PBN 2011 Winners

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PBN 2011 Grand Prize Winner from Blurb Books on Vimeo.

PBN 2011 Category Winners from Blurb Books on Vimeo.

This year’s Grand Prize winner is an innovative and moving “book-within-a-book” that chronicles the mafia-controlled streets of Naples through the accidental killing of a young girl. Valerio Spada combines on-the-street photography with photos of the original police documents to show, in the author’s words, “the problems of becoming a woman in a dangerous, crime-ridden area. Adolescence is almost denied.”
Gomorrah Girl was chosen by an international panel of 12 judges from more than 2,300 entries in four different categories. Valerio Spada received a $25,000 cash prize courtesy of HP Indigo Digital Press.
The panel of international judges also chose four books as the best in their respective categories – Fine Art, Documentary, Travel, and Student. Each winner received a $5,000 cash prize courtesy of Adobe®. Lead PBN 2011 Juror Darius Himes discusses the category winners.

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Blurb's Photography Book Now Contest

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BlurbPBNContest
Only two more weeks remain in Blurb’s Photography Book Now contest.
Blurb books must be submitted by 11:59 PDT July 15.
Categories include Fine Art, Editorial, and Portfolio.
The Grand Prize is $25,000.
Jurors include Darius Himes, Monica Allende, David Fahey, Michael Mack, Lesley A Martin, Susan Meisalas, Erin O’Tool, Martin Parr, Judith Puckett-Rinella, and Brian Smith.
Get the inside scoop from the jurors here.
What makes a winning photo book? Darius Himes (publisher)
Which photo books have been most influential? David Fahey (dealer)
What books should you read on a desert island? Brian Smith (photographer)
What are last year’s PBN winners are up to now?
Learn more about the the PBN Contest here.
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Darius Himes – Inside Photography Book Now on PhotoEye

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PBN’s lead judge, Darius Himes, co-founder of Radius Books, is interviewed by photo-eye Director, Rixon Reed.
Here are a few choice excerpts.
“Creating a successful book involves editing and sequencing and design all in light and in line with an overriding concept that has to be determined ahead of time. Asking yourself ahead of time, “Who is this book for?” and “What am I trying to accomplish with this book?” is extremely important.
I think that print-on-demand books have become so popular for two main reasons. First, they open up a major industry to the amateur: publishing. For the average American, it’s novel and fun to take your photos and lay them out in a book, push a button and a week later get something that looks pretty professional. That’s fun!
For the photography “professional” or art photographer, it’s also fun, but in a slightly more serious way. Most photographers dream of seeing their work in print (for a variety of reasons) and this technology opens up a whole world to them. It’s the publishing world made accessible.
But what most photographers don’t realize is that there are a whole host of people in the publishing world that work hard behind the scenes on different aspects of books, and when those people aren’t included—designers, editors, typographers, marketers, and distributors—they often end up with an inferior product.
Printing a book with an offset printer is different than using the HP Indigo printing process that is currently the standard for print-on-demand books … If you expect a print-on-demand book to look like, or have the range of materials, that an offset printed book has, you’ll be disappointed. … each has their advantages and disadvantages.
There’s no print-on-demand “author” that has sold 1000s of copies of their book (that I’m aware of). If they had, they would have made more money using offset printing and selling the project to a publisher. Again, it’s the quantity game.”
Read the whole interview on photo-eye.
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