The Making Of: A Still Motion Picture

by Maria Grazia Stanfield
(Atlanta, Georgia U.S.)

There it was! A coffee table book filled with photographs taken by a non professional was being sold in a museum gift shop. Right then I made up my mind that I could and would publish my own. It was April 2005. For many years I had been seriously thinking of creating a very similar book. I knew that mine would be hardcover, in color and I would use a simple story to tie the photographs together.

My first step was to contact the publisher of the book I had seen. Because it had been printed by a Midwestern university, I thought it would be affordable. I learned very quickly that the photographer was a professor at the U and they would not print for outsiders. After surfing the web and talking to several local printers, I found out that to get the quality and color I wanted, the answer was an oversea printers and a minimum order in the thousands; everyone seemed to agree on that. Having worked as a film production assistant for years, I knew that persistence pays. I also knew that even for the professionals in Hollywood, more often than not, it takes as many as seven to ten years to get investors to believe in their project and in the end they have to contribute a lot of money out of pocket anyway. Knowing the odds and my get-it-done personality I did not want to waste time looking for a traditional publisher.

Part of my research included buying similar books printed in the U.S. I talked with one author who was kind enough to tell me what she spent for which services so I could get a general idea of what a 'very low budget' meant. By seeing her product first hand, I could compare apples to apples. Later on, after my project was finished, I figured that by doing everything myself (except printing and binding), I ended up paying the same price per book as the American printers charged with a large minimum order and got a much better cover, paper stock and printing quality.

I continued calling anyone who could offer additional information. A person I worked with in the movies was now publishing directories and sent me a Directory of Printers for the State of Georgia. There I found one of the most important pieces of the puzzle! It was the name of the one and only binder who could deliver a hardcover in 'landscape' format. Everyone told me it would be very expensive and it was, but on this one I had to put my foot down and do it right!

At that point, I still didn't have a printer. During my search, at least two of the most promising local printers had gone out of business (as I had been warned could easily happen) before I even discussed the contract requiring 50% down. Good for me! At least I had learned what were the specifications needed to get the job done: to save a bundle of money, I needed to deliver a 'READY TO PRINT DISC' to the printer.

To get that disc ready, I had to spend all my weekends laying out the pages. It took several months to enhance, crop and resize each photograph. Since I know very little about computers, my husband was my operator, pushing the buttons while I concentrated on making hundreds of visual decisions. I kept in mind that I was going to send copies of the book to directors and producers I had worked with over the years. I did not want to be laughed at by these professional, eagle-eyed people who don't miss anything…

Previously, I had talked to a couple of graphic artists who charged $100 + per hour for their services and seemed to be mostly interested in playing with their latest computer toys, rather than listening about the look I wanted to achieve. Looking back, I am glad I did it myself although I don't know If I would do it again… the next time might ruin forty years of marriage.

Back to the printer dilemma: I discovered a print on demand service on the internet (this was very new at that time). They mailed me a sample on good paper stock- it looked great! Just what I was looking for! However there were two problems: 1) Their landscape hardcover had a see-thru window in the middle and looked like a photo album: 2) The cost for the number of pages I needed was $50-60 per book plus shipping with almost no price break for quantities. Back to square one.

One day out of the blue, my husband (a color copier repairman) came home with a big surprise. At a company meeting someone from another division had handed him a fantastic color page to ask him what he thought of the quality… it was a sample from a brand new digital press just arrived from England and being distributed by his company in the U.S.

I had found the perfect POD!

I immediately contacted company headquarters and found there were only two of these presses in my home state. The printers I had been


dealing with knew of it but refused to talk about it because it was going to ruin their business. So, I contacted a new one- who was operating only that press. I really liked the owner and wanted to give him the business, but after a few months he was still hung up with experimenting on a way for him to do both printing and binding, instead of going over the printing challenges (I told him I had a binder).

In December 2005 I made the decision to try the other printer. I was lucky to be dealing with the Senior Vice President who became very interested in my project and really listened to what I wanted. He gave me even more than what I asked: he told me I could dedicate the finished book individually to each of those few special people I had chosen. An extra linen page was added to the front on the book and read : "THIS BOOK HAS BEEN PRINTED ESPECIALLY FOR…"

The only thing I had to compromise on was the book jacket. Due to the landscape format, the press was not able to print a page long enough to fit correctly around the cover. For me it was actually good news because it was very expensive. It took only a couple of days to come up with a new design. Later on, I used that same design to print bookmarks for advertising. I printed a total of 350 books and even though they were expensive, I am able to make a small profit. I always knew it would not be done for the money, but more for the challenge, pride and satisfaction.

The binding process: When I met with the binder to discuss what he needed (the book needed a minimum of 60 pages for best results) I had a gut feeling that because he had zero competition, he would take his time to do the job… My gut feelings are usually correct and because the printer had a business relationship with him, I decided to pay the printer the $300 I would have saved by taking care of it on my own. Boy… am I glad I did! Even after we agreed on a comfortable deadline, it took two extra months to get the job finished.

After inspecting the books one by one, I found approximately 100 books were defective: several pages had 'glue spills' and were sticking together. Thankfully, the printer, knowing his business, had printed just about the right number of extra copies as a backup. From the day I made up my mind to the final book delivery, one year passed. The process was so intense that, when I sat down to write this story, I was convinced it took two years to get to this point however- my documentation shows otherwise.

A NEW BEGINNING: MARKETING AND SALES

Holding a full time job in retail makes it almost impossible to be in certain places at the right time. On several occasions, I pushed myself to the limits to attend events such as a major book festival, a couple of art shows and book signings at book stores. The main reason was to figure out who my 'customer' is. In most cases, I noticed two main groups: 1) Senior citizens: 2) Those with a strong interest in movies or visual arts.

Also, with help from a businessman I was able to get a nice newspaper article in the small town where the photographs were taken and felt proud to have sold a book to their county library. The Atlanta newspaper was a different story: it took six months of back and forth to set up an appointment. The reporter wanted to meet me at the distant location and eventually (when I thought it was not going to happen), she decided to meet me at her office. She must have felt very bad about making me wait all that time. The outcome was an incredible article, one-and- a-half pages long with color photographs from the book! It was so well written that over a year later, I still run into strangers who mention seeing the article; over half these folks are senior citizens.

After reading about a competition for self publishers, I picked that date as my deadline to design and build my own website. Again, knowing nothing about computers, it took me six months to do it, with a $50 program for beginners (the only help I received from my husband this time was to find the program). While I was literally pulling out my hair, what kept me going was the fact that, just by entering the contest, I would get a free link to their well known site and an honorable mention.

The main disappointment with the website is that after submitting it to 44 different search engines (paying my web host for that service) and waiting 6-8 months for responses, I never received any 'hits.' Instead, I got dozens of e-mails asking me for money from those same search engines. I am currently trying to figure out the best way to use the internet to target my two markets.

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