Selling PDFs of our photographs

I'm a subscriber to your magazine and to your podcast, and I recently purchased (and am thoroughly enjoying) your PDF Publishing visual workshop. Someplace within all of the "Brooks-talk" that I am ingesting, I heard you say that you had some particular perspectives on pricing PDF folios for the market. Is there a blog post or podcast episode where you are sharing this particular perspective?

— David

Thanks for asking and for enduring all that "Brooks-talk"! Actually, there is a section in the new workshop, Finding an Audience for Your Work, that includes this information.

The short version is this:

• I don't believe people are willing to pay for entertainment-type content delivered via the web. At least I haven't seen any examples that leap to mind as rousing successes — the single exception being music via iTunes or Amazon.com. Newspapers have tried it and failed. Magazines have tried it and failed. There is simply too much precedence of web-delivered content being free — think YouTube, Hulu, the various news websites, somewhere in the range of 4.8 trillion blogs, etc.
• I'm not aware of many photographers offering PDFs for sale over the Internet. William Neill comes to mind, but I don't know whether or not his offerings have really sold. (There is, of course, a difference between offering and selling.)
• Basically, my observation is that people are only willing to pay for something if it involves the shipping of molecules. (We'll pay to have a newspaper shipped to us, but not for access on the web.) So, if you have a PDF you want to sell, better to ship it on a CD or DVD than to try to charge for it via web delivery.
• But this implies a very telling thing about photographic PDFs: they can be pretty reasonable file sizes in and of themselves, so why not distribute them over the web? If the only reason for putting them on a physical device like a CD or a DVD is to sell them, it seems a bit snake-oilish to me.
• There must be a solid and convincing reason a product like a PDF must be on a disc. For example, LensWork Extended (which are molecules in the form of a DVD, shipped to subscribers) typically have 2-4 gigabytes of data per issue. This is far too much to transmit via the Internet, particularly when you consider the total bandwidth we'd need for all our subscribers. Disc shipment is the only alternative.
• This implies that as photographers, we had better be willing to produce something of substance — of meaningful substance — that requires this much volume or there is simply no reason to put it on a disc and ship it. In the case of LXT, that substance is in the form of the number of media monographs as well as the audio and video components we include with each issue.
• If the small PDF doesn't require a disc, my advice is to either send it into the world for free (like I do on my website) or build enough content that it actually makes sense from the consumer's point of view to pay for it and have it shipped to them. Notice on my website page for the Uchiwa-e project, the free, downloadable PDF does not have the audio or video components, but the disc version does.
• For photographers, what about a print + disc offer? Or a folio + disc offer? This is where we need to get creative about what we offer. Make it make sense to ship something.
• In short, offer consumers something they think is worth it and they will pay for it. It's called the free market — where exchange of cash for product is a win for both parties. Try to offer for sale something that people don't value and they simply won't buy it. The [new, digital] world is no different than it's ever been — we have to earn whatever income we make by providing something of value in exchange for it. And in my observation, there is just too little of value in a simple PDF of images for folks to want to cough up the cash. So, we have to get creative as to what we offer to be sure our audience agrees with us that what we are selling is something they are willing to pay for. At least, that's my take on it.

A friend of mine recently sent me this quote, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

"Businesses planned for service are apt to succeed. Businesses planned for profit are apt to fail."
Nicholas Murray Butler (President of Columbia University)

As photographers and artists, we need to spend more time thinking about how our products offer service and value to those we hope will purchase them.

Comments

[Algol]

Michael Reichmann made a try, by giving the customer an option to buy a downloadable version of his video journals. A few years later he does not offer the dvd version anymore.

"Businesses planned for service are apt to succeed. Businesses planned for profit are apt to fail."

Exactly what I mean. If you are interested to serve the customers you will gain more customers and succeed. If you are sticking to the old time physical media as DVD, by claiming no one has managed to make the transition; you are only trying to maximizing the profit and will be overrun by someone as understand the new medium.

