Ask Brooks

ISBN and ISSN numbers

I'm sure this question will be answered when your PDF Seminar on "Publishing" is on the market, but in the meantime, I'm interested in the requirements for, and the differences between, ISBN and ISSN numbers and why they exist.  I know that the ISBN is used on books, and that ISSN  is used on magazines.  I noticed that LensWork magazines have an ISSN and so do the LensWork Extended PDFs [but different numbers for the same issue] ...but the folios don't have any such numbering shown. Could you explain why?

— Doug

Basically, these numbers are unique identifiers that allow resellers (i.e., stores) to scan the barcode and identify the unique item. You can learn all you need to know from RR Bowker, the company that issues the numbers. That's really about it, except for one other, very important distinction.

ISBN numbers are used for books; ISSN numbers are used for periodicals. Why distinguish? As Mark Twain used to drawl, "Da gov'mint." The US Postal Service has a special class of mail delivery for "periodicals" — a fancy term for magazines. Why? I don't know, but I suspect it's a classic case of special interest lobbying. The magazine business has a cheaper rate for mailing stuff than regular mail. It saves publishers (and subscribers) a ton of money.

LensWork — our bimonthly, subscription-based publication — qualifies according to USPS rules as a periodical and can benefit from the cheaper postal rates. (This is domestic mail only, of course.) Part of the qualification is that it is identified with an ISSN number, again which it qualifies for. We all save money.

LensWork Extended — our bimonthly, subscription-based publication — however, does not qualify as a periodical because the US Postal Service is stupid —uh, er, I mean, behind the curve. You see, it's not made of paper, is not chock full of ads, and doesn't feel like all the other "periodicals." Being a computer disc means that it can't be officially designated a "periodical." So, they have time and time again rejected our request to have it qualified as a periodical. We keep pushing and they keep resisting. This means it must mail to subscribers at a higher postal rate. Thankfully, it's lightweight or the postage would go through the roof.

This is also why LensWork Extended has an ISBN number and barcode rather than the ISSN number you see on LensWork.

This is also why LensWork and LensWork Extended do not mail together in the same envelope.

This is also why we have certain feelings for the USPS that I'd best not include in this post.

We love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office, we love the post office. Honest, we really, really do.

500 Books

Do you know of any book printing houses up in Canada that have reasonable prices on runs of around 500? I'm working on a coffee table book, and found a company in Hong Kong that is affordable (around $10 a book) and the quality is good... but it's a long way to travel, and I'd like to proof it in person.

— Joel

This is the proverbial "no man's land" of publishing — and exactly the spot so many photographers would like to be, if they could.

• Printing 1 or a few is easy: just do it by hand.
• Printing 2000+ is easy: offset commercial printing is made for this.
• Printing 500 is too many to do by hand and not enough for a fully amortized press run.

It's all a matter of marketing. Selling a few handmade art books is easy. Selling 2,000 books is really hard. So, the natural compromise is to print 500 books or so and push yourself to market them aggressively. The problem is finding a way to print them affordably.

It all boils down to a cost-per-book analysis. In the world of offset commercial printing, the magic in reducing the cost-per-book is to amortize the fixed costs over a large enough press run. Almost without exception, the fixed costs amortization really kicks in with press runs of 2,000. Once your press run gets to 3,000 books, the fixed costs are nominal and any more than 3,000 don't lower the cost-per-book more than a few pennies.

At 500 books, the cost-per-book share of the fixed costs is very high, which makes marketing a challenge.

So, Joel, to answer your question, I wish I knew a way around this but I don't. The price of $10 per book for 500 books seems very inexpensive — unless your book has very few pages and is very small. The only way to get costs that low with a press run of 500 is to use really bad paper, very cheap binding, sloppy printing, and to print in a very low-wage print shop — all of which leads to a formula that would make me very nervous. Be careful and have a rock solid contract that specifies the quality you expect — and don't write the check until you take delivery of the books and are happy with them!

The Original

Brooks,

First of all, I would like you to know how much I enjoy your Editor's Comments, including your most recent, Paper as Medium [LensWork #87]. Having said that, there is one point that I feel that is important that you did not touch on: The print is the only way that a photographer can show their image in exactly the way that he or she wants it to be seen. With the computer monitor there is always the issue of the calibration and even then how would one be assured that they are seeing the image just as the photographer wanted. Even with the quality of the reproductions found in LensWork or in the four tone process used by Little, Brown and Company for Ansel Adams' book, there is still nothing like looking at a print to see the depth and breadth of the photographer's vision. I know that looking at a print there is no compromise between what the photographer meant for you to see and how it is being presented. I am interested in your thoughts.

— Rick

I agree with everything you've said. However, way off in the corner of my peripheral vision there is a fly heading straight for the ointment.

