As I wrote and published a book about MSU, or 12 critical mistakes
Three years ago I decided to make a book about the high-rise of Moscow State University on the Lenin Hills - a large, illustrated, with the involvement of graduates, etc. The history of this work is a real movie (sometimes farce, sometimes horror) with a bunch of dramatic turns. Extra-successful crowdfunding, a wide audience, many enthusiasts, a complete failure with the planning, collecting all the possible rakes and as a result an absolute package of budget and time. In general, the classic story - that's why I decided to tell it here.
TL; DR - if you want to write non-fiction for money - just forget. But if the soul asks for adventure, life seems too simple - go for it! You will get a lot of unnecessary connections and discover a lot of flaws in yourself. But it will be fun :-)
')
Yes, and this is a longrid; The approximate reading time is 20 minutes.
When I was studying at the law school, I often visited the high-rise building of Moscow State University (Main Building) with the aim of dining in the canteen. Then, in graduate school, I was lodged in a hostel inside the building, and I spent there a wonderful year and a half. Not to say that the building is very comfortable by today's standards, but MGUshniki are in love with it, and I, of course, was no exception. I even tried to find something about the history of the building, its architecture, but I did not find anything fresh from the 50s: neither photographs, nor myths, nor unknown facts about the high-rise modern writers were interested. “This is my chance!” I decided.
At that moment I was not working all the time and was interrupted by one-time orders in my own part - I helped start-ups with Russian legislation. There was a lot of free time, especially in the summer, and I didn’t want to write a dissertation at all, so I decided to take a break for a couple of months and quickly make a photo book about the Main Building. The idea: to quickly hold crowdfunding, if it burns out - to compile the book itself from online sources, add photos and - voila!
I decided to crowdfund on Planet, because there were many similar book projects. The crowdfunding campaign proved surprisingly successful. I did not quite understand how this works, but what is called, the client went. True, I didn’t calculate the budget badly and initially stated the amount of 130,000 rubles - “this will definitely be enough.” This bar was eventually taken in three days. Of course, after that the activity of donors (“backers”) decreased, but we still collected almost half a million rubles and entered the top of the site in terms of recapturing the amount claimed (“top losers who cannot count”).
The success of the crowdfunding campaign was, of course, a huge and quite successful target audience. Nearly 10,000 students live in the Main Building, an average of 4-5 years; it turns out that there are at least 60-80,000 MGU students scattered around the world who lived in this building and managed to fall in love with it. No other high-rise was reflected in the lives of so many people. At the same time, the crowdfunding law was confirmed 100%: if you want to raise money, bring your audience to the site. Local backers (from other projects) contributed at best 2-3% of the total amount; fees provided primarily MGUniki, who came to my links.
Of course, it is difficult to write letters to strangers, especially letters asking to give money, but mailings gave the maximum effect. Especially helped by mailings to graduates of faculties living in the building itself (mekhmat, geologists, geographers, physicists and chemists). Unfortunately, not all faculties had connections with graduates and a lively community - most even the educational part does not keep contacts of their graduates (and why do we need an endowment - they still finance from the budget!) I had to look for curators and heads of certain courses that are already more less widely sent my calls.
Good effect gave blog posts. Firstly, top bloggers like Alexander Popov or Artemy Lebedev (unfortunately, architecture connoisseur Ilya Varlamov refused to help - Ilya, so be that) posted posts about the book. Secondly, I wrote several thematic articles in LiveJournal communities about history and Soviet architecture - in 2015 there were still quite a lot of people in them.
The remaining channels yielded no results. For example, I made two hefty banners and hung it on the fence of the university before large-scale celebrations on May 9: from each of them, a maximum of five people came + the police quickly cut them off. The favorite reps contests and publications on faculty sites turned out to be useless as well.
Our unlucky banner looked something like this.
