Project

Photographer Q&A

Hey folks, welcome to 50photos.com. This is where I plan on talking about the book, and attempting to market from.

Many of you have asked outstanding questions regarding this project. Let me assure you, I do have a plan, and I’m very flexible in how to fulfill it for the benefit of everyone involved. However, at the same time, this plan was hatched at about 2:30am, so it’s not bulletproof yet. In the spirit of the internet, though, I’d love to move as fast as you all are comfortable with. I think we have a great project here, and I would love to use this first attempt as a groundbreaking and successful collaboration.

Goals
My goals are simple. I want to make money for everyone who take such outstanding photographs. You are my heros. I wholeheartedly admire your talents and I want to do something to give back. I want people to appreciate your work as much as I do.

You’ve shown your community spirit by licensing your photos with a Creative Commons license. I respect that. It adds to your credibility and willingness to help others too.

In the end, I believe your photos are worth something. I might be miscalculating the value on this first run, but I still think it’s worthwhile to try it out. There’s nothing to lose.

In the following lines, I’m going to try to answer most of your questions as I can today (November 30, 2007). I will update this Q&A page if this project is successful and we sell out of books because I’d love to do another run using a different theme if it works out.

So, here we go.

Q&A

• Where will these photo books be sold?: I will be promoting them from this website as well as my own personal blog. I will be asking my network to post articles about them as well, bringing in some more publicity. They will be published and sold and shipped by Lulu.com, allowing for international orders.
• How can I (the photographer) control the number of books being sold?: Because of the licensing of your photos you can allow me, by written permission, to produce a limited number of books for profit. Your acceptance via email is enough to both allow the publishing of the book as well as legally limit the production run. Basically, you have full control, and if more are produced without your permission, you have the rights to legally make a claim against the person or company which produces your work for a profit.
• Will I be able to get a copy of this book?: Absolutely. Anyone will be able to order the book. However, we can’t give it away for free to anyone, including the photographers. The license for each photographer is separate. Now, perhaps after the limited-run is sold out, or perhaps in a different agreement with the rest of the photographers, we could do a private run in which all the photographers agree to a non-profit publish of the book.
• What type of formal agreement can be made?: If necessary, I’d be happy to get a formal document together which everyone can sign. In fact, I believe there is a new web service which will help us formalize everything with digital signatures. Writing the agreement will take a little time to get right with 50 contributors. However, if anyone is concerned, I’d be happy to make a formal agreement which we can all sign.
• What is the payment procedure?: I will make payments at the end of each month in which the run has not sold out or until we decide to end the run. If the run sells out before a month, I’ll make payments to photographers as fast as possible. Payments will be made via Paypal.
• Would the photo be published with credit rights?: There’s a few ways we can work this out. To keep emphasis on the photographs, I would personally prefer to add a “credits” page to the end of the book which would number the photos and give appropriate credit there. I was thinking names and urls to the photo on flickr would be appropriate.
• Who retains the rights to my photo: You do. No questions asked. You only give credit to me to publish the number of books we all agree upon (50 in this case). I am not purchasing your photographs from you, nor do I have any expectation of ownership over any of your photos. You will be free to use it on other publishing projects or any way you could consider in the future, even sell it.
• Do you know what the price range will be?: There are 51 photographers (one extra for the cover) all getting $1 each for their photo. Additionally there are printing costs and the commission % Lulu.com takes. For organizing everything, I would like to take an administrative fee as well, if you all agree to that. Therefore, with the limited run (scarcity), the price will be right around $80 for the book. Shipping and handling will be separate. That sounds like a lot of money for your photos, but remember, to everyone else you are professionals, and this is a professional book. I would like to make the pricing transparent to the public, if that’s ok with everyone. Understanding the cost structure and seeing the scarcity of the products help to increase the price. I believe the price is right. But, that’s what this is all about, it’s a market test to see if doing it again is viable.