RF BOOK-Project

R

Rich Silfver

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The more I learn about this the more feasible this project is !

I will use this thread for ideas/suggestiona and general questions/request for help.

The idea is still: NO MONEY DOWN for participants.

To get things going I've selected www.lulu.com as the prime candidate for printing the book (I've had a great email discussion with a person who has published three photo books through them and he really liked their photo reproduction capabilities (deep rich black, etc).

Binding
They offer perfect (glued back) or spiral binding. I'd opt for glued back. Other thoughts?


B&W or Colour
This is a big one. Should this be a b&w only book - or a colour book? My vote is to print in colour - that way both 'real' colour images could print as well as b&w images (especially nice for people who 'tone' their b&w images and want to keep the tone).

Size
6"x9" or 8.5"x11"
No-brainer to me. Let's go for the bigger size baby.

(More about these options here: lulu info )

Pages
My initial thought was '25 photographers and 2 photos each'.
Photos always printed on the right-hand page with 'blurbs from the photographer on the left (what camera, lens, film, a story about the photo, etc).
That and some foreword, title page, index, etc would bring us to about 60-65 pages which seems like a good size.

Price and Money
Assuming a 65-page book (swag) the base price would be about $20-25 dollars (for a colour book). If we would go down the road of a b&w book we'd be looking at a rough base-price of about $8-10. Quite a difference. (Note: this is the price that the book would be sold at).

Any royalty that we as publishers 'make' I have no idea what we would do with (all the 50 cents ;) ).

My idea is to: Open up the Lulu account with a generic useraccount id and share that account with EVERY photographer that is in the book. That way everyone can look at sales statistics, etc. The royalty is paid to a Paypal account. We could use the same approach there and SHOULD there be any money accumulating in it we either split it up (2 cents for you...2 for you...) or buy something of ebay for it and randomly award one of the particpating photographers.

So..key is that it doesn't seem very hard at all.

Apart from any feedback on the information/'decisions' above I'll need the following from you:

1) Who wants to participate?
Please reply with "I'm in' in this thread and I'll add you to the list. Does a cap at 25 photographers sound good? (Then again maybe only 5-6 wants to contribute :) ).

2) Title?
What should it be called?
- 'Through the rangefinder', a collection of photos from all over the world by people using and loving RF cameras.

- A tribute to RF photography. a collection....etc

- RFF Members photography book Vol I,

Etc? Etc? We need some ideas!!

3) Photo theme
Is RF-photography enough of a theme or do we want a theme throughout the book; 'people', 'saturday mornings' ( ;) ), etc, etc?

4) Pick photos. If you are in start picking out your two absolute favorite photos and think about what you want to say about them. Maybe you haven't taken them yet...so grab that camera and head out!! :)

5) Front and back covers
Who is crafty with photoshop here and would be willing to invest some time to piece together a front and back cover? They can do it for us but it's 170 bucks and the idea here is reall NO-ENTRY-FEE. It's just for fun!

That's about it....for now....

Let's aim for a mid-October submission date to the distributor :)

Get those cameras clicking!! :D
 
Like I said before earlier I am more than eager to contribute to this project. :) I suggest that we go for a color book for versatility and ease in photo selection. I would suggest perfect binding for durability. As for royalty, we could put them in a central RF funds for printing T-shirts and other collectibles for the members. As for the title, how about 'Rangefinder Forum Photography: First Harvest'? Or something in that vein. I would like to suggest that we purchase an ISBN account so that there is a possibility of wider distribution and I am willing to sponsor the fund. I nominate Richard to be the co-ordinator of this project. :)
 
Joe, Peter, Gene, Rover - happy to have you onboard. That makes five of us so far :) 20% of the people we need!!

(People if you replied to the old thread I'll still need for you to repeat it in this one that you are on-board as I'm gonna use this as the 'official' sign-up sheet).

I'll be happy to co-ordinate the effort. We will need to do some work all of us though - especially on things like #5 above which will require someone with good PS skills and sense for layout (Hey Todd! :) ).

I'll be setting up a Lulu account, email account, etc today and once we have everyone onboard I'll be distributing those account id's as well as password for any of us to go on there and look at statistics, etc.

Title: I like Rangefinder Forum Photography: First Harvest. The 'problem' is that this is not an official off-shoot off the RFF so I dont want to use Jorge's invention/name. Maybe generalize it to: "Rangefinder Photography: First Harvest"?

*Side note: I like Peter's idea about an ISBN number and selling it through Amazon - I already have two people who wants to buy the book as they are RFF-lurkers (non camera people) and like the photos here. :)
 
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I second the sugestion of the title 'Rangefinder Photography: First Harvest'. Any other suggestions? Who is going to write the foreword?
 
How about you Peter? :)

The different pieces needs to be delegated to people - but only if they WANT to do it. "Just" contributing with photos is ABSOLUTELY ok. You are however responsible for putting some text together for each photo.
What I'm planning to do is to post a 'sample' of what such text can look like to help trigger some thoughts.

