It’s been a long year full of change and distractions. That’s why the new Sad Bird curated book has been taking so long. I would be lying if I said I didn’t forget about it, but honestly, I really put this book on the furthest back burner, when I should have been working on it passively without intruding on my own art and general work.
So in the new year, I am committing to working on more bound pieces. Since Sad Bird is still young and doesn’t really have funding of any kind aside from my own pocket money, there’s still a lot of limitations as to what I can do with it. This means most of the projects I’ll be taking on will be fairly conventional photo books where I can only really play with design, sequence and typography. This isn’t all bad! I’m sure all of you interested in art books have a few favorite books that are within the realm of conventional art books without much play in the actual object, and are conservative in delivery, the kind of photo books we expect.
With all of that inconsideration, I’ve had to make some adjustments to what this new curated book will be. Originally, there were going to be multiple writers involved in this book. Now, I’m going to only include one writer for an introduction and let the images work through each other and on their own. It’s a pretty big change, but I don’t want to abandon that original idea of having a written response to each image in the book, so, perhaps, I’ll introduce that idea on a later day.
As I’m writing this, the sequence for the new book is nearly done. I’m taking advantage of my last week before my classes resume to get as much work done for this book as I can without over-exerting myself. Before any news on cover design, release date, etc. will come, I will be sending emails to all who submitted to this book if they will be included or not, and even if they weren’t, will still receive a link for an advance order prior to the full release.
While working on this new book, I have begun to consider where and how I want to approach Sad Bird going forward. The past three books have all been free submission, very open-ended works. However, with the direction I plan on taking Sad Bird, including registering it as an official business sometime in the near future, I will need to begin charging submission fees to assist in the production of the book — which will also allow a discounted order on the final piece, even if the submitting artist was not included. Doing paid submissions is common in the art book world, but often times I see (seemingly) needlessly expensive submission rates, often making m e question what it’s actually paying for. Now that I have three curated books under my belt, I have a rough idea as to what my current reach is to be able to gauge what would be a reasonable price to charge for submissions to be able to make an edition of the book. Yes, an actual edition, rather than a print-on-demand. An edition will allow for not only more affordable books, but also retaining value long-term (so long as you take care of it!). The downside to the convenience of print-on-demand like I’ve been doing is the price of each book is quite high for what it is — while good quality, it’s still a bit much. The next book is going to be a proper hard-cover book, rather than a magazine style piece, so it will be more expensive by nature. It’s important to note that whenever I price the print-on-demand books that I’ve been putting out, I price them at production-value, meaning I make no profit off of these books and the price you pay has zero mark-up (so, Blurb takes some profit in that, but not Sad Bird or myself). This has helped me understand not only the kind of market I have, but also just understanding the financial side of book making and selling.
I hope that by beginning to charge for submissions going forward will not deter many people from submitting. Of course, not everyone can afford even a $30 submission fee, for example, which brings to mind an idea for a student discount or similar situations that allow for more people to submit, but also still allow the book to be put together in a financially feasible manner. It’s often said that there’s little money in photo books, and that’s an unfortunate reality currently. However, the trajectory of the photography community, in fine art, commercial, documentary and beyond, photo books have become very popular and many smaller publishers have begun to sell out their books — and that’s darn hard to do!
I want Sad Bird to be an art book publisher in the ranks, rather than just a vanity project. While I’m young and Sad Bird is young, with some of my goals this year and beyond being to connect with artists more and to begin collecting more books from smaller publishers and artists, I hope to build Sad Bird into something more.
If you somehow managed to get through this rambling update on Sad Bird, thank you for taking the time to do so. I’ll be posting updates about the new Sad Bird book on the social media pages on Instagram and Twitter as things update. If you were an artist who submitted to the single-image narrative call for entries, please keep an eye on your email to see if your image may be included in the final piece.
Here’s to a new year full of new art.