Aron provided some of his views on the photobook publishing. I had heard Aron talk at a PhotoLondon PreShow talk earlier in 2017. Aron’s talk at Magnum was a frank assessment based on his own experience as a publisher. He started publishing in 2008 and has published a number of since then.
Shops no longer represent the traditional channel for distributing books, they are unlikely to take more than a few books so it is necessary to find alternative channels. When looking for funding be careful as funding promised can evaporate or can change shape with the person providing funding making requests that might compromise rather overall financial viability of the project.
The great thing about books is they help make photography accessible and you can get people to view your work. Aron advised thar it is best to keep things simple and small. He advised that you should publish books because you love books. When designing books look to use and copy styles from other publishers that have relate to the subject of your book.
Distributors are more interested in the larger volume book markets and a distributor will want to take a large percentage and want the ability to discount books that means that the publisher getting less than the manufacturing costs which is the reason to explore other distribution channels.
When approaching a publisher with a photobook idea, gather reference material to give to the designer. Keep dummy printing costs cheap by printing on A4. Creating colour book on an offset printing press gives predictable results. Printing black and white books is more challenging as results are less easy to predict. When preparing image sequence for a book take photographs of the selected sequence to retain as a reference for the final book sequence.
To help marketing a book use Instagram and include sample pages plus behind the scenes images and videos to help engage with your audience.
I found Aron’s feedback refreshing and the hints and tips were very useful. He advised to do your research on publishers to find one that has published books similar to your project.
