Photo Books Question

Paul Braverman asks: "Why do highly desired photography books remain out of print? There is an obvious demand for Winogrand's Women Are Beautiful and Heath's Dialogue With Solitude. The price for a copy can reach four figures. Why not reissue them? Seems like the estate of those photographers would make some money, collectors would still be able to brag that they have a first edition, and I would be able to buy a new copy at a reasonable price. Everybody wins. What am I missing?"

Mike replies: Many photo books are reprinted, of course, and I'll talk about that in a second. But the underlying problem is the nature of the demand. It's slow and steady. This doesn't fit the business model these days. As I understand it, the tax code was changed in the Reagan years the way inventory was accounted was changed by a 1979 Supreme Court Ruling [see JG's Featured Comment below —Ed.] such that publishers have to pay higher taxes on unsold inventory, which pushed the sales model to an all-at-once "bestseller" mode. An author friend of mine was told that if her book hadn't established good sales within seven months, the publisher would stop promoting it and it would be toast. Contrast this with the classic model, which was that publishers printed a big batch of copies and sold them out of stock for years. One legend in the book industry was that back in the '70s Oxford University Press had brand-new books on the shelves that were more than a hundred and fifty years old, and they could go whole years without selling a single copy. Yet they would stay "in print."

The new model fits books with a bestseller sales curve, but it's unsuited for any book that has low sales but consistent, continuing demand—which happens to describe most photography monographs (a monograph is a book of pictures by a single photographer). I don't generally admit ex-library books to my collection, but I have one book by Henri Cartier-Bresson that is ex-lib because I loved the irony of the "DISCARDED" stamp in the front—it says "No Longer Relevant." The irony is that while that may be true of the information in the pictures—no longer current—but of course it's not true of the photographic artistry of the pictures.

A picture book that sells 25,000 copies right away and then sees demand quickly tail off to nothing fits the way publishers need to do business now, but a book that sells 3,000 copies its first year, 2,000 the second, 1,000 annually for the next five years, and then 500 copies a year for the following twenty years just doesn't work for publishers any more...even though the eventual total sales numbers might be the same.

I might point out that this also better fits certain types of work. A romance novel that's read for entertainment and is part of an ongoing series of books fits a bestseller sales curve quite nicely. The kind of work that suffers is the "magnum opus" kind of thing whereby an expert might work for twenty years to summarize all of her knowledge in a certain field. That type of book should ideally stay in print for many years, to be readily available for the scholar or serious student who needs it. Unfortunately, many photography monographs are closer to the latter type than the former—a photographer might toil for twenty years on a body of work and then want to publish it in one grand coffee-table tome...which should sell to that photographer's fans at a slow but steady rate for many years. That kind of working model no longer fits the prevailing publishing model, unfortunately.

Reprints happen
As I mentioned, many photography books do receive reprints, because of the phenomenon you mention, Paul—the consistent, continuing demand after the book is NLA (no longer available) new puts upward pressure on the price. That often goes on until the pent-up demand justifies another reprint. An example is Walker Evans' American Photographs. First published in 1938, it received a 25th anniversary reprinting in 1962, followed by a paperback version in 1975, another reprinting for the 50th anniversary in 1988, and finally the 75th anniversary reprint (the best reprint as it tries to exactly replicate the original book, only with better paper) in 2012. This version is still available, probably because it is such a staple of Museum in-house bookshops. (Which are excellent places to go look at photobooks, incidentally.)

Reprints vary widely in quality, and you have to be careful. Some reprints are better than the originals, and some are much worse. Although I love books, I'm more interested in the photographs than the books, so I look at content first. I prefer the Pantheon reprint of Brassai's Paris After Dark (or Paris by Night), because the first edition is very expensive, very fragile and often damaged in the first edition because of its spiral binding, and the reproduction in the Pantheon reprint is so outstanding. As an example of the opposite, Eliot Porter's In Wildness is the Preservation of the World is a remarkable book in its first edition—the color printing method used was involved, difficult, beautiful, and no longer even legal because the chemicals need for the process were so toxic. But the 2012 reprint by Ammo is so atrocious that it completely misrepresents Eliot Porter in my opinion and, I would argue, actively damages his reputation. (It's still available but I refuse to link to it.)