Here's a list of tasks that I need owners for:

1) Front- and Back cover design.
This is a biggie and whoever want to take it on has my deepest thanks!!

2) Foreword

3) Index generation
Boring but necessary. Once all the photos are in a PDF/Word template an index needs to be generate for the back of the book.

4) Generarting the PDF/Word file with the 50 photos and text pages (making sure they are lined up, text is centered, pages are numbered, etc, etc).
I can do this unless someone out there is an expert at this (I'm not :) ).

That's honestly it - it's really not that hard and we should have it all ready to go in four weeks I think! :)
 
Richard, count me in.
Now for your questions:
2) Title:
I like the already proposed one: 'Rangefinder Forum Photography: First Harvest'

3) Theme:
Don't think a "theme" is necessary. On the contrary, I think a variety of themes and approaches would be nice.

4) Pick photos:
This one is difficult :)
I don't have that many worth showing, and I guess I'll need some editing help ;)
I'll upload some in my gallery, and that's a promise!

5) Front and back covers:
I'll have to let that one pass - my PS skills are next to none.

Again, a big thanks for being the driving force behind this project. It would be really nice to have something tangible as a memento of the wonderful gang on the RFF.

Denis
 
I will do the foreword of the book. Any others have a word about the ISBN? It seems that LuLu have 2 different ISBN packages and which one do you guys think would be better? I can sponsor the more economic package but the deluxe version would be a bit too much for me. :)
 
Things I could help with:

- Layout -- I've written a couple books and am fairly handy with PageMaker, or better yet, LaTeX, both of which produce excellent PDF. Avoid Word for this especially with photographs.

- Writing -- I've done a lot of writing and could help contribute to a Foreword.

I think the writing of the Foreword should be a collaboration -- maybe one lead writer who can post drafts on the Net for everyone to read and comment on until we agree collectively that we've got it right.

We could perhaps do the same with the PDF format for the book to make sure everyone is happy with the layout and look.

One thing I'm NOT good at is cover art and design but I could certainly envision a nice collection of RF's on the cover. And maybe a collection of RF's taken from the back, on the back cover. Just a passing thought from a non-designer.

It might make sense, for the back pages of the book, to include a short single-paragraph bio for each photographer and an email address (if you don't mind putting one in public)

I'll be available to help out in two weeks. I'm just finishing a writing assignment for a Canadian magazine.

Gene
 
Hey ! If it's not late consider me on board as well !!! sorry, I was in the gallery... :D

Will read the posts so far but not sure if I'll be able to post 'til tomorrow. I'm sure the new posts will make a great read ! ;)

Oscar

PS: I think Peter came out with a nice title on the previous thread: RFF Photography: First Harvest.
PPS: Oh Taffer, first read, then write :p
 
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RF Book Project Update

RF Book Project Update

Update:

Update:

1) Yahoo email account rfbookproject@yahoo.com created

2) LuLu account RF Book Project created with link to the Yahoo account.

Participants will be given the passwords to both Yahoo as well as LuLu accounts once we close the sign-up.
 
Thanks for all your work on this Richard.

We should also give some thought to image dimensions and optimal image size. Do we want the widths of landscape images and the lengths of portrait images to be uniform? If so, what dimensions. How much white space do we want to leave on the image pages?

Because this is for printing rather than web viewing, images should probably be between 250-300 dpi resolution rather than the web's 72 dpi. We'll have some hefty file transfers on our hands :)

Gene
 
Sorry to be a pain in the ass but one restriction on signing up for this project:

Your member account MUST have been created BEFORE September 14, 2004.

The reason for this is that you will be given access to email and lulu account and see transaction data, etc and I also want this to be for existing members and not just something that you would create an account here for to be part of. Sorry.


In:
Richard - you are IN
Joe (Back Alley) - you are IN
Peter - you are IN
Rover - you are IN
Gene - you are IN
Denis - you are IN
Frank - you are IN
Jos (Taffer) - you are IN

That's 8 out of 25 so far.

(I also have tentative spots reserved for Biber, Todd, modsoul (max), Laika, RML(?), michael, chenick (Nick) - as they replied to the old thread with interest to join - which is another 8 people).
 
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Seems it's going fast !!! Btw,

- I also vote for glued back
- If possible, colour, but as you said it's quite a difference in the final sale price (less potential buyers?)
- I vote also for no themes, just rf-photography.
- As for the front cover, how 'bout some PS setup using the base of that RF T-shirt from some time ago ?

And... I'm gonna sleep now, impatient to read the new posts tomorrow though ;)

and thanks, thanks and thanks Richard for driving the bus with this, you da man !!
 
I love Gene's ideas, particularly the front and back photos idea :)
And, as he said, perhaps the foreword could be a group effort?
While I'm here (and before I go to sleep), I'd like to ask a favor from everyone: pick two from my gallery for this project (new stuff just uploaded) :)
Just leave an appropriate comment under the one(s) that you like.

Denis
 
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