I thought that’d make the process simpler and even though it definitely helped, the whole thing was still pretty chaotic and messy it was nice to be able to print the labels at home, though so I only had to drop the books off at the post office, without having to wait the people working at the post office still hated on me a little bit as I kept bringing more and more books for almost 2 weeks anyway, this time around I think I’ll skip stamps.com and use some other platform I think you can print labels on PayPal and that’s what I might end up doing anyway, shipping is definitely the least enjoyable step of the whole process, and really expensive believe it or not, shipping the books was several times more expensive than printing the books themselves well in the 5 digits again, shipping internationally changes the whole thing I had buyers from 30 different countries, which opened up a whole set of challenges, besides cost we haven’t even talked about customs that can be a very bad surprise, for both you and the buyer anyway, all of this is why I’m not doing it this time, at least not at a big scale the thing is that companies like Amazon have made people expect fast and cheap shipping — if not free and that’s something just not feasible for small businesses even less for small artists you might want to lower expectations on this front from the very beginning I think this pretty much covers the whole process of self-publishing a book now I just want to share some random thoughts and a conclusion publishing a book is something every photographer should do at some point, even if you have no intention of selling it make it for yourself, but do it there’s something about seeing your work on paper not just one image but a collection of them, put together in order to tell a story if you do want to sell it, though, you are going to have to do some math while you can definitely make some money by selling books, don’t expect to make a lot it will actually feel very little for the amount of work but it’s so worth it I love to think that there are a few hundred copies of my book out there, in so many different countries during this process, I made a few mistakes, some of them I’ve already mentioned things will always, always, take longer than you expect, sodon’t work with tight schedules printing took a whole month longer than I thought last year, and I had to cancel an overseas flight because of that that’s money lost getting the books ready for shipping also took much longer than expected it took me a whole week working more than 10-11 hours every single day to estimate the shipping cost, pack the test print the same way you will pack the real books, and bring it to the post office have them give you a price for domestic and international shipping do not offer shipping to countries you don’t know you can afford shipping to or even if you can ship there at all sure, you can always cancel an order, but it’s always better to avoid these situations try not to disappoint your buyers pay close attention to the size and the weight of the package I eye-balled the weight of the final package, assuming it’d be under 3 pounds it turned out to be 3 pounds and 1 ounce, which made international shipping much more expensive than I was expecting to give you an idea, I charged $20 for shipping to Europe but in reality, I had to pay anywhere between $40 and $60 that completely ate all of the profits, and in some cases, I lost money by shipping books I can’t stress this enough, make sure you run the numbers multiple times especially if you are planning on having a low margin because no matter what, there will be surprises and situations you didn’t account for that’s ok, as long as you give yourself some wiggle room with your margins if you have a very low margin, one failed sale, one damaged book, or a situation where you have to give a full refund and lose money will eat the profits from several other books, from several other sales so please, give yourself enough margin you don’t want to end up losing money with all of this in the end, there’s no right or wrong way to go about your book it is YOUR book after all do not feel like you have to do this or that because your favorite photographer did it that way, or because it’s what you are supposed to do do what feels right to you, as long as you stay within budget adjust the book to your needs, and to how you want your audience to look at it and experience it I hope this video was helpful and motivates you to publish your own book, if you haven’t yet yes, it’s a long and complicated process it can be expensive as well but these challenges make it even more rewarding in the end I absolutely love looking at my own images, and showing them to other people and I love looking at the work of fellow photographers who made the same choice if you have any questions about the process, maybe about something I didn’t even cover here leave a comment down below and I’ll try to get back to you thanks for watching, and see you in the next one!