Jain Lemos » Photography and Publishing

I believe we’ve reached a point of Internet Osmosis.

My website, www.jainlemos.com appears on SpyFu. Their motto is “Spy on Your Online Competitors.” An alert this morning led me there for the first time.

This is the link to my site’s listing on SpyFu. Notice the webpage’s tab header is my URL. Towards the bottom of the page, there are two boxes with information. One is for Organic Keywords, obviously gleaned from my posts. The other box provides a list of Top Organic Competitors. A bar next to each of my competitors measures the overlap. Today, my highest competitor site is the Official Website of Paul Michael Glaser. No surprise that David Soul would be second.

In 1987, I worked on the feature film, The Running Man as an assistant to actor Yaphet Kotto. Paul was the film’s director (he was called in to take over the project as director a few weeks into production). I remember the moment he arrived on location. We were at California Steel Industries in Fontana, Calif. on a hot and dusty day. More chaos than usual. The movie is set in the year 2019, only 10 years from now.

So anyway, that is a coincidence. But why else would my site overlap so high with Paul’s? The movie is based on the Stephen King novel (written under his pseudonym Richard Bachman).

In 1997, I worked for Headland Digital Media, a division of Penguin Putnam (Pearson, PLC) in Novato, Calif. Our project team created online communities surrounding major book launches, including Tom Clancy’s Politika and… Stephen King’s Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. Here is a press release announcing the site we built.

In 2007, I updated my LinkedIn profile. I know this because of a recommendation date. This is one of the few (I think) places where I list my full resume details. It reads:

Content Strategist Consultant, Headland Digital Media, Pearson PLC: Developed and launched effective and innovative online marketing Web sites to rollout and promote new books by authors Tom Clancy and Stephen King, increasing site stickiness with the Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass trivia game, exclusive screensaver, and sweepstakes, and the Politika exclusive online game that allowed readers to enter Clancy’s world and encouraged repeat site visits with online prizes.

In 2017, I will check back with SpyFu.

Meanwhile, I will watch the 1977, Season 2, Episode 13 of “Starsky and Hutch” for some clues.

…is a good policy most of the time, especially if you’re under deposition or something. One of these responses will suffice to answer nearly every question asked: Yes, No, Possibly, I’m not sure, I have no idea, That question is going to take some explaining!

Still, I’m going to give you my explanation about why I blog. Because I keep reading photo-related blogs and wondering: Who is their audience? Why do their posts receive a lot of (or no) comments? Is the blog getting them work, selling their services or bringing them licensing deals? Or is blogging just an ego-gratifying WOT (waste of time)?

Here is my reason for blogging. I started blogging because I wanted to learn how so that I would be able to help clients with their own blogs. I also liked the editing interface with the ability to easily and quickly update my blog (in my case, my website). I used to hard code and still do on occasion. It’s not that much fun anymore to work with MySQL, CSS, and PHP! A blog is a communication tool and you can talk to yourself if you like or don’t have any readers. But it’s really a marketing tool and that is why I want to understand blogging. When I switched a few months ago to WordPress’s ProPhoto platform, I realized there is a lot more to a custom blog than the free Blogger account I started with.

I also look at blogs of my competitors: other photography and publishing consultants. Some only have brochure sites, some with a blog section. Most only post press releases about various photographer clients, industry happenings or information on photo contests. A few have a “voice” and provide tips with hints to hire a consultant for more secrets, as I try to do here. Admittedly, my blog is a mixed bag and has some structure. I like to change it up.

Here is what I’m getting at today: If you are a photographer and you are blogging, there are plenty of questions to ask yourself (such as those above). If you are spending too much time blogging and seeing too little return on your time investment, then you would do well to devise a real plan. There are specific methods to driving traffic to your blog and I’m always working on cracking that code.

