Publishing a photo book and seeing 👀 my own book for the first time

Unboxing an advance copy of my monograph was so special. I can’t even describe what it felt like seeing it for the first time. All those years of lugging equipment all over the city, burning through savings and grant money on supplies. Killing myself trying to get the work noticed. After all of that work, it finally happened. I had a string of career wins that brought the project to a penultimate state.

Allow me to demystify something about publishing a photo book.

In full transparency, and not that it’s anyone’s business, but I make no money on this project. In fact, I lose money. In order to publish we have to lay out a lot of overhead on things like commercial grade scans, press checks, color matching etc. Editing, scanning, test prints, match prints, airline tickets, hotel stays. I am reimbursed for none of it. The benefit, and my biggest gamble, is that the work gets noticed somewhere in the vertical of a museum curatorial team.

It is a very big risk.

I get to keep a few dozen copies to sell or archive. But even if I sold each book I get, and even if i marked them up to triple what they run for. and even if I got a small royalty per sale, I will never make back what I spent. However, and I can’t stress this enough, the work isn’t meant to sit in a box. We don’t do this for the money. We do this for the love of the art.

10 years of photography encapsulated between two covers. In a certain sense the experience of the work isn’t mine anymore. It belongs to whomever experiences it,. My greatest hope is that people take from it what they need in their own way. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

You can pre order it here.

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Angela Cappetta Monograph Published by L'Artiere Full Version

Book teaser.