|
Forums >
General Industry >
Producing a Calendar
Anyone have any idea where to start on that? Model releases, payment compensations, promoting. Anyone every tried and succeeded or failed? Why and how? Thanks you anyone that can give any input. I appreciate it. Asking Photographers and Models Mar 01 06 06:25 pm Link Have significant experience with it. Produced a calendar that was sold nationwide at the majors (Barnes & Noble, Borders, Bookstar, Waldenbooks, etc.) for over 4 years. It is a VERY TOUGH business to get into (e.g., to get the nationwide buyers to pick you up) and even harder to make money at. This is not to discourage you, however. Many people produce calendars just for their business customers or for private distribution, like Pirelli Tires. However, because printing and binding are involved, it can get to be pretty costly pretty fast. I.e., doesn't make a lot of sense to do it solely as a vanity project. Mar 01 06 06:48 pm Link Do calenders sell much over the internet? Mar 01 06 06:57 pm Link LULU can do it and sell them one at a time, and I think they work with Barns and noble and amazon. Mar 01 06 07:08 pm Link Take some time (and money) to research your market, and competition. That money will be the most well spent, even if you decide it's not what you want to do. Scaramanga nailed it with the fact that it's a very tough market. It can be fun, and rewarding, but it's a lot of work unrelated to actually taking photographs. Mar 01 06 07:11 pm Link Dawnie wrote: Not sure, our calendar was produced before online calendar sales were prevalent. To be honest, I think calendars are still largely the exclusive province of walk-in stores with physical store fronts. Mar 01 06 07:12 pm Link JT Hodges wrote: 100% agree. You sound like someone with experience in this area. :-) Mar 01 06 07:13 pm Link Scaramanga wrote: Just a touch. Probably not as much as you have. Mar 01 06 08:16 pm Link I went as far as producing a prototype. (See http://www.artsuppliesonline.com/catalo … ta_id=8840). It was a big lot of work to pull this together, and the results weren't all that pleasing to me. So, I didn't even get as far as finding a printer or a distributor or a retail outlet, and I certainly wouild have had a problem getting a price that would allow me to make a profit (assuming I used quality printing). Mar 02 06 10:29 am Link So far no one has asked you WHY do you want to make a calendar? What is your personal reason for wanting to do it? Then how serious are you about doing it? Then you can look at what is the best way to go about doing it! In light of the reason you are doing it. For an individual calendar you can print one out yourself on your own computer. Hey it is a calendar! Print out 25 and give them to your friends. Kewl! Either pick up an inexpensive binder or go to kinkos and have them do it. Looks good. Now if your looking to go to a printer and print thousands so that you can get the cost per unit down to a number where there is room to make some money you should know that you are looking at $30,000 to 50,000 up front right away quick. If you are sitting on extra money and still want to go that route have at it! If you are not sitting on a large pile of "play" money probably want to look at other ways to make money besides dreaming about a calendar. Usually calendars are a two year project with very little return financially. Tell me again why you want to do a calendar? later, david two major reasons for it being really tough to make any money in calendars 1) everybody and there brother is making them 2) very limited shelf life. Calendars sell in Nov and Dec. Jan 3rd left overs go in the trash!!!!!!!!!! If you have them printed in the states they are usually printed in July and August, Shipped to the stores in Sept/Oct sold Nov/Dec trashed or returned for credit Jan! If you have them printed in Austalia you could be looking at printing them 8-10 months in advance. How much money do you want to tie up? How long do you want to tie it up? How much are you expecting to get back out of it? Can you handle a loss? If you are going to print calendars you need to make sure you have them sold before you print them!!! This is not something most people can do successfully on their own. Mar 02 06 11:11 am Link DSP_Productions wrote: Thanks for the informative post, DSP. I do want to print a calendar one day, and sell it just on my website, since I know how difficult it is to get anything into brick and mortar outlets. I researched publishing a magazine, and came to the same conclusion: The "easy" part, although expensive, is producing and printing the magazine. The hard part is getting it into distribution channels. Mar 02 06 11:21 am Link If you just want to sell them on your web site then use LULU . No investment other than your time to design it and they will sell them one at a time and send you the check. You can also make a book with them and they will sell them through Amazon. Mar 02 06 11:27 am Link Terry Breedlove wrote: Thanks, Terry! I bookmarked the Lulu page. If and when I ever put out that calendar or magazine, I'll send you a free copy! Mar 02 06 11:32 am Link Ditto  Mar 02 06 11:33 am Link Publishing a magazine is muchhhhhhh easier than publishing a calendar! Before everyone jumps all over me NO I DID NOT SAY it was easy I said it was EASIER! and compared to a calendar it is. With a magazine you are doing it with other peoples money! always a plus in my book! lol that's what the advertisers are for. another thought, if you have a few dollars and an image that will hold to a larger scale, that you haven't talked about - it is even easier to make money by doing a really nice poster than a calendar or a magazine! later, david Mar 02 06 11:42 am Link If you want print-on-demand stuff you might want to look at something like imagestation.com (by Sony). They do really nice