Art Lovers discussion

Question from Leah: Has anyone tried to publish their own art book or book about some aspect of the arts, and what did you find out?

I think this is a good question. Especially for those of us who write, or at least study art and want to put it into words. How, exactly, does one go about getting that published? Any words of advice from our already established authors? Or even some of you who would have ideas?

I'm thinking that artists might want to take a leaf from the book of poets and political pundits, who regularly used to publish chapbooks and broadsheets showcasing their work.

I keep seeing adult colouring books and things, and in reference sections of bookstores and libraries, books on art history, great masters, and now and then, techniques specific to a genre.

But outside of photography, I rarely see art books made by artists about their own art.

Is it so hard, so little marketable?

Why not?

I live in Yucatan, Mexico and our local bookstore quite regularly stocks monographs of artists. I can buy books on Dali, Cezanne, Degas, Renoir, Picasso and others, so if I am here in a remote area, a small city with a population of 60,000, how is it that your local bookstore can't stock individual artists.

This is a very low readership area. Mexicans read on the average 1.5 books a year versus Americans who read 8-10 books.If anything the availability should be reversed.

But that is not what you are writing about but about how to publish your own book. You might want to check out BLURB website. There are others at well. I recall there was a printing company in Michigan that used to do on request publishing for art students who wanted to put their MFA exhibition work into book form.

There are numerous very small art printers who will also print up books in limited editions. The prices I have seen were less than 1,000. Do a google search for hand made artists books and you will see what I mean.

Geoffrey, that must be wonderful, to have your local bookstores so supportive of the artists.

I live in Canada, and our bookstores do stock books on the arts, especially on the classical and well known artists such as the ones you mention.

The big ones rarely stock books on individual local artists, however, unless that artist happens to be both famous and dead. Smaller, more independant bookstores do often stock local authors, but it is rare that an artist presents a book for people to buy -- which is why I was asking the question about why artists DON'T publish books about their own art.

Are you talking about self-publishing, Leah?

I'm not sure, Ruth -- I'm thinking that self-publishing in the form of chapbooks and broadsheets traditionally and in e-Books today is a time-honoured tradition for poets and those with social or political issues they wished to highlight. However I've almost never seen this kind of thing done with artwork, and I'm curious as to why. Probably it IS self-publishing, and artists do create their own works for sale all the time -- but I've hardly ever seen an artist promoting a chapbook or anything remotely similar to their public unless you count calendars and cookbooks.

One problem with publishing art books is that color illustrations are so damned expensive.

Of course, there are books created by artists as works of art in their own right. https://www.google.com/search?q=artis...

Leah wrote: "Geoffrey, that must be wonderful, to have your local bookstores so supportive of the artists.

I live in Canada, and our bookstores do stock books on the arts, especially on the classical and wel..."

They are not so much supportive of the artists, all of whom are long deceased but trying to round out their display of books to look like a complete bookstore. I don't know whether their sales on art books are good or not, but they have the ones that they think will sell. Klimt, Caravaggio,the Impressionist, most popular of all movements, El Greco and others, including the ones that I aforementioned, are included in the stock. Our bookstore is Dante, a chain here in Mexico, the other big chain being Ghandi. Both rival any of the bookstores you see in the malls. In the city of Merida, our capital city of 1 million inhabitants, there are 5 bookstores, excluding the religious bookstores. That compares unfavorably with US cities of the same size.

There are many Mexican publishers, however, especially of children's books. There is nothing much happening in the literature arena here in Mexico as there simply isn't simply ample reading habits. Parents don't read to their children at night time, and reading for pleasure is not encouraged in the school systems.

However, there is one bookstore in Merida that is the exception. It's affiliated with Conuculta, Mexico's equivalent to the NEA. Its publishing arm is long and it published small monographs of living artists who have reached curatorial approbation. There are about 50 books of these artists, published at government expense. What their sales are, I have no idea. I do see some of these books in the university libraries but I have yet to see any in any friend's library. I have two or three of them, but then again, I am a picky critic.

The fact that your self made book is at your local bookstore doesn't guarantee much success unless you pressure your friends to purchase them and you have a lot of friends. People who publish their own chapbooks or self made books don't have much in the way of sales. I worked for Nexus Press back in 1994 and can attest to the lack of sales. Occasionally you get a blockbuster book like I WANT TO TAKE PICTURE or its sequel by Bill Burke, photo educator at Boston's MUSEUM SCHOOL, but other than that sales may be limited to low hundreds at best.

