Intro 序
You finally did it, you are so happy you had self-published a photo book or a photo zine. You posted them on facebook, you get a lots of likes and supportive comments from your fb friends and all, but you hardly sell them out. You may even have an website setup, with paypal business account and shipment calculation services ready, but still you don’t really sell them out except from some of your close friends.
You know your book or zine is not bad and with a reasonable price, you know the next thing to work out are marketing and distribution. You are not a professional marketing person, most of the self-publishers are not professional marketer don’t they? and you have not much budget on marketing too. So where should you start promoting your book and zine?
Not long ago, I self-published a photo zine, it's called Home Town. This photo zine compiled with my street photographs from 2014 to 2016. It was my debut zine, and I wanted to promote it so I get to reach out to the people who are interested in it. I begin to research about the photo book and photo zine market over the internet. I realized I should list down all my research findings so that I can keep track them so that future day I can refer them back, and also it benefits the next newcomers too. I’ll keep this post update, and I look forward to your comments too, regarding on any opportunities and alternative ways to promote our self-published works.
你終於做到了，你非常高興因為你終於出版了一本攝影集或攝影誌。你把消息放上臉書，你得到很多讚跟支持的留言，但你並沒有把書賣得很好。你可能已經建立了賣書的網站，有了paypal商業戶口和郵費計算功能，但你並沒怎麼把書賣出，除去幾個跟你熟悉的朋友之外。
你知道你的攝影集或誌還蠻不錯看的，價錢也公道，你知道接下來你必須去用功在經營與行銷上了。你不是行銷專家，很多獨立出版人也不怎麼樣對吧？而已你並沒有過多的預算在行銷上。那麼，你應該從何開始去推銷你的書呢？
不久前，我自費出版了一本攝影誌，叫作『Home Town』。此攝影誌收藏了2014-2016年間所拍攝的街頭照片。那算是我的處女作，我想推銷它，讓更多對此攝影風格感興趣的人找到它。我開始搜尋關於攝影集跟攝影誌的市場網路。我覺得我應該把它們一一列出來，以待未來的日子裡可以繼續參考，並且也可以幫助下一位獨立出版人。我會繼續不斷的更新此篇章。當然我也期待你的留言，請告訴我更多可以讓獨立出版人推銷書本的機會與方法。
I decided to go with zine format for my photography works, but why? If you don't know what is zine, zine is a self-published reading material usually produced in a small amount, small in size, less pages and small-circulation. The regular form of a zine is, staple bind a few piece of A4 papers, and fold them to make a A5 size booklet. Zine can be in variety of formats, such as printed or hand-written text, comics and photographs. The person who produces zine call themselves zinester. Zinester have a saying, "Zine making for love, not money", that quote strike me. Yes, I did it because I love doing it, the keyword "Love" is a very important element in zine making.
我決定我的攝影集用zine的形式詮釋，為什麼？ 如果你不知道什麼是zine，zine 是一種小型的自製出版讀物，體積小，頁面少，流通量也低。製作zine可以很簡單，把幾張A4尺寸的紙釘了、折成A5尺寸的書就可以了。zine有很多形式，可以是文字的（印刷或手寫），漫畫或攝影。zine製作者稱自己為zinester。zinester有種說詞『製作zine，為愛，不為錢』，它打動了我。沒錯，我製作zine因為我享受其中，“愛”是製作zine的一個重要元素。
六月是期待已久的斯里蘭卡（Sri Lanka）旅程。
機票在一年前已經買了，所以說期待已久，還真的是很久。這一次的旅行我沒花時間去研究行程，因為我是跟一大群好朋友一起去的。而且在朋友圈裡有個導遊級高手，行程理所當然交給她了。也好，不然行程都變成我喜歡的當地街道就有點太過。。。那個了。