Roadside Attractions

As a photographer and graphic designer, it makes sense that I'd want to design and publish a book of my photographs.

And I have…sort of. You can see for yourself if you come over to the house and take a look at the one sitting on my coffee table…or visit my Mom and Dad in Anaheim Hills and check out the one on their coffee table. My Dad's is nicer, and a bit different than mine. Those are the only two copies in print, each one painstakingly printed out on my Epson 2200 printer on acid-free paper. It measures 12" x 12", has 96 pages with 81 photographs, all but thirteen are black and white. If nothing else, I'd like to make four more copies, one for each of my children.

Of course, I'd like to print a lot more than that and sell every last one of them. And then print some more and sell those too. Perhaps Oprah might discover it and it would go to the top of the NY Times Bestseller list. Sure. However, the technology and thus the economies of book publishing are changing dramatically. Currently, there are several service providers such as Blurb and Pikto which will print and bind a photography book along the lines of Roadside Attractions for $75 (Blurb) to $260 (Pikto). The quality of the Blurb books are suspect and with Pikto, I'd be limited to 80 pages. Both services would allow me to market the book in their online "bookstore." With Burb for instance, I could designate a $100 selling price. You'd order the book, they'd print it, send you the book and send me the $25 difference between the printing price and selling price. I honestly can't think of more than a handful of people who'd pay that much for such a book, even if the quality was truly outstanding.

I've also obtained quotes from a broker for having the book printed in the Far East. I could get 1,000 copies printed for $12,000 or so. I'm pretty sure that I could sell 300 or 400 of them over the course of a year and break even with a $50 cover price. Then I'd still have 500 copies sitting in my garage along side the 200 or so copies of Wheels Rolling--West that I have now.

Another possibility would be find a local printer who is using the same digital press technology being marketed by the online book printers and having a reasonable number of books printed and bound under my supervision. But that will have to wait until the house gets done.