Kasagatake (Mt. Kasa), Kita Alps, Japan

OK, I know an opus is composed of one’s life’s work and what I’m going to write about concerns only that last nine years. But the title sounded good for this post. You’ve read about me and my pursuits in photography. You know me as a guy who climbs up mountains in search of those glorious views of light, rock, snow and sky. I even told you the other day about my dream of having my own photo book published. Now I will share with you two things. The first is that I already published two books a few years ago, but I published them myself. I was the author, editor, designer and the man with the money. The books are quite nice, but I didn’t publish so many so I can’t sell them in the stores. Book stores take 40% of the selling price, so I sell my books at presentations and exhibitions or through friends and students. I still have a large stock in my closet waiting for the next chance to try to attract interest.

Though I am pleased with my own productions, I still want that professionally published book that will have a real editor and be distributed to bookstores across the country and even sold on-line, like on Amazon. For the last two years I have seriously been working on such an idea. My subject: the Japan Alps. Now, I realize all too well that there are dozens of photo books about the Japan Alps and their more prominent individual mountains, books of photographs made by people with much more time and much higher quality equipment than me, people who have captured the photographs over a period of ten to twenty years or more. So what’s my angle? What would give my project an advantage? I am writing it in English and this is not to be just a photo book. I have been researching about the natural history and climbing history of the Japan Alps. I also have written about the Alps based on my knowledge and experience. I have typed over 30 pages and made a selection of about 200 photographs from over 30 hikes in the Alps. I still have more work to do, more mountains to visit, more photographs to capture. But I am basically ready.

Tsurugidake (Mt. Tsurugi), Kita Alps, Japan. There's a movie coming out about the first ascent of this mountain.

Last year I prepared my proposal. I bought a small book of sixteen blank pages and carefully attached 32 photos printed at the highest quality. I printed out all the text and also prepared a dozen pages of sample layout design from scanned photos. I prepared an introductory explanation and argument for the book, a breakdown of the book’s contents, a marketing and promotion proposal, and three pages of my professional history, to show them who I was and what I had done.

My first target was Kodansha, a company that is famous for comic books but also the company that seemed to have produced the greatest number of coffee table books about various Japanese things in English. I think they even did a book on Japanese sword sharpening, a very esoteric subject with a limited audience for sure, you would think. I mailed off my proposal and received an email a few days later. “We appreciate all the effort that went into your proposal and all the research you have done. The photographs are very beautiful too. However, our market is largely in the United States and we don’t think a book on the Japan Alps would sell very well there. We will be returning your proposal.”

Mae Hotakadake (Mt. Mae Hotaka), Kita Alps, Japan

I wrote back a thank you. I totally accepted their reason for the rejection because I had not been looking to hit the American market. My target was the Japanese market – foreigners living in Japan who loved climbing the mountains and Japanese who felt the same and maybe could enjoy reading English. No, matter; I had my next target selected.

ICB had the second highest number of books about Japan in English on the bookshelf at the airport. I fired off my proposal to them. Three months passed and I didn’t hear a word. I rang them up to ask what was going on. A man who spoke English rather well told me that the biggest distributor of English books in Japan had just recently gone bankrupt and as a result ICB had lost its distributor and wasn’t looking at taking on any new projects. I told the guy that I had provided a C.O.D. return way-bill with my proposal so if he didn’t mind would he please return my proposal. It arrived a day later.

With English publishers looking no good I decided to aim for a Japanese publisher and went straight to one of the big publishers of photo books, Toho. It took some time to prepare the proposal because I needed some of my pages translated into Japanese. I did my best and my manager checked over my writing and made corrections. Wednesday last week I shot off the proposal to them by courier. The package was scheduled to arrive Friday morning. When I came home Saturday night there it was back in my home. It hadn’t even been in their office for 24 hours. A note was stuffed inside, handwritten:

“Dear Mr. Hotaka, thank you very much for sending your book proposal to us. Your photographs are extremely beautiful. We have produced many photo books, however, these days they are not selling very well. We have far too much stock of books that don’t sell. It is very difficult to sell photo art books, so I regret to say that we will be returning your proposal to you. Thank you again for contacting us.”

I wasn’t surprised. Their home page had made mention of a message to their creditors that they had been working with the court to restructure their company and recover from their situation. It didn’t sound good. I was pleased, though, to receive the hand-written message and I noticed that my business card was not returned. It hadn’t been returned with Kodansha either. So, I sent Toho a thank you message and said if they even needed photo stock or an English writer I would be available. I also realize that they may not have considered what I can do to promote the book. I have several ideas for promotion including sending sample copies to magazines and asking them for an interview and story about the book; mailing postcards to the various photo associations as well as all my friends and former students; make a web site to promote the book and post stories about and photos from the book on various sites; hold a series of exhibitions where the book can be sold; and so on. I think they just looked over the idea and passed it back. Looking at their site I saw four or five photos books had been published since January 2008.

So, it’s off to the bookstore this week for me to look for my next target. I do believe that eventually I will be faced with the offer of cooperative publishing. This is where the author pays the production costs and the company professionally arranges the book, selects the photos, edits the text and handles distribution. A guy I know had a book come out last year of the Mont Blanc Massif and it looks stellar. But I don’t have a couple of million yen to spare right now (read about $20,000) and I am not taking out a loan either. I’ll just keep plugging away and submitting and hope that one day I get a bite. In the mean time I’ll keep climbing and shooting when I can and keep adding to my research as I go. And I’ll follow the advice in my previous post and keep trying to get my name out there. When I have finally gotten that book published I’ll let you all know.

Yarigatake (Mt. Yari), Kita Alps, Japan

A note about the photos:
I always post the snaps I capture with my compact digital. This time I posted scanned slides. These four photographs are being included in my book proposal. I just thought I'd share with you what I can really do with my cameras.