One Project, Many Products

We talk to a lot of creatives about publishing with Blurb. Photographers, designers, illustrators, artists, and educators—each group has their own style, each person has a distinctive set of likes and goals. With all this variety, it makes sense that we’re seeing the publishing industry diversify to accommodate them.

Many of us grew up in a time when publishing meant one project and one publication. Every ounce of energy and planning went toward a book or a portfolio or a catalog. Sometimes the results of the effort were extraordinary. Books sold, portfolios got jobs, and catalogs helped sell prints. Other times, the efforts were not as celebrated, and for whatever reason the publication might not have lived up to the plot line.

Today we live in a much more fluid publishing world where you don’t have to settle for one publication, where a creative can design multiple versions of a publication for multiple audiences at multiple price points. After all, book buyers aren’t the same, so books don’t have to be.

Imagine you are a photographer and you learned in school that the definitive sign of being a professional was to publish a monograph, a serious critical look at your work as an artist. The monograph typically covered a considerable span of time and often included serious essays and forwards contributed, hopefully, by heavyweights in the chosen field. The monograph is still considered a crowning achievement for photographers, but it might not be the right book to get work out there. Monographs tend to be large, expensive and created in limited quantities. Also, monographs tend to be either story-driven or artist-driven, and they may only reveal the traces of who the artist actually is.

Artists are far more than any single work. They see the world in a unique way, which means they have a tremendous range of things to share. This is where modern publishing gets truly interesting. As an artist working today, I can still publish the beloved monograph-style book, either with a traditional publisher or on my own, but I can also publish my own smaller, less expensive publications that work in tandem with the larger, more expensive book.

Say, for example, you documented the behind-the-scenes story of your project coming together, and you package and sell this as a smaller 5×8 or 6×9 trade book at a very affordable price. Often, the behind-the-scenes story gets more attention and interest than the actual project. Having the smaller, more affordable book allows for a wider audience to engage with your work.

Going one step further, perhaps you made portraits of the people who were instrumental in the project coming to life. You can print and publish their images in magazine format as a “thank you” to all those involved.

Now, from one project, you have multiple publications helping to expand your reach, your audience and your book publishing footprint—each sized and priced to fit the demographic most likely to engage.

Modern publishing is about fluid, affordable, adaptive publications that allow projects to live in multiple forms and formats. Don’t limit your options to those of the past. Consider how you can stretch your project into multiple formats, reaching a broader range of products and audience.

What has publishing been like for you? Have you seen multiple formats work well together? Tell us what you learned in the comments below!