Another of the important factors: our first layout designer (well done!) Prepared an early prototype of the book for the beginning of the campaign. It helped: at first, the backers saw with their own eyes what format the book we want to make and how it will differ from the “competitors”
As a result of the campaign, I had almost half a million rubles in my hands, and I was sure that this would be more than enough for materials and for printing a book. At that time, a lot of people sent photographs to me, according to the text, I had already reached an agreement with Nikolai Kruzhkov (a specialist in construction history and the author of the book “Stalin’s High Rise Moscow”), and also had a preliminary discussion with a couple of architects' friends. It remained only to remove the building in the photo, but then again lucky: I wrote a famous architectural photographer Margarita Fedina, who, as it turned out, had already shot GZ a couple of years ago. She offered to share photos for free.
It was August in the yard. I was sure that the book would be ready in three months and had already mentally calculated my millions of money and kilometers of fame.
On closer inspection, everything turned out to be much more complicated. First of all, almost all the sent photos were taken from the same angle. It looks good in the university instagramme, but not suitable for the book. Secondly, I categorically did not like the style of existing books, I wanted something less formal, respectively, the texts also had to be reworked. Thirdly, it was not possible to agree with the architect (unfortunately, they are not taught at Moscow State University). The cherry on the cake: architectural photographs of Margarita Fedina covered a maximum of half of the building (they were not allowed to go further).
Everything else, the project began to take away most of my time, and I was forced to abandon several projects. It hit the bill, and I decided that I had to learn to delegate. I hired a manager.
From the height of current experience, it seems strange that I, having experience in writing a dissertation, took up such a project. After all, firstly, no one can write a dissertation on an unfamiliar subject in three months; secondly, no manager to write a dissertation will help. As my practice has shown, only one person can cope with a thesis and a good book who will closely control the whole process from beginning to end. Do you want to do well - do it yourself.
A student of journalism acted as a manager; At first I paid her a salary, then, as the tasks were exhausted, I switched to paying for the actual output. She tried to work in good faith, but the work turned out to be too difficult: with all my desire, I could not tell where to look for the material and what to do with it; At times our project was like a blind man wandering through an architectural desert. Of course, we immediately downloaded a bunch of materials from the Internet, but, firstly, they have become boring to everyone, and secondly, there was little that could be used in the book because of copyright (a separate discussion about this). They interviewed the older tenants of the building, but they learned a little - since the time of construction the life of the tenants has changed a lot, and the memory is a relative thing.
Manager Diana keeps tracing paper (drawing of 1953) in the Technical Archive of Moscow State University
By academic habit, I decided to go through Soviet magazines and books. Planned economics and corresponding planned journalism had their advantages: it was made to write about important events absolutely everywhere, to broadcast, as they say, from every iron. As a result, almost all the journals in 1948-1953 told about high-rises, sometimes in the format of whole special issues (“Science and Life”, for example, or “Technique of Youth”). By the way, when Stalin died at the beginning of 1953, all the journals also wrote about this absolutely absolutly - the mourning number of Murzilki still remains a hit on Avito.
Not everything was easy to find. So, after tightening the nuts at the turn of the 40-50s, many magazines closed down; In this confusion, whole years disappeared from the libraries. Yes, imagine, there are Soviet journals that cannot be found even in Leninka - like “USSR in construction” or “Moscow City economy” of the early 50s! I had to look for the right copies at Avito (1500-3000 rubles per piece) and ask the sellers to photograph the necessary pages. Of course, not for nothing.
Yes, imagine: there is a journal, but it is not in libraries
Topics high-rises in Soviet journals are presented mostly poorly printed and, even worse, completely identical illustrations. Official photos were staged through, depicting beautiful people in the pathos of the interiors. I switched to foreign magazines and found a lot of funny photos of the life of the 50s; surprisingly, the photos of private foreigners and foreign interns turned out to be the most informative: unlike ours, they did not have an internal censor.
Just for comparison
In parallel with digging in old magazines, I arranged with the photographer Margarita to photograph the rest of the building. As befits a boy raised bywolves in a university environment, I wrote a great letter to the administration with the project’s benefits, calendar, guarantees and requests. Sent and waited for an answer.
