Jain Lemos » Photography and Publishing

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!

If you haven’t been listening to the radio shows on Inside Digital Photo, now is great time to head over there! It’s all free, and you’ll get the latest news, in-depth interviews, product reviews, live event coverage and tips featuring special guests. Host Scott Sheppard interviewed me for his Oct 4, 2008 program where I give some tips and insights about how to develop and market book projects. The show is about 40 minutes long, and I’m in the second half around 19 minutes if you want to slide ahead.

Today I discovered Vewd, “a documentary photography magazine continuing the tradition of storytelling through a visual medium.”

I sense that founder Matt Blalock is honestly passionate about photoj. Overall, Vewd is well done and provides another decent platform for image story circulation. My only hesitation is the exposure of your ideas without very much return, unless you bang the hell out of your page clicks. From their FAQs (emphasis mine):

Question: Do I get paid?

Answer: Of course! If we choose your work and feature it, we pass on to you a large portion of our advertising income. We wouldn’t be able to have a site without the advertisers and we couldn’t have it without you! Pay isn’t the best, but we like to think it beats giving your work away. We pay you depending on how many people look at your gallery. Our current rate is $2.50/1000 views – we pay via PayPal or a check monthly. There is a minimum balance of $35 for a PayPal payment and $50 for a check.

Is it clear enough that per click payment is calculated via unique views? I hope if you click on Morgan Hagar’s photo here, he will get some cash!

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.