More and more photographers are starting to rethink this idea of "the original." What is it? In the days of the darkroom, the original was indisputably the print made by the hand of the artist. Sort of. I never did feel entirely comfortable with the fact that famous photographers like Ansel Adams had assistants who did so much of the work for them. When Don Worth or Ted Orland or John Sexton (et al) did all that work for Ansel in helping him with his printing, at what point exactly does it become their work rather than Ansel's? If Ansel focuses the enlarger is it still his work? If Ansel does the dodging and burning motions, then is it still his work? Does he need to soup the print in the developer for it to still be his work? Is it still his if someone else ran it though the fixer, did the mounting, spotted the image? If an assistant does it all and Ansel only signs it, is it an original Ansel Adams because he approved it as matching his creative vision? What about photographers who do not do their own printing at all, e.g., Duane Michals? What precisely is the darkroom photographer required to do for it to be an original? Fuzz abounds.

Back to my comments on "the original." There are many photographers today for whom the book is the only physical form of their work. There are no prints. The book is "the original." There are photographers working in multimedia for which the PDF or the Flash presentation is the original. There are photographers whose work is an interactive installation piece. What is "the original" for their work?

For most people, the line between original work and not original work lies somewhere between the artist's vision and the physical artifact created to make that vision manifest. Somewhere, but precisely where can be difficult to nail down.

In my case, I do extensive creative work on my digital files, but I have an assistant do the printing. I consider my digital files as "the originals" (where the creative work happens) and the prints as reproductions. The prints never look precisely like my originals nor precisely like the vision in my head.

And this doesn't address at all the conditions under which the so-called original is seen. Paul Strand looked at is work under a very strong light — a bare incandescent bulb just inches away from the print — which is not at all how we today look at his prints in the museum exhibition. Under what lighting conditions does the photographer intend their work to be seen? From what distance? With whose eyes? (We all see color slightly differently, for example.)

So, when you touch on the idea that the original is the only way a photographer can show their work exactly as they intended it to be seen, we can quickly find ourselves peering through a glass darkly. An argument could be convincingly mounted that the only people who ever see work exactly as the art maker wishes are the art makers themselves. The rest of us always see some form of compromise. The only question is how much is the compromise and how much are we then missing?

DPI for submissions

I am preparing a submission to LensWork. The portfolio submission guidelines indicate a pixel width or height size. I did not see a dpi size. Do you prefer 72dpi, 240 dpi, or 300 dpi?

— Michael

This is a common question and needs some clarification.

First, the term dpi is "dots per inch. " This is a hold-over term from offset printing days which refers to the dot density in a half-tone images, like in the newspaper. Lay down a ruler and count the number of dots in an inch; no more sophisticated than that. In recent years, this has fallen out of favor for computer images for a more up-to-date term, PPI which is an acronym for "pixels per inch."

Both of them are meaningless in some regards.

The PPI is not really a measurement of the resolution of an image, but rather the density of pixels when spread over a given linear space. Output devices require a sufficient density of pixels for their needs. Greater density is discarded to no advantage; lesser density will result in a compromise in image quality — often called "pixelization," a blockiness to the edges and smooth tones.

Inkjet printers typically require a pixel density of around 300 pixels-per-inch, give or take a little. Most people use somewhere between 240ppi and 360ppi; there is some debate about the optimum.

The resolution of most monitors is 96ppi, older ones as low as 72ppi.

We produce two different publications with the images that are accepted for publication.

• LensWork (our print edition) is printed on an offset printer that requires 400ppi for the best reproductions. Because of the page size, the largest images can be as wide as 5.5" or as tall as 7". A little math will show that a landscape orientation image must have at least 2200 pixels horizontally or we won't be able to provide the necessary pixel density. Portrait orientation images must have at least 2800 pixels vertically. Hence our submissions guidelines specify these as the minimum dimensions — 2200 pixels wide or 2800 pixels tall, depending on the orientation of the image. More than 2200 pixels in width or more than 2800 pixels in height is not a problem, but not needed for our use. Fewer pixels in either dimension mean we run the risk of compromising image quality on the press.
• LensWork Extended (our multimedia edition on computer disc) requires 96ppi for display purposes, but we produce it at 200ppi so readers can zoom in on the details of an image without pixelization. This also accommodates large monitors and HDTV presentations. Based on the size of the InDesign layouts we use to create LensWork Extended, we need images that are at least 2222 pixels wide or at last 1666 pixels tall. This is within the parameters of the print dimensions we need for LensWork, so the 2200x2800 pixel images in LensWork will reproduce beautifully in LensWork Extended, too. In essence, we simply resample the images to the required pixel density — PPI — as needed for each publication.

So, it makes no difference to us whether you provide 10 PPI or 10,000 PPI images as long as they are at least 2200 pixels wide or not less than 2800 pixels tall. We'll arrange the pixel density as needed for each use.

For your own use, the PPI can make a difference in this regard: Placing images into some other software application, e.g., InDesign, will cause the receiving application to size the image base on the PPI specifications in the image file. Drop a 2200x2800 image set to 72 PPI into InDesign and the image will be huge. Change the image (in Photoshop, for example) to be a 2200x2800 image at 5000 PPI and the image place in InDesign will be tiny. Both images will be 2200x2800 pixels, they'll just render in your layout at different sizes based on the PPI specification. You can, of course, resize either of these images inside InDesign and as long as the final pixel density meets your output requirements there is no functional difference between the 72ppi and the 5000ppi image in the output from InDesign. The only thing that counts is the final output pixel density — which is a function of the available total number of pixels in the originating file and the output size in the InDesign layout.

Whew! Make sense?