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。
Where to promote your self-published photo book and photo zine?
哪裡可以推銷你獨立出版的攝影集和攝影誌呢？
The community 社區:
Independent or self-published is not easy, especially for distribution and marketing. Therefore there are also independent organization or individuals volunteer to help, I would like to say thanks to all of them, they are the pioneer who set the path, and it really helps.
獨立出版或自費出版並不容易，尤其在經營與行銷上。所以蘅生了獨立組織或自發性的同志出來幫忙，為此我在這裡向他們致十二分敬意。他們是先鋒，為我們開路，幫了很大的忙。
- http://theindependentphotobook.blogspot.com/
The Independent Photo Book is a blog that promotes the independently published photo books or zines. It was hosted by Hester Keijser since 2010, it bare no cost, you can submit your book details to her, and she will help to put them up to the blog as well as tumblr and facebook page. However, you must at least have a website to sell your books to be make sense to submit. - http://broken-spine.com/
Broken Spine is a resource for showcasing self-publishers, independent publishers, ebooks, zines, epublications, significant photo/artist books, and critical writings regarding the medium of the art book. This page was hosted on tumblr platform, that allows submission within the site. - http://wemakezines.ning.com/
We Make Zines is an online community site for zine makers and readers. You may register an account there. If your registration accepted ( mine took a day to be accepted), you can post up your zine promo text and image in a blog post under your account. They have a forum for you to ask questions, and also interest group called “photozine”, I do post up there too. As it is community site, and it is free of charge.. - http://www.facebook.com/groups/photozines/
Photo Zines & Indie Photo Books is a facebook private group. The description mentioned “Working closely with photographers and independent publishers to create a space for promoting their visual stories.” To me, this group Is like a hidden gem in the facebook space. I find a lots of wonderful photo book and photo zine posted up there, I am so glad to be accepted as a member. You can promote your book and zine there, members in that group will see it.
They are more than what I had listed definitely, I will add more when I discovered more, do not hesitate to leave comment for me, if you have good one to add them into this list, thanks in advanced.
社區網頁應該比我列出的這些更多，我會更新它，如果以後找到更多的話。那也請您務必要留言告訴我，如果你有這裡所沒有的。
The Library 書庫：
Library usually looking for physical books to fill the bookcase. They usually asked for donation, as this is a non-profit works. The admin of the library may create website or running a bookshow to promote the books they received.
書庫實際上收藏實體書。他們通常都希望你可以樂捐給他們，因為這是非營利性的。書庫管理員通常會上設網頁紀錄收藏的書，或舉辦書展或讀書會來推銷他所收藏的書。- http://www.theunknownbooks.net/TUB-Small-Library
A small library focus on photography book at Portugal which established by Fábio M. Roque. From the website it mentioned “So if you're a small publisher and send us your book, we will file it in our library, and we will publicize your project through our website, a review of the book in our blog. Your project may be on any public event that may occur in a future. “
The awesome reviews can be found at http://theunknownbooks.tumblr.com/. - http://www.indiephotobooklibrary.org/
The library was setup by Larissa Leclair focus on independent photography books. - https://photobookarchive.com/
This is the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive Library, established by Daniel Boetker Smith. I managed to attend their book reading session in Georgetown, Penang Island. The event was held together with the obscura festival, both of the event are awesome.
The local bookstores and online bookstores 在地書局與網路書局
There are independent bookstores that accept books from the independent publishers, they probably work by consignment. You may consign books to them, they put them at their rack, and they charge 35% from the sold books, something like that. There are online bookstores that selling books from independent publishers too. If you able to convince them, they will buy it and resell at their online stores.
I found some site includes wonderful huge list of booksellers, and frankly speaking I haven’t work out this path yet. Meanwhile I am still researching on it. I’ll put up the list that I had discovered:
接受並販賣獨立出版讀物的獨立書局是存在的，他們願意跟獨立出版人合作。你可以把書委託於他們，他們會把書上架，如果書賣了，他們抽35%的佣金，大概就這樣。也有一些網路書局願意接受獨立出版讀物。如果你可以說服他們的話，他們會向你買下，然後轉賣。
我找到了一些網頁列下很多書籍販售商的網址，老實說我並還沒開始去接洽。我這裡只是把我找到的資料列出來而已。
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