I’m fortunate to have many great clients who have never even read my blog. LOL. Which is sort of an answer to the Q: Who is my audience? I think it’s (a) people I mention and link to here in my posts and who receive Google Alerts with their name, and (b) my loyal followers such as Hoiyin Ip, who attended one of my lectures. He wrote recently:

Hi Jain, I won’t say I am busy, particularly not in front of people like you who have obvious achievement. I spend my time taking mini steps here and there with the hope of achieving some success. Thanks for your encouragement and compliment to my blog! I actually like to blog more, at least as a writing practice. But who cares? My voice has no volume, unlike yours. You obviously put your heart on your blog. I love your latest message: one photo, one caption, one pitch, one blog post. Heartfelt!

Wow! Thanks, Hoiyin. I’d say such a nice note deserves explanation (and there is that ego gratification component). Please jump over to visit Hoyin’s blog for a moment. This is how it works!

Please be sure that you understand the full implications of Facebook’s Terms of Use (ToU) when you post images on their site.

This is a separate issue from the outrage over Facebook’s change to their ToU policy which indicated they “owned” your profile. On pressure, they went back to their previous ToU. However, that policy remains unacceptable to many picture professionals. Even if you “retain full ownership” in the content you post, you still give them rights to perpetually copy, display, excerpt, distribute, etc. your work as they see fit!

Facebook’s Terms of Use as it stands today (emphasis mine):

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Jim M. Goldstein, a San Francisco-based photographer, has become the voice of reason on this issue. I chatted with him the other day and encourage everyone to read his blog posts and watch his full comments in his interview (video) with KPIX. Here is an excerpt:

“Facebook’s “not nearly as horribly shitty as the new one” ToU is still exceptionally unfriendly to photographers and other creatives. It still over reaches (just slightly less now) and I can’t help but think reflects a very distorted internal culture driven more by corporate lawyers and less by community managers. While the actions taken to revert the ToU stem a more immediate PR nightmare and exodus of users, photographers should NOT be under the impression that everything is now fine with Facebook. Facebook’s assumption of rights to the work submitted by copyright holders or 3rd parties posting digital assets (photos, videos, music, etc) that they just happen to like, but don’t own needs to be fixed and fast.”

I had a vision that somewhere inside the new stimulus spending would be a small mountain of assistance within The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for nature photographers, especially after meeting so many of you at the NANPA conference in Albuquerque last week. I contacted Victoria Hutter at The National Endowment for the Arts to ask about how they plan to allocate the new money they are receiving. I explained that many photographers are in dire need of financial help in order to continue with important projects documenting nature, conservation, animal behavior, travel, culture, climate change and other relevant cause topics and programs.

I went on to say that many publications and organizations previously assigning and/or acquiring photography have either folded or suffered severe setbacks, leaving photographers to abandon projects because they cannot afford to continue without the backing of traditional outlets for their work. I stressed how we need to quickly find alternate resourcing. Will the NEA help us?

Here is Ms. Hutter’s response:

Dear Jain: Thank you for your thoughtful note. Unfortunately, the NEA does not award individual grants, except through literature fellowships, since we were barred from Congress by doing so in 1997. So I’m afraid we won’t be able to assist your colleagues. In addition, if you look through our web site, you’ll note that 40% of all grant making funds goes to state arts agencies, plus we serve such a wide range of organizations that focusing on one group, such as nature photographers isn’t practical.

But I wish you all the best in your efforts.

After thanking her, she added: States and locals are definitely your better contacts for this. In case it’s helpful, here’s a list of state arts agencies: www.arts.gov.

Onward.

(Related, but twice removed: Chief Official White House photographer Pete Souza is on the job. A link to a photo gallery tracing the path of the ARRA is here, but I couldn’t get it to launch. Maybe the story hasn’t started just yet. )

Ah, semantics. Who cares? When it comes to talking about photography, it matters to me. Last week I went to Albuquerque to speak on editorial and educational photo licensing trends and terms. I also reviewed the portfolios of some twenty photographers at the North American Nature Photography Association’s (NANPA) Annual Summit.

In many conversations I heard phrases such as, “I’m not sure how or where to sell my work,” or “Who do you think will buy my photos?”

