Places: Epilogue

Afterthoughts on the process of creating and releasing my first photo zine

Selected Works is a regular newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell. Yes, that’s me. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Symmetry:

Over the weekend, I got a very sweet message from MC Slam of MC Slam & DJ Jam, one of the original New Zealand (Aotearoa) hip-hop groups, asking if he could buy a copy of the photo book he’d seen me posting about online. I was more than happy to package up the final copy of Places and mail it to him, and two days later, the Nikon F60 film camera that I used to shoot most of the book stopped working.

I could probably (arguably) print and sell some more copies. Still, sometimes you have to bring one idea to a close before you begin another, which is basically what I guess I’ve already committed to doing. If anyone wants to sell me a cheap Nikon F80 camera, please let me know.

Now, with that of the way, I thought this might be a good time to write something about a few things I’ve learned over this experience/experiment and act of love.

Graphic designers are worth their weight in gold:

Once I came up with the basic idea for Places, I got coffee with my mate Kate Reddington, who has been doing cool graphic design stuff for at least as long as I’ve known her (and probably even longer). In the 2010s, when I was having a bit of a dalliance with event promotion, Kate laid out some gig posters for more. The great thing about this is by the time Places came around; we had somewhat of an understanding of how to communicate with each other, which made it all a lot easier. My key takeout here is simple: Long relationships matter.

Once we started, she asked me to create an initial draft copy by hand to give her a sense of what I wanted (and also possibly to make me think about how much work goes into something like this). So, I headed to Warehouse stationery, printed out hundreds of photos, bought some fancy paper, tape and glue, and did my best to put together a rough version of what I thought it should look like. She took that away, played around with everyone on a computer, and came back with a vision that exceeded my wildest expectations. Thank you, Kate!

People can be very supportive and encouraging:

I’m not going to be understated here. For an independent, self-published, self-distributed publishing project, Places has been surprisingly successful. I had the gut feeling I could sell a few copies, but in the end, I sold more than I expected. That said, I also sold it at what was arguably a low price point, NZD $25. Some people have told me I should have sold it for more, but it’s my first-ever photo book, and I wanted it to be reasonably accessible. The profit margins haven’t been amazing, but a bunch of other things about the process were. I’m not complaining here.

The big one was how supportive, encouraging and easy to deal with the people who bought a copy were. I received so many nice messages about buying Places and so many more about how they felt after receiving it. I hadn’t thought too much about the endgame with this project, I just knew I wanted to get it done before the end of the year. I don’t know if validating is the right word because I wasn’t looking for validation, but the conversations I had with people about it all made me feel pretty good. As they say, there’s something to be said for feeling seen and held by your community (and covering your costs).

The other thing that blew me away was the range of people who got in touch with me and the range of places they’re from. I’ve kept a list, and you’re all fucking legends. In the end, I sent copies all around Aotearoa and overseas to Australia, the US, the UK, Spain, Italy, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Jamaica. A few of those were gifted on my behalf, but in the scheme of things, that was a tiny number.

Side note: I know some people probably get a bit worried (or find it a bit cringe) when I complain on Twitter about some of the issues freelancers deal with around getting their invoices paid. Rest assured, if things were absolutely falling to pieces, you’d know because I wouldn’t even be tweeting at all. I put these issues on the table when I have the mental/emotional bandwidth to do so because they are very real, damaging and discouraging, and if it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, those tweets aren’t for you anyway.

Beautiful things will be had and held:

One recurring theme in correspondence I had with people about Places was how impressed they were with how nice it looked and felt to hold. I’d love to be able to say my photos did the heavy lifting, but they were really working in concert with Kate’s design sensibilities and the paper stock we used, Impress Silk. As my friend Tarannum said to me, “Very few people don’t like beautiful things.” I think the wraparound ocean cover image was a smart choice as well. People send me photographs of it sitting on their coffee tables (at home or at work), and it just seems to fit in really well. There’s something (or things) or learn from that.

Bills, Bills, Bills:

I kept the sales process pretty simple for Places: send me your address, and I’ll send you my account details, etc., but part of me thinks I should have set up an online purchase platform with various shipping options. The overseas stuff was a bit fiddly, but apart from that, it was pretty okay. I might go for a buy button next time.

In terms of printing, it took me a while to figure out where to get it done and what sort of paper to use. I found it surprisingly hard to find any good local information about this sort of thing online. I don’t want to suppose too much, but could there perhaps be some gatekeeping going on in the zine world? lmfao. For transparency’s sake, I used a company in Wellington called The Big Picture, who were very nice and easy to deal with.

BONUS:

My profile of the New Zealand dream-pop sister duo Clementine Valentine is live on Audio Culture now; read here.

Last week, I interviewed New Zealand poetry and writing guy Dominic Hoey for Selected Works, revisit our Q&A here.

FIN.