Probably the most famous photobook that went a very long time without a reprint was Cartier-Bresson's 1952 The Decisive Moment, which finally received its first-ever reprint by Steidl in 2015 (the reprint is apparently just going out of print now). Although Steidl didn't stint, the reproduction choices have been controversial, and not everyone loves the reprint. It's well worth owning, of course. My problem with it is that although it's H.C.-B.'s most famous book, it's not the best book of his pictures—that honor would go to Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer, first published by New York Graphic Society in 1979 and later reprinted by Bulfinch. That one was available for years and is still plentiful on the used market—check eBay Books or Abebooks.com. (I like Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art, too, although you have to take the dense text with a grain of salt.)

One book you mentioned, Dave Heath's Dialogue With Solitude, is a special case, because the entirety of the original book is reprinted within the pages of the epic retrospective Multitude, Solitude which is a must-have in my opinion. That book is getting expensive but of course everyone reading this blog already bought it on my strenuous recommendations three years ago at the low original price.  :-)

The other book you mentioned, Garry Winogrand's Women Are Beautiful, sold extremely poorly at first issue and was remaindered for years, available for next to nothing. It's a bit pricey now but I suspect the demand for it, although ongoing, is extremely low, probably too low for a reprint to be feasible.

More recent books are reprinted too. Alec Soth's Niagara was just reprinted last month by Mack. If you're a fan of large-format color and want it but don't have it, be sure to snag it while you can.

Conclusion
The upshot is: many photography books are only printed once; many photo books are plentiful, maybe even too plentiful, while they're in print, but then get scarcer and scarcer once the book is discontinued and the supply dries up in the face of ongoing low-level demand; and, many famous old books follow a feast-to-famine-to-feast cycle as they receive periodic reprints and then those reprints, in turn, go out of print. To be a real photo book collector is a fascinating game, but anyone with a personal photobook library, however small or large, can play the game at any level. But no matter what level you play it at, it's always a game.

Mike
(Thanks to Paul)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Darrell Gray: "Disfarmer: The Heber Springs Portraits was a book I always wanted but could not afford—a good used copy was in the hundreds. Then a year or so ago it was offered 'new' at around a hundred bucks. I bought it, and comparing it to a library copy first addition I could not tell the difference. Same ISBN, same publisher, same dust cover, same everything. Did somebody find a box of them sitting in a corner somewhere? By the way, it was $22.50 in 1976."

Kenneth Tanaka: "There can be other factors in play besides those Mike mentioned. For example, many large-run photo books these days are produced in association with shows. Getting the rights clearances and production scheduled to reprint a second edition of such catalogs is rarely as easy as you might think. Works in a catalog are usually owned by various parties who must agree to a second edition. And top printers, such as Steidl, are generally booked years in advance. With respect to money, the only parties to make money from photo books are generally the printers. It’s usually a money-losing or, at best, a break-even marketing or commemorative initiative for everyone else. It’s frankly remarkable when we see a major photo book reprinted independently of another exhibition."

JG: "At the risk of being pedantic, it was not an 'inventory tax' per se that caused publishers to start carrying fewer books in inventory, but a change in the way they accounted for the inventory on their tax returns, which in turn affected their reported profits or losses for the tax year. For an interesting analysis of this—well, it was for me, anyway!—I recommend reading 'How Thor Power Hammered Publishing.'"

Mike replies: Thanks JG. I amended the post in accordance with the information at your link.