But you are lucky that you have readers/listeners/viewers as are wishing you to dare to try the transition. During the transition you could offer both options and you would earn more on me than you do today.

[Brooks Jensen]

I've followed Michael's project for some time now and he's doing a great job of it. I like his content. As a consumer of his Video Journal, however, I was extremely frustrated with the shift to the download paradigm because I simply could not get his files to download. I worked with Chris on this for some time and I never could get the half a dozen or more 400mb files to download without a timeout or other crash. Finally, I just gave up in frustration. Maybe my experience was unique, but there is no way I would wish this on my readers.

I know he has lots of folks who have no problems at all, but I also know there are others who do. In my way of thinking, I'd rather not have any frustrated customers at all, if possible. We know there would be problems with LXT as a download not only with bandwidth issues, but because a typical issue of LensWork Extended involves dozens of separate files, cross-document links would be at high risk unless the downloads were perfect and perfectly located.

As to profits, I'm not sure I understand your statement about our trying to maximize profits. Michael charges $16.95 for his Video Journal downloads but you can subscribe to LensWork Extended for as little as $4.84 per issue. And we incur the costs of producing and mailing them. Perhaps I should hire Michael as my business consultant!

[Algol]

I have never had any problem with downloading the video journals. Nor do I pay $17 per issue. I pay $10 per issue.

I will happily pay $4.84 for Lenswork Extended, but when I try to order I have to pay $6.50 per issue. For us living abroad (outside North America) buying online and download is faster and cheaper.

About "maximizing the profit"; I am using the same citation as you used, and I am rephrasing what you have written. It is about giving service to customers and not say no, because it is not been proven the most profitable by others, yet.

Yes, it is up to you to chose who you will listen to. Michael can be one of them. As you have written it, you are threatening to increase the price. That might be your choice, and maybe some of current customers will not renew the subscription. It is still your choice.

You might reflect on what I suggest (for free); that you could increase the service and let the subscribers to chose between DVD and downloading. By increasing the choices you might save cost to produce the hard copy, packeting and shipping. You might also increase the number of subscribers; both the younger generation and international.

[Chuck Kimmerle]

Sorry, Algol, but I have to disagree. The Internet is not yet to the point in speed and quality where the general public is comfortable downloading a DVD's worth of content on a regular basis. Too much time is involved for downloading on a normal day, and it will be even worse when eager subscribers attempt to download the new content, all at the same time. There's as much a chance to lose subscribers as there is to gain them.

The time will come when the Internet and related equipment make such a proposition feasible, but that time is still a few years away at best.

[Tony]

David Duchemin sells his PDFs online at 5 dollars. They mix his ideas and teachings along with his images in short ebook style publications. They seem like they sell great. I personally enjoy them and would love if others released similar content.

[Mickld]

I would love to subscribe to the magazine but I live in the UK and the shipping charges are too high. I just checked out the charges again - for a one year subscription for only the magazine it costs $39.00 but the shipping on top of that is $45.00 bringing it to a total of $84.00 for 6 issues.

I can't bring myself to pay more in shipping than for the actual magazine. I understand this is outside of your control, but offering a pay-for PDF of just the magazine (to keep the size manageable) seems like an experiment worth trying.

Would offering it as a magazine for the iPad be a viable option?

[Stephen]

A few PDF stores that come to mind. From my understanding, at least the first 2 are doing very well.

http://www.craftandvision.com/
http://www.bamagazine.com/

http://www.brucepercy.co.uk/pages/Misc/store.html
http://learn.mitchellkphotos.com/
http://www.darwinwiggett.com/product.php?id=41

I would have been the first to say that I much prefer having a copy shipped to me but I've been buying the pdfs listed above and have been very happy with them.

[Alain]

Hi

I also have problems with the shipping costs.

BTW. I never bought the Luminous landscape video journal while they where DVD's, now I have most of them downloaded.

Alain