lundi 27 octobre 2014

Photo Book Service idea - Pros/Cons

I'm not sure if we have any professional photographers on this forum but I know we have several graphic designers.



As a hobby I like to scrapbook.



In reality I never have time to do it properly. So I turned to photobooks when my daughter was a year old as a way to chronicle her first year of life. Of course, I'm a designer and was completely frustrated by all photo book templates I came across back then (6/7 years ago). So I found an online company who prints custom photo books and you can simply upload a completed PDF file that matches their printing template and I've done that for the past 6/7 years. I print enough books for all of the grandparents and us. They run me $15-$25 each depending on how big they are - which makes the photo book a completely reasonable Christmas gift that is very appreciated.



Ours are displayed at the house and whenever we have company they usually get looked at. As a result I've had several people - Aunts & Uncles, my sisters, friends... tell me that I should create these for other people too - basically set-up a division of Crazy Dog that did photo books. My books chronicle 12 months of the kids life - I put 2-3 pictures (snapshots) from each month along with several pictures of the birthday celebrations, Christmas, any vacations, etc... with a little bit of journal-type commentary but not much. My daughter was born in September so our books run October-September that way I can get them put together and printed before Christmas each year.



I keep thinking about developing this type of service - but I'm not sure I could do it as effectively for other families as I can do it for our family. And there are so many DIY photo book options out there that I'm not sure there is a market to support the idea. I think it could fit in really well as an added service for a professional photographer who was also a designer... Anyway - what do you think? What pros/cons do you see with providing this type of service?



I'm envisioning a few types of books:


  • An Annual Overview

  • Special Occasion/Vacation Books

  • Lifetime books - that would be babyhood to senior in high school review, or a summary book for a grandparent, or a 50th anniversary type book, etc...






As a point of reference - I usually start with 1000ish pictures from an entire year - cull those down to 250 or so and then cull it even further for the book. I think I would ask potential customers to provide 250-300 pictures for an annual book and tell them that I would use a minimum of 50% of the pictures they sent. Of course there would be proofing and revisions...




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