Digital BW, The Print

Well in the last week, we've seen many options, from ultra cheap, to 
DIY and expensive. So what price would you consider good? This being 
for say an 8x10 on a nice acid free double sided semigloss (like an 
offset press semigloss)with between 20 and 50 pages in a hardcover 
binding (sewn or glued, but not a post type binding). Pigment inks of 
course, from some kind of inkjet at fairly high resolution. Short 
runs only (on demand type of thing). Completely color managed, with a 
gamut of at least what a typical press can produce (similar to SWOP 
v2), but with extended gray inks for better highlights.

And the final question, what kind of market do you think there is for 
something like this?

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Greg"
<dfaprinting@y...> wrote:
>
> Well in the last week, we've seen many options, from ultra cheap, to 
> DIY and expensive. So what price would you consider good? This being 
> for say an 8x10 on a nice acid free double sided semigloss (like an 
> offset press semigloss)with between 20 and 50 pages in a hardcover 
> binding (sewn or glued, but not a post type binding). Pigment inks of 
> course, from some kind of inkjet at fairly high resolution. Short 
> runs only (on demand type of thing). Completely color managed, with a 
> gamut of at least what a typical press can produce (similar to SWOP 
> v2), but with extended gray inks for better highlights.
> 
> And the final question, what kind of market do you think there is for 
> something like this?
>

I don't have a lot of experience with this, but I can offer the
following data point:

Michael Reichmann on Luminous Landscape put together a book of 26
prints on 11"x17" paper, printed on Epson Archival Matte with an Epson
4000, and bound by a professional book binder. He made 100 copies,
sells them for $495, and according to the website has sold at least 70
of them:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/about/monograph.shtml

I would guess that if the book construction is high-quality, then
there is certainly at least a limited market for these. But I'm sure
it helps to already have an audience, a community of people who
already know your work. 

For pricing, it may be useful to think of the book as a collection of
photos. How much would you charge for the same number of photos
printed individually? Factor in the binding costs, and then factor in
a "bulk" discount sort of thing.

Dave

I was thinking more along the lines of how much do you think you should 
pay to have a book printed and bound, not about it's resale amount.

And I read the article about the newer book that Mr. Reichmann put 
together.... In order to get the per book cost down, he had to buy a 
LOT of those books. 1000 books should not be considered a short run, 
and just goes to show what it costs to get a real press up and going. 
The costs are another reason that profiling a real press is seldom 
done, it's just plain too expensive to run all that ink and paper just 
to print the targets. There are other solutions to the profiling 
problem, but for best results, it's expensive.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/100-books.shtml

It's an interesting read for those that haven't seen it yet.

One note, where he describes how he proofed the images on his 
printer.... You should realy use the Epson Professional Proofing Paper 
semi-matte as opposed to the regular Epson semi-matte paper. The shade 
of the paper will be much closer. You should also profile that paper 
for best results. Also note that the proofing paper will change color 
after a couple of months, this is normal. Most proofing papers have a 
limited lifetime, though many of the newer versions are much more 
stable.