J D Ramsey: "After reading this post, I wanted to order the books mentioned. I was particularly intrigued by the Multitude, Solitude book by Dave Heath, who I was unfamiliar with. Sure enough, I found through the link to Amazon, but for $275, too rich for me. I was disappointed that I hadn't bought it earlier. Then I noticed the message in the upper right saying I ordered this book in December 2015! Say what? I immediately walked over to the shelves where my photography books are and there it was with a rather nondescript dark blue binding. Of course I immediately took it off the shelf and started to leaf through it. Thanks Mike for reminding me of this wonderful book and making me aware that I really need to smell the roses and sometimes just sit down with the books I've bought but haven't devoted some quiet time to."

Mike replies: That's the best delivery service I've ever heard of!

Comments

[Jim Lewis]

I think another reason is that when the original photographer is no longer alive, there's no one with the aesthetic authority to oversee the reprint. I've seen reissues that looked dramatically different than their originals (in their contrast, details, and so on, and I would imagine artists' estates object loudly to that sort of thing. If you think, as I do, that the book *is* the artwork, it's no better than having someone remake a Picasso print decades after the original.

[Hélcio J. Tagliolatto]

it says "No Longer Relevant."
I bought a 1959 edition of Sudek's Praha Panoramaticka, almost for free, due to a similar stamp in a Brazilian bookstore.
Sometimes, ignorance can be useful.

[Mark Bridgers]

Would these books ever be made available electronically? With the excellent screens on iPads and other tablets, and essentially zero cost of distribution, it seems a reasonable thing to do. Otherwise so much is just lost to history.

[JG]

Unless one has impeccable taste, as well as an ability to predict the future, speculating with photo books is a fool's game.

Just as with collecting photos, the best strategy is to buy what you love and cross your fingers that they someday appreciate in value.

[HR]

Blurb and other companies print on demand so books can be ordered at any time. I recall sometime back that you wrote an article here about someone's Blurb photo book that you liked a lot and recommended it. You provided a link so people could buy it. I think it was a B&W book. Maybe there have been others you have recommended over the years too. A solution to the problem?

[John Camp]

Then there's the retail end of things. I once spoke to a buyer for Target, who was in charge of book sales (which at one time was given more space than now.)Her only criteria for books was sales *intensity,* because she had to produce X amount of income per square foot of shelf space per year. Slow-but-steady was not an option for her; she essentially stocked nothing but big names and bestsellers, and really not many of those, because the store management didn't care whether she was selling "Story of O" or the "Encyclopedia Britannica," as long as she got to X. So her ideal situation wasn't even to sell a lot of one specific book -- they'd get, say, twenty copies of the new Stephen King, and if they were all gone the first week, that was great, because then they'd move in the next prospective bestseller. No way would they give book space to an art photo book expected to sell three copies over a year.

One of the problems the big book chains had (Borders has failed, Barnes and Noble is hurting) is that part of their business model was to provide some of everything. I can remember when B&N dedicated an entire bookcase to academic literary criticism; I doubt they sold ten books a year out of that case. And retail space is *very* expensive. That was okay when they were the 500-pound gorillas, but then Amazon came along. Amazon does well because it doesn't have any significant amount of retail space -- it has big cheap warehouses and can afford some lower intensity of sales.

I think the real coming model for high-end photography might be downloaded books, intended specifically for high-res monitors and iPads. The books would cost nothing to store, and if you wanted one, you could have it instantly. There might be some color problems, but you could probably provide tuning details with the books -- how to set your Apple monitor for the truest color.

[Bill Tyler]

It seems to me that with "print on demand" services increasing in quality and availability, this might be a good model for photo books. You wouldn't necessarily get quite the same ability that a more traditional printing process has for paper choice, size choice, and quality control, but there would at least be no inventory, and there would be a royalty stream for the photographer.

[Yoshi Carroll]

I highly recommend catching up with Craig Mod about his experiments with the latest ways of publishing art books using Kickstarter, especially his latest, Koya Bound.