What I teach is what I learned when I started in this business, circa 1988. We don’t sell and clients don’t buy; we license and they license the rights to use our creations. Even if your work is in the form of a product (such as prints or DVDs with per unit pricing), inherent in that product pricing is an intellectual property value. Like any property, the value calculations have fixed and variable components. Whatever the transaction is all about, using the word license in our dealings helps this business become less like commodity trading and more like talent acquiring.

I received this note from Kelly Sonora today:

Hi Jain, We just posted an article, “100 Useful Tips and Tools to Research the Deep Web“. I thought I’d bring it to your attention in case you think your readers would find it interesting.

Thanks, Kelly. This is a great resource. Photo people will find this post on the Read Write Web useful, too. It describes and provides links to some of the Deep Web visual resources available.

Yesterday’s Magnum Blog post gives advice to those starting out in photography from several members. Many provide the same basic suggestions but I think what Mikhael Subotzky had to say works for those aspiring to be a Magnum-type shooter:

Q: What advice would you give young photographers?

A: Stick to one project for a long time. And keep working on it through many stages of learning, even if it might feel finished. It’s the only way to break through what I think are some vital lessons that need to be learned about story-telling and how to combine images.

What do you think is a long time? At what point do you quit a project if it isn’t panning out or something better comes along? Should you have more than one project going at a time in order to create portfolio diversity?

Whatever your book is about, remember the idea has to be sold three times:

1. To the publisher or investor who will finance and produce your book,
2. To bookstores and fulfillment houses that will keep it in inventory,
3. To someone who will buy the book.

Proposals must illustrate exactly how you will communicate to the potential customer. If you have a concept that readers will buy, then the booksellers are more likely to pick it up from the publisher.

This endless loop can become a head scratcher, but there is a way to get it right. Create your proposal as a PowerPoint presentation for your customers. As you move through the slides, are the readers pulling out their wallets before you finish? If so, then the acquiring editor and the bookseller in the same audience will take notice and follow suit.

You will still need to have many other proposal elements developed in order to make the first sale. But if the main impact of your proposal proves you can make the last sale, you significantly increase your chances of landing a great publishing deal.

A while back, I mentioned The Deep Web, and how most all photo researchers know how to use it when it comes to finding images. Several people asked me what that is all about so I thought I’d explain a little more.

The Deep Web has also been called the Invisible Web, Deepnet or the Hidden Web. It is not the commonly seen Web that is driven (indexed/crawled) by search engines. According to some reports, the Deep Web is estimated to be several orders of magnitude larger than its counterpart, known as the surface Web.

What all this means is that the Deep Web provides a way to find databases on the Internet. Researchers can access any topic, such as photography as a broad category and then on to wildlife photography as more specific and so on as they drill down to find databases dedicated to imagery of their current research subject.

Since it is invisible, you will have to do some sleuthing to find it . Give it a try sometime. And thanks for asking!

Write (photograph) what you know about is good advice but you may know more about something than you first realize. When it comes to subject matter, I like to ask photographers what they feel gives them “authority” to publish on their proposed topic. I’m interested to know about your significant credentials, time spent on the body of work and influential people attached to the project. Equally important to me is your curiosity, passion and intimate connection to the subject. I want to make sure we can convince publishers that you are the very best person to take up this topic.

Case in point: A photographer who is also a parent is certainly qualified to do a photo project about children. Regardless of your parental role, you have a basic physiological component which automatically connects you to your offspring. This causes you to become an authority on children on some level. The key is to take that authority and kick it into a project idea that is so strong it can carry your project beyond just your amazing shooting style with young people.

To create a successful photo book, all of the proposal elements (message, text, design, photographs, visual style, production values, marketing hook, endorsements, etc.) must be perceived as having the potential to touch a common nerve with the intended audience. Defining your audience completes the strength of your proposal.

What if you aren’t a parent but have built your career around taking pictures of children? One of my earlier posts with an anecdote about my grandfather I titled, “Chase your DNA.” That is a narrative theme any photographer with an interest in family photography could run the distance with. Equally, a publisher can see the potential to expand the concept into many directions for a comprehensive book: history of the family portrait, ancestry mixes, family trees with a few broken limbs, skeletons in the closet, then and now comparisons of family properties, similarities in the facial features between old generations and newer ones, and so on.

