-=Official=- GREAT POTN BOOK planning thread

Claire wrote in post #2209738
I was thinking of something now. When I go to the Gothenburg Book Fair I usually buy a book that is with all the winners and nominees for the Swedish Photojournalism Award. It's a very simple layout with the images being the focus. The fun thing is that they also include a CD with ALL the submissions. Maybe that might be an idea to also include? A CD with low-res versions of all the submissions.

CD - cool! yes BUT again will have to be very simple

EOSAddict wrote in post #2209830
Simon,

Claire,

I was thinking that we should have a 13th section for POTN competition winners.. what do you think?

I don't think it should only include competition winners as some of the best pics I have seen on POTN have never seen the light of a competition

As to design, I'm all for a clean design, but somehow I'd like it not to be boring. If that's possible...

I do not own a lot of photo books - coffee table photo books that is. Instruction books, I have too many. I will have to hit the book store this weekend and poke through a few books of a photo'g work.


I'm not a fan of dictating that EXIF data be included, but that's me. I'd rather have a paragraph about how the photographer got the shot, how s/he saw it, what s/he went through in the thought process.


As to the number of photos, there has been a lot of talk from people about how they'd buy one if their shot was in it. Sales are kind of important. And the photographers are the community of POTN right? Not just the best of us, but all of us.

Of course, we have to cut it off sooner or later - we can't post all pics. And we have to remember about size - 8 pics on a page will mean these shots are about 3.5 inches by 2.1 inches, which is kinda small. But even 6 photos per page isn't too much bigger due to page width, and that would end up with a lot of white space.


As to pithy quotes and funny sigs - I love the idea, there's no doubt about that. I think we can do that cleanly, utilize the white space, bring more people into the book somehow, and definitely show our humor and community.

I just played with some very simple layouts. Given an 8.5x11inch portrait page, 4 photos or 6 photos per page, both yield pics the same size due to the width limitaton. About 3.5 x 2.3. inches. 8 pics per page would be much smaller, so I'd think that 6 pics per page is the limit. And even that's pretty small.


Perhaps I need to keep looking for a Print On Demand house that could do 9x14 landscape or something. But I'm not sure if I'll find it with the other Print On Demand services that Xlibris provides, like I spoke about earlier. And the price would be more for a larger book, so that means less pages, so we'd probably end up at the same point.

It is a problem when we have to consider layout of other's work - we just don't have total freedom of layout. Especially when we approach this as a contest with the idea of places - 1st place gets the largest, 2nd & 3rd get the next size, and so on.

Larger photos means less people get their pic in the book, and that starts to bring down the sense of community.

I Simonius wrote in post #2209643
one thing I would LOVE and also believe it will help sales is if some small percentage of the profit can go to charity (as well as the rest to help POTN costs)

As good idea as that is I don't think that will work with this. Remember this is an international forum and some may support one charity and other will support other charities. So this might also end up costing sale.

POTN IS charity.

Claire wrote in post #2210083
POTN IS charity.

yes but other than that

tommykjensen wrote in post #2210084
yes but other than that

How about me?

have you considered printing the book on its side, so it is flipped up (flipchart/calender style) to read? That would give a landscape format.

If the images where placed so that you can view the top and bottom images from one side (think nintendo DS)

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

That looks like a portrait layout to me.

And I'm no fan of a flip-book like you describe. Why not print it landscape then? It seems odd to me.

Scottes wrote in post #2210341
That looks like a portrait layout to me.

And I'm no fan of a flip-book like you describe. Why not print it landscape then? It seems odd to me.

I think the orientation of the book should be based on the number of entries from each category. i.e. if there is more landscape photos than portraits then use a landscape orientation and vice versa. Also has anyone found a place to get maybe a 10x10 or 11x11 book? Surely that would give us the most flexibility but I am not certain if places do that.

tommykjensen wrote in post #2210081
As good idea as that is I don't think that will work with this. Remember this is an international forum and some may support one charity and other will support other charities. So this might also end up costing sale.

I was thinking of somthing Global like 'save the children'

EOSAddict wrote in post #2209621
Ahh , my apologies. I thought you ment cameras and lenses and stuff. Yes, some good PS stuff would be interesting. But generic techniques rather than CS2 tutorials.

I Simonius wrote in post #2209612
By tech stuff I was thinking photoshop stuff rather than exposure etc, but it is worth considering the idea and playing with it, surely?

If I may chime in here, in the tech section I think it would be nice if we could have lighting tech, panning tech (motorsports for example), maybe setup shots for macro, I don't shoot wildlife - so I don't know how to say what I mean - how that is done and maybe something from the G&N guys. Just my $.02.

Picking up on Scott's earlier post - perhasp we should reduce the image count and focus on fewer, larger images at a size where you can really see them properly. That reduces the number of poeople who feel connected to it byhaving an image in it. Question is would that drastically reduce sales or is having a high quality product that lloks good (regardless of who is in it) a better sales concept!

I hate to say, but I probably would not buy the book if one of my photo was not in it. Sorry!

Y'all know, M Pix is having a 50% sale on their books.

98photo wrote in post #2210726
Y'all know, M Pix is having a 50% sale on their books.

I saw mention of MPIX books, but their page says "Coming Soon."

Also, if they're just getting into this book thing, I don't want to be a beta. Xlibris has been doing this for 4 years at least.