The Photobook is Dead Longlive the Photobook...

What next for the photo book, those eye candy tomes we all love to flick through on the proverbial coffee table?The natural progression seems to point to digital if everything else is taken into consideration, comics, magazines and books have all seen a move to digital formats although not quite in the mainstream way that their paper counterparts have enjoyed so far but I'm betting that in the next five years we'll see a massive increase in the way digital  platforms provide the means to view traditional published media.
I grew up reading comics and I have to admit I'm reluctant to give in to an entirely digital model, the same for Photobooks, I love being able to pick up a decent sized coffee table book packed with photos to paw over and the thought of flipping pages on a digital tablet leaves me slightly cold.

Currently the way of the electronic paperback, Kindle, Smashwords and other ebook publishing formats have helped break down the restrictive barriers for indie authors and amateurs to realise their own book. However the route for photobooks has been somewhat slower because in order to fully maximize formats like the ipad  a small degree of Html coding is required in order to template the book before you put it out there which I think is restricting a large degree of the audience. Making money from traditional glamorous paper photo books however or using Blurb.com as a platform to make money is extremely difficult and the larger the book, the larger the retail and production cost, some of the higher paginated photo books on Blurb.com are priced at over $100 per book, some even higher, a trip to Amazon underlines the stark reality of pricing when you can buy books by professional photographers such as David Notons Photography Essentials waiting for the light which is 192 pages (24 X 26 cm) of full colour photographs and advice for around £16.

So where does that leave Photobook pricing for your digital project for an i-pad version? since you've effectively removed the cost for print and manufacture which is where the majority of where companise like Blurb.com costs are tied up you can price the book at a much lower retail price. To remain competitive you have to look at the content and pricing of other book projects, what you offer as value for money is important, remember that with platforms like i-Tunes you're going to come away with 70% of the profit less whatever taxes you have to pay but its a much healthier chunk. A price in the region of $5 would certainly provide a good motivational price incentive to buy and for a digital format its far more realistic than pricing it the same as its paper counterpart, the chances are you have the potential to make more money taking a 70% i-Tunes royalty than you do with a traditional print model royalty so you shouldn't look at a price of $5 as de-valuing your photographic work. With the vast range of Tablets being made available through 2011 and 2012 the formats are emerging to make good revenue from the digital book side, the downside is that the photobook is no longer a physical entity to have in your library or have sitting on your coffee table, instead it lives and breathes inside the digital shell of whatever reading device you're using.

The Photobook is Dead, Longlive the Photobook