Others have gone high end and created extremely elaborate hand made art books that in themselves are works of art and these come with huge price tags. The wealthiest collectors look at these as investment and will pay 2-4,000 for a limited edition of 3 to 10 hand made books, but for the usual low design, good luck, you are going to need it. Yes, it's nice to put a book out there, but keep in mind that the returns are usually poor. You might want to check out Printed Matter Bookstore in NYC that specializes in selling these kind of art books. There is a whole slew of such bookstores in the world that cater to this taste and should you self publish contact them about selling your books with them.

BLURB I believe is a print on demand publishing house, much like so many others now dotting the publishing marketplace. Check them out. I believe their printing is digital not photo offset and the prices for the books range from 15 to 200 dollars. It's possible to send notices of your books publishing to curators, gallery owners and museum professionals to enhance your sales. Or get email address lists affiliated with art institutions and send them a copy of the first 5 pages of your artist book with information as to how to buy them.

My new book "Modern Art a Portrait of Mediocrity" is available on Amazon. Perhaps the some of the many Modern Art lovers here might check it out and write a scathing review.

I don't see art books made by artists, either.

Thats very interesting. I am an artist and have always been interested in producing my own book of my art. My fellow artist friend showed me what she called a zine which is basically a pamphlet/booklet that other artists have produced in small quantities to sell through their website not necessarily in a bookshop. produce. I did try to look into it but difficult to find a printer for the right price. I will look at Blurb for myself so thank for the tip and will continue to check out other site. Interesting thread!!

Leah wrote: "Ok, I have a topic -- and it may be one that has already been discussed, but I'm going to play the newbie card and ask anyhow!

Has anyone tried to publish their own art book or book about some asp..."

Amy wrote: As a bookseller I will tell you that it's virtually impossible to publish anything these days unless you do it yourself. It's awful out there. HOWEVER....that's a call to press your own books like they did in the 20's, and bring together artists, writers, printers, advertising artists, etc. to bypass the ridiculousness of the publishing mafia today. It's been done before! If you want to get into it, there's a huge history of self publishing going back to the invention of the printing press.

How about
http://www.amazon.com/Dada-Suicides-S...

But as a reader, I can tell you I won't pick up a self published book. With so much to read available, I need a gatekeeper to weed out the self-indulgent drivel.

I agree with Ruth- I won't read a self-published novel, because I want to read quality books, and you're more likely to get that with a traditionally published book.

When I was in Paris last year, I bought some beautiful cards from the artist who painted the images at the Christmas Fair near the Eiffel Tower. (I know, I know. Lucky me.) Looking her up in case I needed to buy more, I found her cards are not her main thing. She publishes her paintings as books with poems (not sure if she writes the poems or if she teams up). Maybe there is something similar in the US? Anyway, here's the link if you want to see what some French people are up to http://www.editionsapeiron.com/

I tried submitting my book to publishers . It was a lot of work and proved a waste of time because they didn’t agree with what I wrote or didn’t open the package. Apparently, the title of my book... Modern Art a Portrait of Mediocrity... was enough to turn them off. I put my book away for years until internet publishing became available.
So I published on Amazon in Kindle format and got very good results. Its free and easy and you can write and publish what you want. My title is self-explanatory, so if I want to publish in hard cover I won’t waste time again and I’ll tell publishers about my Amazon success and advise them to read my book there.
I believe hard cover is in demise and many good books are never read because of that.

I have published a book with my own art-work and another one that is about art. Here's my story on both:

1) I wrote an art column for a local San Francisco paper, Mission Arts Monthly, for two years. The paper eventually went out of business. So, I collected my pieces and started sending query letters to see if any publisher would be interested in publishing the content in the form of a book. I got some feedback saying that the material was good but it was niche market and the publisher would likely not see a return on investment. I decided to self-publish the book, It Felt Like a Kiss: Glimpses of Art in the Mission District of San Francisco. I have been able to sell this book via local San Francisco bookstores and book fairs, etc. But, book promotion is time-consuming and I don't really have the time because I work full-time and am pretty busy writing and making art when I'm not working.

Learning how to self-publish, however, made it easier for me to put-together my next book which I didn't even bother trying to publish via the traditional channels.

2) I had written several haiku at my twitter handle @notexactlyahaiku, some of which were re-tweeted. My work also inspired other writer friends to start writing haiku and I got quite a bit of positive feedback. Some of my haiku inspired me to create sketches. This led to the idea of a haiku book with sketches: not exactly haiku. I self-published the book and took the first 10 copies to a book fair and sold 7 out of the ten copies.

I sell my self-published books when I market them but don't have time. To summarize my experience:

1) Once you learn how to self-publish one book, it's fairly easy to use that expertise to publish another one. There is a caveat, however. I did all the layout, design, etc., myself. I also built the websites for the books. If you don't have the skill-set to do this, then you'll need to find help.