linen-bound books that look super professional. When I show models my book that I published they rush to take their shirts off! It works great! They also do calendars. The quality of imagestation is like loads better than cafepress, but it's not as good as a high end desktop printer. GWC! Mar 02 06 11:45 am Link Wow, this is a really good thread. So it seems, for a broke college student like myself, it might be easier to just print posters or sell prints through galleries than producing a calendar. Mar 02 06 12:21 pm Link Thanks for the heads up. I got a lot of advice over email and I really appreciate it. I know what steps to take now. Well, I will give it shot. Mar 03 06 03:47 pm Link Thanks for the heads up. I got a lot of advice over email and I really appreciate it. I know what steps to take now. Well, I will give it a shot. Mar 03 06 03:47 pm Link Terry Breedlove wrote: I recently picked up a photo book that was printed by LuLu.com. Not bad work. I like that they print them to order which helps cut down on your upfront capital outlay. Mar 03 06 03:51 pm Link Anybody can put together a "calendar". If you think you will just put it up on the web and sell a lot, I think not. Most calendars that are successful either have a product tie in (like Hooter Girls) or Hawaiian Tropic, (etc), or have gotten a mass distribution deal (like Ann Geddes with Target). You have to figure out a way to MOVE em. I did some shots for a guy who sold about 20,000 to 30,000 calendars a year, but his deal was that he would go to hunting shows almost every weekend with three girls and sell them from a table where the girls were present to steer dumb hunters into buying one. The calendar was hot girls in bikinis holding shotguns, or standing next to a 4 wheeler with a dog, hunting oriented stuff. You don't have to sell a lot of calendars at one show to make a tidy profit, but you have to hit a lot of shows. In the end, his situation collapsed because the girls got greedy or lazy and killed the goose that layed the golden egg. His print cost was about a buck a piece, and his show cost depended on the venue and the location. But if you can sell 200 calendars a weekend for 15.00 bucks a pop that's 3000.00 per weekend. Times 50 weeks, that's 150,000.00 gross. He bought a big RV and they would stay in the RV for the shows to save the cost of a hotel and travel expenses. In the end, girls would say they would go on the trips and then flake at the last moment, or not get up in the morning and get the the show first thing, or got greedy and demanded more per show then the sales would support. What was really sad was he was making more money "his way" than probably 90% of the photographers I know, working 3 days a week. In the end it failed because of the models. At one point, he used models who werent even in the calendar to sell the calendars. I realize his "business" plan requires the use of models for 3 days weekends and that's a hard schedule to work around. Mark Mar 03 06 04:01 pm Link I know this isn't the best route, but if you want cheap start up and fast results, try Cafepress.com You can make a 12 page calendar there, but I think they are just 11 x 17 unfolded. Mar 03 06 04:01 pm Link Dawnie wrote: I would do it TFP. The exposure for a model is good. Mar 03 06 04:03 pm Link I will add to this post...I am currently doing my 2007 calendar...and yes it is alot of work...and if you are smart you will put together a team of folks to help...such as make-up artist, hair strylist, street team, promotions, advertising and do everything in your power to get corp. sponsorship. It is very hard work and alot of moving. You have to promote the hell out of it, with ads, radio spot, commericals, parties, promo tour and be ready to put out close to $75,000 up front.. and we have not even spoke about models and wardrobe yet... you will have to have all your legal work in order, contracts, retailer, distrubitor and Do forget your UPC barcode...Now the models...you have to find quiality folks to make a great product with....i would suggest start small and grow... first state wide...regional and then national...this will hopefully build a buzz and after you do it once(2007) or twice(2008) you hopefully can have a good following from your target demographics.... and hell yes...research your target demographics...find out what they like, don't like and what they will buy and will not buy. Not to mention it is time consuming...seems like thats all i do is calendar work lately, so if you are trying to go big...be ready to take a small loss in your photography biz because of the time it take to do a quaility calendar you will miss shoot time for wedding, senior, sports and portraits. Let me not forget to mention...your first time out...just pray you can at least break even. any other questions feel free to email me and i'll give you more info.... Mar 03 06 04:50 pm Link oops...i also forgot... DO NOT rely on internet sales you surely need a direct market...in person, like a mall booth, flea markets, store fromts, retaial outlets, and at events to promote your product... Mar 03 06 05:12 pm Link Dawnie...don't do it. Ditto about the market research etc. You will also find out that what your market wants may not be what you want to shoot. Now that becomes a pain-in-the-neck. It's a lot of work, with little reward depending on your market. $30k estimate is a little high, but I would recommend that you know enough friends who can do layout etc for you. If you want to have good quality printing at low cost, you will want to look overseas (Hong Kong is the printing capital of the world). For 1000 you are looking at a printing cost of around $3k (CTP technology, much sharper), you won't find that anywhere in the US. Did the Ducati calendars for two years, I am not going to do it ever again. Online sales sucks. Mar 03 06 06:40 pm Link |
