Photo books - best place for maybe 100?

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chriscross

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Chris
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I'm after some help please.

As a favour I shot a dance show in the summer. The dance school would like to be able to sell photo books containing all the images to raise funds for their new dance school. I'm helping do it. I'd say they'd want to retail them about £15-20 so we make a decent markup. Please can you shout up any places that print photo books of varying sizes/prices so I can look at ordering them bulk? Cheers
 
chriscross said:
Thanks pal. Had a walk up to jessops today and they seem to have something - via Cewe photo books so giving that a go for now
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I had a bad experience with CEWE the image were not central and the text looked awful, when I complained they ignored my e mail for weeks before finally saying it must have been the quality of my images

Going to Vista print I had the same photo book printed using the self same images and it was perfect- make from that what you will!

I will never use them again to be honest:mad:

Les
 
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Having tried a few different photobook options, I always recommend Blurb. They do volume discounts, but you're better off waiting until one of their regular discounts - anything up to 40% off. I've self published a book which I sell at my talks and through my website so I bought 30 or so at 40% off which made it affordable. But if you want to sell a book at £15-20 with a decent markup, you'd either need to produce a rather thin photo book or go for a trade book which is on lesser quality paper.
 
If you could rustle up demand for a thousand copies, and supply a press-ready book in pdf form, you could go the conventional press route for far less per copy than print-on-demand presses like Blurb.

Blurb (et al) prices don't allow for much of a markup.
 
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droj said:
If you could rustle up demand for a thousand copies, and supply a press-ready book in pdf form, you could go the conventional press route for far less per copy than print-on-demand presses like Blurb.

Blurb (et al) prices don't allow for much of a markup.
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No chance of that unfortunately. I'd say im looking at 100 max. thanks for your input though.
 
The other alternative if using Blurb is to put it on sale on the Blurb site and forward the link to people to view and order at their leisure. You can then set the price you want, and don’t have to stump up the price of 100 books up front that you’ve no guarantee of selling.
 
I think that you need to relate the page-count to the asking price (this is about perceived value, hence likelihood of purchase). Thus I would cost the wanted page-count at several suppliers, and see what gives. I can vouch for Blurb quality (though it is not true photo printing), but suspect that their pricing might be too high.

Are you experienced at sending to print, to be aware of common pitfalls (prints too light or dark, issues with colour and contrast, etc)?
 
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It certainly seems like most of the players offer an option where you set it up, and then just post a link where people can buy them ad-hoc. I guess the problem with this approach is that you won't get a volume discount.

It may be worth contacting one/several of the suppliers direct and seeing if they'll do a deal for a bulk buy.

From the type of books I've done in the past (hardback A4), none were anywhere near your £15-£20 price though. In fact none of those type were less than £30 per book.

I'd also suggest that collating them is going to be fraught with problems as someone will complain that you don't have "a full size picture of Jocasta when you've got one of Milly...and she's not even as good, and you've got 7 pictures of Tilly and only 5 of Jocasta...." ;)

All that said, I've always been happy with photobox (not tried any of the others) and it looks like they do 30 page (not sure how they're binding that) soft-cover versions from £14.95.

https://www.photobox.co.uk/shop/photo-books#category=small-books
 
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Might be a better profit margins printing calendars with a local printers. Let them put their logo on its and tell them its to raise money locally you might get a nice discount.
 
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