Coming soon: The proposal as a communication tool.

The bulk of my experience is producing and editing documentary books but I have also worked on plenty of single subject titles (i.e., cookbooks, gardens, tiles, wedding design, cars). In either case, the proposal’s topic must initially be perceived as having the potential to connect with an identifiable audience beyond people with an interest in your fantastic photography.

Here is an example. Your proposal is to photograph behind-the-scenes of the next Boston Marathon; from runners chomping down big carb dinners to a cancer patient undergoing chemo treatment the night before. This is a lukewarm idea, so what will make your proposal stronger?

The right combination of the three elements I mentioned yesterday. First, the linking of the concept via the proposed title and subtitle to topics of immense interest: aging and health. Then, to give your proposal additional legs, the first visual must subliminally suggest that hopes and dreams do come true.

Suddenly with these simple improvements of the idea, the proposed book is not just for people who actually run marathons or live in Boston. It has opened up to anyone with a desire to overcome a handicap, to find inspiration to change, to win, to find inner strength and conquer the impossible.

On deck: Do people ever ask for your advice about your proposed topic?

My next few posts will be dedicated to addressing what I believe is important information about photo book publishing, my professional passion. I am now channeling my frustration over what I felt was thin advice in PDN’s September Book Issue into mini help sessions. Writing proposals is a darling topic of interest and a fine place to start.

Is it a Book?

I have read hundreds of book proposals. When I was an editor at Harper Collins, we received dozens of proposals every week. The vast majority were eliminated for the sole reason they were not books. In other words, the concepts were quickly identified as feature articles, public space exhibitions, photographs of a local event only of interest to that community, conceptual images suitable for calendars or greeting cards, grand schemes beyond financial reality, tabloid fodder or egoist attempts from the photographer you barely broke even on last season who now feels a showcase of their outtakes is in high demand.

To become a photo book, your proposal must have a clear premise and a driving force bigger than the initial concept. This must be expressed right away and here is how to do it effectively.

The book’s proposed title must easily translate into a category. The determination of category is critical to booksellers; they are the ones who decide where to place your book in the store. If you aren’t sure where your book belongs, neither will those who face these decisions daily.

The logline (subtitle or short description) is where to reveal the book’s driving force. Remember the title and logline presented are proposed. As presented they may never see the light of day. Still, the more expert help you seek in getting this part right, the better your chances. Title elements should stand out so sometimes creating a professional logo or branding element is helpful. Also, be aware that subtitles are often omitted from lists and bookseller order forms, but for proposal purposes, use a subtitle to strengthen your idea. Proposals rarely look anything like the finished product but we have to imagine that they could.

Consider the latest book from A Day in the Life veteran author/publisher David Cohen: What Matters: The world’s preeminent photojournalists and thinkers depict essential issues of our time. The main title is strong. The subtitle links the title’s intrigue and **pow** announces who will be the book’s receptive audience. If your proposal only consisted of a two part title (and you aren’t David), would an influential person ask to hear and see more?

And then…the first photograph in the proposal must be brilliantly tied to the title and logline. Even though the entire book could, and oftentimes does, morph into something else, in my opinion it is these three elements (title, subtitle, first photograph) along with their independent and collectively unique energy that determines if your proposal will be considered or not.

Coming up: How turn your topic into a great photo book proposal.

1. The most successful photographers don’t turn over their entire take to the client.
2. They also don’t publish their best frames until years later.
3. SEO is not a new corporate title acronym; it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
4. There is something called the Deep Web and most photo researches use it to find images.
5. I accept credit cards, checks or EFTs.
6. NPOs can and do absolutely pay for photography.
7. On average, 20 percent of your images will bring you 80 percent of your income.
8. The gas tank icon with a hose on the left or right does NOT always tell you which side your car’s tank is on. Darn it!