{"id":489930,"date":"2010-03-30T14:37:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T18:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/37signals.com\/svn\/posts\/2240-how-craig-mod-and-gina-trapani-decided-to-go-the-indie-publishing-route"},"modified":"2010-03-30T14:37:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T18:37:00","slug":"how-craig-mod-and-gina-trapani-decided-to-go-the-indie-publishing-route","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/489930","title":{"rendered":"How Craig Mod and Gina Trapani decided to go the indie publishing route"},"content":{"rendered":"

Craig Mod<\/a> has an interesting story about publishing a guide book to the Tokyo art world. Here’s Craig’s description of what happened:<\/em><\/p>\n

I coauthored and designed a guide book to the Tokyo art world: Art Space Tokyo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It came out in 2008 to much acclaim and sold out rather quickly.<\/p>\n

The publisher we originally published with didn’t have the money to support a reprint. It sat in limbo for ages.<\/p>\n

This is a niche book \u2014 Tokyo & art.<\/p>\n

It’s also a beautiful book: silkscreened clothbound hardcover, detailed maps, printed and bound in Japan. Elegant.<\/p>\n

\"tokyo<\/p>\n

The original publisher was talking about reprinting it \u2014 cheaply, paperback, disposable. Destroying much of the original charm.<\/p>\n

This is ridiculous. So I bought back worldwide publishing rights from the publisher. Drawing inspiration from REWORK<\/span><\/a> \u2014 looking sideways, ignoring the ‘usual’ rules of publishing, this is what’s now happening:<\/p>\n

Sales folk at traditional distributors push for cheap cheap cheap because it’s easy to sell. The problem is cheap cheap cheap doesn’t generate sustainable profits. And leads to disposable, flimsy books.<\/p>\n

Instead of compromise, we’re raising the price. This lets us keep the same high quality, which readers love. It also means the revenue generated by the sales can lead to expansion of the project. Instead of every sale eeking us back to break-even, every sale helps lay the foundation for expanding the project.<\/p>\n

More…<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Craig Mod has an interesting story about publishing a guide book to the Tokyo art world. Here’s Craig’s description of what happened: I coauthored and designed a guide book to the Tokyo art world: Art Space Tokyo. It came out in 2008 to much acclaim and sold out rather quickly. The publisher we originally published […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}