Bursting your bubble
Let’s begin with the bad news: your book’s not going to sell. I asked top agents and publishers how many of their artists drove Bentleys. The answer was always exactly the same: they laughed. Heartily.
Essentially, there are too many photobooks and not enough buyers. According to standard economics, market forces should ensure that supply will dip to meet demand when nobody wants a product. But for some reason, with photobooks, we insist on printing the things, regardless of who’ll buy them. So, in effect, the photographer becomes the customer.
“At the moment, there’s way too many photographers out there,” explains Tom Claxton, a photographic agent in New York. His list includes some serious names in photography, such as Mark Steinmetz, Max Pinckers, and Laia Abril, who…