Two months have passed. First, the assistant was on vacation, then the rector himself, then someone else there. Finally, they informed me that my letter was written to one of the vice-rectors. I waited for him to leave his vacation, and went to the reception.
I don’t want to go into the content of the conversation that has taken place - let me just say that it was held in a raised voice. University, they say, he will write any book, and amateur here is not needed. I flew out of the office, and afterwards a letter flew to the faculty - figure out why the teacher was engaged in this nonsense.
To say that I was upset means to say nothing. I shared my pain with the graduates and here, instead of hugging and comforting, I was cursed again. The main complaint was reduced to why I generally useful to coordinate anything and spent on it for three months instead of engaging in business. I thought. Several other acquaintances in the administration, to whom I molested, said, in general, the same thing: why did you even need permission? After all, it still will not give until you show the result. Therefore, in any case, it is necessary to begin with the shooting.
Well, shooting is so shooting.
You may ask: is it true, why did you decide to coordinate everything in advance? In fact, this is not because I am a human robot, accustomed to acting on instructions, no! Simply architectural photography itself is a very slow procedure, eliminating unnecessary fuss.
First of all, for shooting interiors requires a large dynamic range. The reader should see in the photo and the contents of the shaded corners, and the shape of the lampshades included lamps. The areas of the spaces that we filmed started from 500 m2, so we could not install our own light. Consequently, the technology of exposure bracketing remains - from one point several photos are taken at different exposures, and then the result is combined using presets in a special editor. This is similar to HDR, which is now absolutely everywhere, only HDR is usually done in three frames, and we have more than a dozen of them.
Since it is impossible to take ten identical photographs, including those on long exposures, we need a tripod. Moreover, it is big, because we will be shooting on a hefty camera, which stands at the level of human eyes (our interiors are designed for this type). And, of course, we will need to turn on all the available overhead lights (ideally, put the same light bulbs in all the lamps, but this, of course, is fantasy). As a result, we get a very long shooting (5 minutes per frame), we carry large cameras and tripods with us, as well as everywhere we demand to turn on the whole world. And without coordination, so that you understand, we do not even open the door.
But the problem began to be solved slowly. Somewhere (library, club) met with local heads and they turned out to be benevolent and adequate people. Somewhere they used student wit: for example, in the lobby of the club we simply asked electricians to turn on the light with the necessary intonation - they say, we are shooting. They took and turned on, and we all took off. Somewhere I had to go into the premises insolently, seizing the moment, and shoot until the guard came. As a result, we filmed the entire building from the inside, except for technical premises, sports halls and, of course, the university administration. The administration is a pity, there are many artifacts in it - from Soviet paintings to jasper columns near the rector's office. But not at this time.
Working moments (hello dontsov !)
The process of shooting that same elevator and the result. The camera on a tripod stood inside the elevator, and the photographer, sitting under the tripod (not to get into the frame), illuminated the walls of the elevator with a flashlight. On a long exposure turned out very badly.
I almost immediately agreed with the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum, the owner of a large collection of Soviet photos. They were as adequate as possible: they sent a huge archive with thumbnails, and later, before printing, they provided hairej on request.
With other museums turned out not so smooth. I sent a manager to negotiate. Calls:
- Yes, they have a lot of photos. But they only give a look, you can not take anything with you.
- At least you can sfotkat?
- No, they are watching this. I can scan. One scan - 3000 rubles.
Although at that time I did not spend half the money, 3,000 rubles per scan already seemed transcendental. Moreover, while the layout is not ready, I didn’t know which of the photos would fall into the book at all, and which were needed only for previews.
As a result, a year later, when we finished filming in the building and started the layout, I decided to go to the museum again. It turned out that both museums and archives, in the overwhelming majority, are budget organizations. They are obliged to provide their materials to other state employees, including scientists like us. But since the manager positioned herself as a private buyer, they immediately seized upon her as a source of extrabudgetary funds. And there was something to do - to give them a confirmation letter from the leadership of the university.
