How Do You Start A Photo Book Business?

2 – Prepare It

A body of work that fits that idea / dream concept

Let me prepare some work. Be right back. :o)

Got some (important) questions about preparing your images?

Let me answer them using the Q&A @ Blurb and Lulu:

OK so we’ve got our idea, and we’ve selected 20-50 photos we think will suit our book. These are JPG images at around 200DPI which I’ve fine-tuned using PhotoShop Elements.

The next step is to work on the book design…

3 – Design & Print It

Add pictures, use sequencing, transitions, drama and story. Find a service to print your photo book

Firstly, lets find out what our photo book will cost us.

Here’s our choices so far:

— Blurb
— Apple photo books
— ZenFolio
— Lulu

What price do I pay for my book?

The base price for your photo book @ Lulu

The base price for your photo book @ Blurb

If you purchase your own book, you only have to pay the base price (see the book pricing pics above). You can also get volume discounts for 20 or more printed books (@ Blurb). Lulu most likely will offer a similar option. You keep 100% of the markup over the cost of printing the book.

Got to factor in shipping costs too.

Basically there’s a base price for printing your book. You then set a selling price, which will determine the profit you make.

When pricing your book, you’ll want to keep two things in mind: The extra coin you want to make, and how accessible you want your book to be for your audience. It’s a balancing act. Price it too high and you could make a serious profit, but sell fewer copies. Price it too low, and you’ll sell more copies, but with lower overall return. — Blurb

For example, let’s say you printed the softcover 7×7 (18x18cm), so the base price is $14.99.

If you sold this on the Blurb marketplace @ $29.99 you’d make $15.00 every time you sell a book. (And if you sell locally, you could haggle a good volume discount deal. See Blurb’s Volume Orders page to get deals like 15% off when ordering 20-49 books).

Let’s price that out, and use an example of ordering 20 books. (15% of $14.99 is approx $2.24).

That’s $12.75 for each book ordered.

$29.99 – $12.75 = $17.24 profit (minus shipping).

Sounds good. But will it work? (Lets test it and find out).

Got a good idea of the costs?

Ready to move on?

Here’s what the BookSmart book creator looks like. I’d guess the other book creation tools would be much similar.

4 – Promote It

Promote the photo book

If I was going to promote my photo book with the intention of selling x number of books every month this is what I would do:

Other things to consider:

— People are more likely to buy a photo book with pictures of them or their friends inside it (example)
— Are there services that will do a lot of all this ‘prep’ work for you?
— Use your portfolio or photos that have been used in exhibitions or shows
— Use this service to bookmark your blog post, submit to social sites and increase your visibility
— Do one photo book first as a ‘test run’ to establish demand and pricing
— Blurb Success Stories
— More to come…

Because this page has already had a few revisions…

I’m going to prepare images & design for my Long Lost Photos From South Thailand book idea. I just want to get started.

a) I will use Blurb
b) I’ll get it printed and sent to me
c) I’ll document most of the process and put it here

And then we’ll talk more about creating a business around photo books.

Savvy?

:o)

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