Douglas Stockdale – Guide to Self-Publishing an Indie Artist Book

Guide to Self-Publishing an Indie Artist Book 2017 copyright Douglas Stockdale

My self-published Guide was formally launched at the Medium Photo Festival in San Diego, CA last week end. A copy was provided for each person who registered for Medium, compliments of my book sponsor, Dual Graphics, the book printer located in Brea, CA (note: Dual Graphics has closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic economics). As a result, over half of the first edition is gone! Even signed a few of these during the Medium event over the weekend.

As I have been writing about this previously, the Guide is was meant to be a short and sweet yet very practical step-by-step to guide someone thru the complex self-publishing process of an artist book. It is ideal for someone who has a lot of illustrations; be that photographs, drawings, paintings, etc. This book is drawn from my various book design workshops, experience with working with my publisher for Ciociaria in Rome and the various photobook discussions with other photographers and artists I have had over the years as the Editor of The PhotoBook Journal. So far, the feedback has been really great.

I cover the five stages of self-publishing include: Book Pre-visualization, Marketing (market size & edition quantity), Book Development, Book Design options and finally Book Production and how these five stages are intertwined during the process. The book development chapter explores the process of developing an artist project with the intent of making a book as well as editing and sequencing the images using a book dummy.

What I think is another interesting aspect of this Guide is the inclusion of three paper samples (Uncoated Italian paper, Gloss and Satin/Luster papers) which the same photograph is printed to help with understanding the implications of printing, paper and illustration interact. There are examples of both color and Black & White images, with the Black & White images printed with the Fultone (Duo-tone) Digital Lithographic Process, which at the moment is only being offered by Dual Graphics. You will not obtain these beautiful Black & White printed pages from Blurb!

What I find interesting and I think is visually apparent below is how the photographs look on the uncoated Italian paper, which is very similar to a matte inkjet paper, as compared to the adjacent gloss paper with regard to detail and contrast. Having these various papers in the Guide, one can actually feel the difference between these papers, a key aspect of a book object.

One nice aspect of this Guide is allowing me to feature some of my photographs from my photobook Ciociaria, the photo-documentary In Passing and my Foundations folio. I would have preferred to use some of the Black & White images from Bluewater Shore artist book but I had to defer to my publishing team (and sponsor) in a selection of photographs that exhibited a greater tonal scale. Especially since I still have a few of the Bluewater Shore edition available for sale.

So if you are interested in obtaining the Guide, these were available from me (Update: This book is now out of stock, sold-out, and no longer available).

Cheers, Douglas