The Compelling Image

Photographers love having a book of their work. Book publishers want a book that they can sell, that’s the bottom line. They look for a theme, a subject, something that will bring it all together. A strong story line or subject of interest to many can make a great book project. If you want to seriously pursue seeking a publisher for your book project, you need to make a maquette or dummy to show them what you have in mind. It’s like a writer doing a synopsis and outline of his book project. Photography books are much more expensive to print and therefore publishers are reluctant to commit to a project unless they think it has a chance of selling a certain number of units.

My book last year was called “TITANS: Muhammad Ali and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the ’70s” – published by Dalton-Watson. It was all black and white and a fun project to design and layout. I did all of the work myself working with a publisher-assigned editor to put everything together as I envisioned. The final pdf layout was converted to CMYK and uploaded to the printer in Singapore. This was a large coffee table book consisting of 262 pages on the heaviest paper available in an 11×13-inch size. It was quite an expensive book to produce and the quality really shows in the reproduction.

My next book for 2011 is called “the South in the 60′s” and is again all B&W imagery that I photographed while working for the St Petersburg Times in my off hours and after leaving the paper when I began freelancing for magazines such at Life, Time, Sports Illustrated and Newsweek. It wasn’t until I started going back through all my old contact sheets that the idea recurred to me and I started seriously editing my work again. I’m now working with the publisher to plan the overall look of the book, whether to lay it out with chapters or sections and how to position it in the marketplace when we launch it. It’s good to have a marketing plan ahead of time. Most publishers work one or two years ahead.

With books you seldom make a lot of money up front, but if carefully planned with a gallery show, you can make more money selling prints from the imagery in the book. At a gallery opening you can sign and sell books and also prints. I had a gallery show in New York City and Rome when we launched “Titans”. There is nothing like seeing large 3 x 4.5-foot prints of your work on the wall to get viewers interested. Books and gallery shows also add to your reputation and prestige as a fine art photographer, always useful for future projects.

Just remember that with book publishing you only get one chance at it. The design, image selection and printing must all be spot on. If you wish to only publish a small number of books, there are many self-publishing entities available to help you. Choose carefully after reviewing their samples.

Award-winning photographer Al Satterwhite teaches the course – Color + Design = Brilliant + Dynamic Photos – online and interactively, starting April 12 at The Compelling Image.