30 — The Nuts and Bolts of the Publishing World

Well done. After batting around thoughts with friends and colleagues,

you’ve hit upon a great idea. Perhaps you’ve been working on it for the last twenty

years, or perhaps it came to you in a fitful dream last night. It doesn’t matter. Before

you go any further, let’s take a good hard look at whether or not it’s a great book idea.

The Big Idea

The single most troublesome area for photographers is defining the concept

of the book. A great book, as with a great photography project, is well-conceived

and has a clearly defined subject. Donna Wingate, a bibliophile who currently

works with book packager Marquand Books of Seattle and formerly headed D.A.P.’s

(Distributed Art Publishers) publishing program, perfectly sums up the situation:

Emerging artists are faced with greater challenges. They have to compete for bookstore shelf space with recognized names (and, indeed, some living legends) who are producing vital bodies of work that are published with important museum exhibitions and the support system of their galleries and other cul-tural institutions. What really stands out when it comes to emerging talent is a project that can answer the simple question, “What is this book about?”

This, then, is the fundamental question to ask oneself as a photographer.

What is your project about? Taking into account things like subject matter, timeli-

ness, and the current status of one’s career will ultimately influence what sort of

book you decide to pursue for publication.

The “big idea” of a book can take any infinite number of forms, and can be

broad or narrow. One recent example is Andrew Zuckerman’s newest book, Bird

Evaluating and Refining Your Concept

31 — Evaluating and Refining Your Concept

(Chronicle Books, 2009), which takes a very straightforward and beloved subject

matter—birds from around the world—and creates a catalog of species with stun-

ning photographs that appeal to a very broad audience. Zuckerman is a talented

studio photographer, and, along with his previous title, Creature (Chronicle Books,

2007), his books have brought him a certain measure of fame, but the birds them-

selves are the main draw and selling point for a subject-driven book like this.

A more narrowly defined (and deceptively titled book) is Martin Parr’s Mexico

(Chris Boot, 2006). While the title of the book is the name of the country, the

book contains a very particular view of tourism and economics as seen in border

towns of the U.S./Mexico border. The photographs are all shot in Parr’s signature

hyper-saturated style, and while the title indicates a broad subject, it is in fact Parr’s

photographic vision and take on the crass side of globalization that is more properly

the subject of the book.

Even with Parr’s international reputation within the fine-art-photography

community, sales of Mexico would have been well under 5,000 copies, while the

broad public appeal of birds will guarantee that Zuckerman’s Bird will sell ten times

as many copies.

Who Is Your Audience?

Defining the audience for your book is nearly as important as producing the

work itself. Many aspiring photographers make the mistake of assuming their book

or project has a huge potential audience: “everyone who loves photography,” or “all

dog owners,” or “anyone who travels.” For the most part, broad generalizations like

this are not true. Most readers, like most art and photography connoisseurs, have

| Andrew Zuckerman, Bird (Chronicle Books, 2009)

32 — The Nuts and Bolts of the Publishing World

particular tastes, which means that you must define a core audience to whom you

can tailor and target your book.

Sometimes, the way other industries market to their audiences can provide

clues for how to identify and market to your own community. If your project is

subject-driven, start building a library of other books about this same subject.

Researching magazine sales and online groups devoted to the subject matter is

another great way to determine the potential size of an audience.

While there is no hard-and-fast rule on how large a potential audience for a

particular title needs to be, there is some common thinking that we have discov-

ered in talking with publishers from around the world. In the world of art- and

photography-book publishing, most publishers see three thousand copies as the

upper limit of a book’s potential market, and the range of quantities varies widely

and depends on various factors, including cross-marketing potential, name recogni-

tion of the photographer, and supporting activities, such as exhibitions or corporate

sponsorship. In truth, small fine-art publishers will print as few as five hundred

to a thousand copies of a book, while the larger houses search for titles that have

a potential audience of eight to ten thousand copies or more. The particular artis-

tic vision of one artist—Lee Friedlander, for example—may have a very limited

audience, whereas a universal theme rendered through easily accessible photo-

graphs—like Andrew Zuckerman’s Bird—may sell upwards of fifty thousand books.

S, M, L, XL Book Projects

Some photography projects make great magazine articles but don’t have

enough depth to sustain an entire book, whereas some seemingly narrow magazine

Martin Parr, Mexico | (Aperture, 2006)

33 — Evaluating and Refining Your Concept

articles end up filling the pages of a book perfectly; other photography projects are

overly ambitious, bordering on encyclopedic in length. Bernd and Hilla Becher

have been photographing a very narrow but deep subject—vernacular domestic and

industrial architecture such as blast furnaces and suburban German homes—for

over fifty years. They have published many books from this overarching project, and

each book focuses on a small slice of the larger project.

Considering how to organize and categorize your project at the start, as

well as visualizing the end at the early stages, is paramount to the success of a

book. Writing a summary or a brief outline of an intended photography project

can often help you to realize the depth and breadth of the project, and to help

approach it systematically.

Sometimes a project is strictly limited simply by circumstance. Paul Fusco’s

RFK Funeral Train (Umbrage Editions/Magnum Photos, 2000) is a perfect example

of such a project. The photographer rode on the train carrying Robert F. Kennedy’s

body from New York City to Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. in

1968, making photographs of the mourners who gathered beside the railroad tracks

along the length of the journey.

At the other end of the spectrum is the career-long photographic project of

husband and wife Bernd and Hilla Becher. Taking increasingly obsolete industrial

architecture as their subject, they have applied a rigorous intellectual and formalist

aesthetic to their photographic practice, producing a body of work that continued

until Bernd’s death in 2007. From this vast body of work of an equally extensive

subject have come numerous, diligently edited books that focus on specific aspects

of their oeuvre.

| Paul Fusco, RFK Funeral Train (Umbrage Editions/Magnum Photos, 2000)

| Abell, Sam Abell: The Photographic Life| Abell, Sam Abell: The Photographic Life

| Selection of contemporary collectible photo books:

Michael Schmelling, The Plan (J&L Books, 2009)

Daido Moriyama, Remix (Edition Kamel Mennour, 2004)

Wendell Steavenson, Georgian Spring, A Magnum Journal (Chris Boot Ltd., 2009)

opposite page:

Hiroshi Sugimoto, In Praise of Shadows (Korinsha, 1999)

Geert Van Kesteren, Baghdad Calling (episode publishers, 2008)

Esko Männikkö, Naarashauki, The Female Pike (self-published, 2000)

Martin Parr, Martin Parr in India 1984–2009 (Photoink, 2010)