2) The hard part is the promotion of the book!!! This is where a traditional publisher can help unless you happen to have the interest and the time and energy to do it yourself.

3) I learned a lot about the book publishing and promotion business. If I can find a publisher for my next book, I will be much better prepared to work with them to help promote my book.

Great answers Poly and Leena!

Leena wrote: "I have published a book with my own art-work and another one that is about art. Here's my story on both:

1) I wrote an art column for a local San Francisco paper, Mission Arts Monthly, for two yea..."

you might check into some art distributors such as D.A.P. or check out the list of bookstores throughout the USA that deal with artists self publications. Printed Matter in NYC comes to mind.

Thanks for the tips Geoffrey. I'll follow-up with DAP and Printed Matter and see if I can find other bookstores that deal with self-published books. I thought only local bookstores are willing to sell self-published stuff so this could be an entire new channel for me.

Printed Matter has a huge following in NYC and when I visited at lunch time back in 2014 I could hardly maneuvor around the store thete were so many people. There are a few dozen bookstores similar to PM throughout the world and with a little bit of search you can find them. I wasn´t at all impressed with the quality of most of those little zines, self published books and whatnot but there were a few gems. If your work really stands out it will do well. Best to send 10 or 15 and take it from there to about 20 of these places.

Also keep in mind AWESOME FOUNDATION which grants 1,000 USD to interesting projects and Kickstarter.

Definitely research the various self-publishing options to see what works for you. We found this comparison article to be helpful in our research: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/whats-the-best-print-on-demand-service-for-self-published-paperbacks/

Eventually, we decided to use CreateSpace to publish our art book as it had templates to use, no upfront fees, and the ability to review both a PDF and physical proof copy before publishing.

We just published our art book on Amazon and have been pleased with the results.

Hope this helps!

I am in the process of self publishing the book ARTHEMIST STATEMENT 2.6: Why create art that nobody asked for? in hard back and eBook.

I decided to go for https://www.ingramspark.com a print on demand service because I wanted the book to be available to a large audience.

The real challenge is finding an audience and how to market the book. Where shall I spend my time and or money?

First of I made my self a short list of 10 people that I believed would be interested in the book and politely asked if they would consider writing a foreword, endorsement / blurb. I was chuffed that Hans-Georg Moeller wrote me a short blurb.

Then I figured out I need to create what is called a fact sheet about the book, which I attach to correspondents.

Currently I am researching where I can send the book for review, I discovered that one needs to contact interested parties 4-6 months in advance.

If anyone has tips and experience regarding magazines or websites that review books then please give me a heads up.

There are also book competitions one can enter, I have jet to look in to this.

And then one will have to contact shops that may be interested in selling the book. Geoffrey mentioned: DAP (Artbook) and Printed Matter

Currently I have contacted the following websites that offer reviews:

https://www.raintaxi.com
https://publishers.forewordreviews.com
https://readersfavorite.com
https://www.readerviews.com
https://www.booklistonline.com
https://www.libraryjournal.com
https://therumpus.net

I have self-published quite a few novels since 2011, but only recently decided the Print On Demand options (Amazon's KDP and IngramSpark) had attained the quality level necessary for picture books. I've since collaborated with three artists (different styles for different book subjects and tone), and have been very pleased with the results. I'm terrible at marketing, but I've actually had better results with the picture books than the novels.

Karen wrote: "I have self-published quite a few novels since 2011, but only recently decided the Print On Demand options (Amazon's KDP and IngramSpark) had attained the quality level necessary for picture books...."

Hi Karen, I assume you are new to the group? If so then: Welcome!
I hope you have a good time browsing all our older threads.
I had a look at your books and downloaded the free one to put it on my to-read list. I used to be a big Sci-Fi fan in my teens, but I still read it (at the moment I'm working on the Expanse series)
We have more writers among our members, I'm sure you'll come across them when going through the threads.
I'm sorry to say we lost our founding mother a short while ago.
Heather who started the thread 13 years ago, had to stop moderating because too much was happening in her personal life.
So moderating is up to me now. But except for posting the pic of the day I like to keep a low profile.
So once again: welcome and have fun!

Thank you for your welcome -- and for checking out one of my books! :-)

I loved the first five or so books of the Expanse series. I think it got a little bleak for me after that, but I don't remember clearly.

I hope Heather is still able to participate when her life allows.

Dirk wrote: "Karen wrote: "I have self-published quite a few novels since 2011, but only recently decided the Print On Demand options (Amazon's KDP and IngramSpark) had attained the quality level necessary for ..."

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JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
My Friend SAMO Late 1970-80s
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