Here's the story of the book: https://walkkumano.com

The kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/craigmod/koya-bound-a-book-of-photography-from-japans-kuman

And some fun background: https://craigmod.com/essays/to_make_a_book_walk_on_a_book/

He also has a podcast talking about book making and publishing, and the new ways available to creators: https://craigmod.com/onmargins/

[Gordon Lewis]

Although there are logical explanations for the current state of affairs regarding photographer's monographs, the net effect is that their work is less accessible, particularly to younger photographers who weren't around or aware when the original editions were offered for sale. The resulting scarcity tends to increase the value of whatever older editions are available in print, thereby offering a perverse incentive for market-conscious publishers to wait until they can reap top dollar for new editions. This, while the world is flooded with billions of free but unexceptional and easily replaceable images. Ain't capitalism grand?

[D B]

Any word on the quality of those Mack reruns of Alec Soth's books?

[I haven't seen one yet.... --Mike]

[Ray Hunter]

William Eggleston's book "Democratic Forest" is one that stands out in my memory for having a very unusual product/price life cycle. At one point, the book was beyond "remaindered." I think the book stores would give you five dollars to take a copy out of the store.
Eggleston's reputation, and the interpretation of his career was given new life and the book became very expensive. There are other examples of this, I'm sure. But that is one that has stayed in memory for me.

[Dennis Ng]

Strange theory. May be it is fact on the ground rather than pipe theory in front of computer display. But we thought we do the long tail these days. http://www.longtail.com/about.html or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail#Goodbye_Pareto_principle,_welcome_the_new_distribution

The whole amazon, ebay, ... are for this kind. Wonder what is the difference between photo book vs non-photo old books.

[hugh crawford]

Re: Kickstarter
Yeah, it can really change the economics of publishing. I really ought to write about my recent adventures but not tonight. The only advice I have is whatever you do, don't publish a book that weighs more than 4.4 pounds or two kilos. (I just figured out how to do international shipping at a reasonable cost, but still shipping is by far the biggest expense)

Print on demand is getting better than a lot of what was printed in the 1970s but is nowhere near what can be done in an offset press. A friend of mine printed a very small edition of books at Steidel last year and the cost was probably thousands of dollars a copy, and they were never offered for sale to the public.

[Ade]

Quite cheered to hear that the reprint of The Decisive Moment is going out of print, as it means I may one day be able to offload my unwanted copy at a profit to somebody else who thinks they're desperate to own a 'classic'. I get that, I get why it has been printed the way it has (because it's a repro of the original, not a photo book per se); I just don't enjoy looking at the images this way. (And it's too big.)

Apart from that, I've generally enjoyed the ongoing surprises of those reprints that have appeared in recent years, many courtesy of Steidl. Robert Frank's "The Americans" was a particular highlight, fully justifying the effort that went into making it widely available once more. I'm also much pleased by those classic works that continue to be available at reasonable cost, such as Joel Meyerowitz's Cape Light. And occasionally, I luck out and find something at retail price just before it reaches rarity status; "An English Eye" by James Ravilious and "Dream/Life" by Trent Parke were both acquired in this way, and are two of the books I'm most grateful to own.

The other thing I've learnt is that, as you've noted above, even if one can't make it to a major exhibition it's worth acquiring the catalogue while it's on (especially as most museum shops now have an online presence).

[Rob Campbell]

I will not buy softback books again.

I would not buy virtual ones either; I want a book, not a thing that requires electricity and accessories.

The only book for which I pine these days - but it's far too expensive - is Deborah Turbeville's The Fashion Photographs. Looked at it many times on the monitor and iPad, but how I'd love to be able to sit with it and just savour the magic "in person" as it were.

[Barry Reid]

@D B. I thought the recent reprint of ‘Sleeping By The Mississippi’ was pretty mediocre. The cover, which is like a poor quality photocopy of the first edition, is particularly horrible.

Incidentally, I am in the minority on this but I liked ‘Niagara’ better than its predecessor. The notes at the back give a nice insight to the stories. I just hope the cover on this reprint is nicer.

[Rob de Loe]

I'm really glad I found this post. I had requested Eliot Porter's In Wildness is the Preservation of the World as a birthday present, not realizing that the quality of the Ammo version was so bad. It was the Ammo version I had requested. Now I have to keep an eye out for one of the good ones used.