Show-offs! (Bluewater Shore) 2017 copyright Douglas Stockdale
Since my last update on the development of my limited edition photobook Bluewater Shore, I continue to be very busy with getting the printing completed at Dual Graphics, starting the pre-publication selling, arranging for books reviews and making pitches to some select book shops to stock and sell it.
First, printing the book at Dual Graphics (Brea, CA); we are currently tweaking the gray tones for the Fultone printing of the interior pages. Fultone printing was developed by David Gardner to improve on the duotone printing then available in the mid-1980’s, but his efforts duly impressed Ansel Adams & John Sexton that Fultone printing by Dual Graphics (at that time called Gardner Lithographic) was the best black and white book printing in the US and where they have their books printed. Since then a whole series of black and white photographers have been going to Dual Graphics to use their Fultone printing process. We are also fine tuning the color and font of the book’s exterior. I may be at Dual Graphics later this week on-press for the actually book printing. I am looking forward to that!
Since I just set my selling price after a stop at ARTBOOKS in LA last weekend to check out the competitive landscape of similar book prices, I am now able to start my campaign to pitch booksellers to stock Bluewater Shore (just received my first confirmation) in conjunction with pre-publication discount and a standard post Photo Independent book sellers discount.
Likewise in conjunction with my budding newsletter process, I am now starting to reach out to my family, friends and contacts to offer a pre-launch discounted price for the book (see below for details). This is essentially a mini-kickstarter program to pre-sell as many of the books as I can to fund my launch at Photo Independent (and pay for the final publication costs).
I have been in touch with (“pitching”) a couple of magazine and on-line zine publications about featuring Bluewater Shore. It can be a little longer process to get accepted and then published by the Editorial teams, so I needed to start that as soon as possible. I have already anticipated that for some magazines that they will only feature “original” photographic work, so my artist book which uses re-purposed vernacular photographs is a bit of an artistic stretch for them (yep, already have my first rejection slip!)
At the moment, I am anticipating that I will have the printing complete by mid-April and then I need to complete the prong binding and hand inscribe the book, book covers and the outer shell. Stay tuned!
One serendipitous outcome of this project; since I am using my family archive to draw on for the content and sadly since my parents (and their brothers and sisters) have passed, I do not know all of the identifies of those in the photographs. Photo above is my dad who plays a cameo role in the book, but then my cousin Jack just emailed me to tell me that he’s the young kid in the foreground. I suspected it might have been him, but I did not know for sure. So now I do. How cool is that?!
Regarding the above photograph, what interested me, besides the subjects, was the vernacular nature of this photograph. The the framing was off-kilter, a trade mark of an amateur photograph, and the spontaneity of the subjects. A classic candid vacation photo which I felt was ideally suited for this summer holiday narrative.
Btw, if you have become interested in purchasing Bluewater Shore, I do have a pre-publication sale going on right now (sort of a personal Kickstarter program), which is $40.00 USD (includes shipping and handling within the USA). The price increases to $47.00 USD on April 21st at Photo Independent (Los Angles). So I can honestly say that this is a limited time offer! (contact me off-line: doug@douglasstockdale.com).
Cheers!
Singular Images 