RF BOOK-Project

mourges said:
Thanks Rover - I must have missed the colour comments!

I like wides too. I've got 10 rolls to process this weekend of the Leica and bessa 35/1.7 and 15/4.5 combinations. We shall see what comes from that!
Click to expand...

mourges, if you read this please contact me asap at aperture (at) gmail.com

If you fail to get back to me by end-Sunday Sept 26 I will have to give your spot to the next back-up.

(Hope the rolls turned out well) 🙂
 
Rich,

do you have any idea about the "retail" pricing of the book?
I already need 10-15 copies. 🙂
 
being somewhat superstitious i have told no one about this project. the friends i asked to vote on my choices are assuming it was for a photo contest and i let them think that.

joe

i'm thinking i will buy the books and use them as gifts.
 
I haven't told anyone either. RML, I don't think we discussed a specific price, but I think early on it was determined that we would not be earning any profit from this project. The cost will be what ever the minimum is, lulu has a charge plus a royalty they will charge. I may be wrong though.
 
Rover you're right - Lulu charges a fee + royalty.

We have two options:
a) Keep it as a non-profit publication and the price of the book will be printing cost + lulu's charge + 0 royalty,

b) Add a couple of dollars to the price and make the book price be: [printing price] + [Lulu's Fixed Fee] + ([our mark-up] *[1.20-something for Lulu's Royalty]).

If we intent this book to be predomniantly for RFF members and friends then option 'a' makes most sense.

If we intend to also slap this onto amazon.com with an ISBN number and see what the interest is from the 'outside world' - and pool some money for God knows what - then option 'b' may be of interest.

With NO royalty the price/book should be about $13.50

With a $3 royalty the price/book should be about $17.25

Don't hold me to those number though as I'm still swagging a bit.
🙂
 
I like option b -- a $2-3 royalty -- so we can pump this into Amazon and perhaps create a little cash pool toward vol 2 so we can afford another Amazon ISBN.

Being able to order from Amazon, and have them gift mail to far-flung friends and family is a bonus.

Gene
 
Though gift mailing from Amazon sounds nice, it's not really a viable option for non-US customers. I'd rather be able to order 10-15 copies and have them send to me so I can distribute them myself (give as present, send them by cheap local mail, etc.).

I like option a, without royalty. When there is a pool of royalty money who will administer it? Who will be responsible for it? How will it be divided amongst the participants in the book project? Will it perhaps go to the maintenance of RFF? All kinds of questions we don't have good or unanimous answers for.
 
I'm too bad with numbers 😛 the easier the better.

But Remy, I've used Amazon to purchase and send gifts all around, a good thing is you can use the same account on all their sites, so selecting the one near your 'target' helps keeping shipping costs low...

But then, 10-15 international shipments are now what we'd say... cheap.
 
Remy's points are good ones, I wouldn't want to create problems over a little bit of money. That being said, go to lulu.com and read the process. Remy, you will still be able to order copies directly from lulu. I don't know for sure, but the ISBN may make the book available to book sellers internationally, not just in the US. Also, the ISBN only cost $35 or so, towards which I am more than willing to contribute. That may be the only cost for us to do this project, which still is excellent.

Of course, if the critics skip the pages with my pictures on them, we may be a real hit, and who knows? Maybe we can fund an international RFF get together in Monico or something. 🙂
 
Rover, as I read it the cheaper ISBN doesn't give direct access to the distribution channels, and thus not to Amazon. The more expensive ISBN option places "our" book in the catalogs of the retailers.

It would, of course, be nice if the RFF book really takes off. I'm just a bit afraid that different views over the royalties could become the death knell of our community. It wouldn't be the first time people can't get face to face over financial disagreements.

For now I'd be more than happy to stick with no royalty.
 
"money changes eveything" cyndi lauper

i don't have an answer to this one, not yet anyway.
i fear what a profit may do to us yet i kinda like the idea of telling people, "oh yeah, sure you can order it, off amazon"
(makes me giggle like a little girl)

joe
 
Interesting... I'm more inclined to go for a slightly more expensive option as:

I love the idea of having the book on Amazon 🙂 and available to bookshops.
And a small profit would help pay for the ISBN listing, and go towards future editions.

Maybe a certain percentage could to go to RFF.com, as if it wasn't for RFF then this book wouldn't exist.

Once these costs are covered, I'm easy.

Remember this will be a quality book for which people will be willing to pay!

Just my $0.02 worth, which I hope to recover in royalties 🙂

-Nick
 
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All participating photographers will have access to the Lulu.com account to view transaction history. I have a question out to Lulu if purchases off amazon, etc also will be shown in that history or if it's just direct-lulu-purchases.

If we go the mark-up route the money would be used in the following way - in order;
1) Until everyone contributing to an ISBN number were fully reimbursed,

2) Until every participating photographer were fully reimbursed for the cost of ONE copy of the book,

3) If a decision on a new book is made then money to cover 1 and 2 above would be earmarked for that out of the remaining funds

4) Any remaining funds after that to be frozen (and account statements made available either periodically or upon request).

At this point it may make sense to re-set the royalty 0 dollars.

#1 and #2 are important to me as the purpose here from the beginning was to produce something that was FREE for the parcipating photographer and I want us to include one free copy of the book as part of that definition.
 
Rich, I can live with your ideas. You're right about #1, and I'm very happy with #2. 🙂

I have no problem with #3.

As #4 is still only the glimmer in our eyes, I can live with that one as well.

To cover #1 and #2 we could perhaps set the royalty to $1. The ISBN costs about $35, so only about 35 copies need to sell to reimburse the one(s) who paid for the ISBN in advance.
Royalty needs to be set much higher if we also want to cover for 25 free copies, unless we want to wait til Heck freezes over. 🙂
 
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