One of the theses devoted to MSU. 50s, reading hall of the RSL in Khimki
So I opened huge museum funds for architecture, as well as my own talent as a negotiator. Subsequently, the deleted archives even sent me scans to e-mail without any letters and contracts.
With photos I stepped on another rake, and, despite my legal education, I did not know about this feature of our copyright before working on a book. It turns out that a huge number of Soviet works (both texts and photos) are not published, since the rights to them belong to no one to whom. In the literal sense.
Look: in the 50s the rights to photographs were only five years old from the moment of shooting, and the absolute majority of the photographers were correspondents and were shot on request. Accordingly, all rights were immediately transferred to their employers (newspapers, magazines, etc.), in other words to the state. Because of this, no one particularly sweats about fixing rights - anyway, in five years they will be exhausted. As a result, for example, in illustrated magazines, photographers were often indicated at the end with a comma-separated list, and now it is impossible to restore authorship of photos.
Then, at some point, the USSR began to ratify international conventions on copyright, and the terms of protection began to grow: first up to 25 years, then up to 50, then up to 70. As a result, many works passed into the public domain several times and back: the most famous example is the series “The Master and Margarita”, which was filmed on the basis of a free work, and when they were ready to be released, the heirs had already returned their copyright to themselves.
In general, the situation with photographs is as follows: first, you can reprint them from the old newspaper for free (if you wish, there is no one to pay, and there is no newspaper for a long time, and the author cannot be found). Secondly, you can find a negative in some archive and scan it - already for money. Neither the first nor the second option does not remove the risks: the heirs of the author can always arise and demand their share. And what is interesting is that if the heirs prove authorship, the court will support them! After all, the archive / museum / magazine is unlikely to have an agreement with the author, rather, just the original negatives (which do not give any rights). As a result, most publishers are afraid to take such (so-called "orphan") content.
Since I was my own self-publishing company, I decided to take a chance on “orphan” photos: in the end, it is unlikely that anyone will be seriously tried. I also acquired some of the photos from museums and archives, and some I found in the public domain. Unfortunately, I practically did not use the work under copyright - I didn’t draw for money. For example, the photographs of the famous Henri Cartier-Bresson, who also shot Moscow State University, belong to the oldest photo agency Magnum, which never makes discounts to anyone.
Those photos of Cartier-Bresson (for informational purposes only)
During the search for information and typing was the first year. Graduates slowly began to grumble in response to my letters about the next postponement. I decided to please them with a little blood and make the cover while the main material is not ready yet.
Through my friends, I found an excellent illustrator Natasha , who became interested in the project and was ready to take on moderate money. At that moment I dreamed of the architectural part of my project and therefore I planned a collage of characteristic elements of the epoch: people, locomotives, airplanes should have been shaped into the shape of a GZ silhouette.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think that the illustrator works in his own style, and Natashin’s style implied graphics, not photo collages. And the 50s were just the time for the boom of color photography: the graphics almost completely disappeared from the pages of magazines that filled the faces of smiling milkmaids and steelworkers. As a result, we don’t associate these years with graphics, unlike, say, the 1930s. Natasha tried very hard, but in the first version neither the Main Building, nor its era were read.
The first version of the cover
Then, in search of inspiration, I came across the collages of Matthias Jung, and an idea occurred to me: to make up the silhouette of the Main Building from elements of other “Stalinok” to demonstrate its relationship with the monuments of this period.
One of the works of Mathias Young
That's what happened in the end
When I showed the result on the MSU forum, the majority of the reviews were, let's say, disappointed:
Of course, I was upset and for a long time I could not understand that I was still not satisfied with the graduates. At some point, I realized that the reason was in the target audience of the book, or rather, in the wrong definition of this very audience. I planned the cover primarily for hipsters, visitors to the architectural departments of bookstores. But it turned out that the main reader of my book is a graduate of Moscow State University 30-50 years old, who takes this book as a gift to his friends, possibly to his parents who lived in the hostel of the Main Building. And for them everything in this cover seemed to be wrong: Stalin, pink color, incomprehensible references to the architecture of other buildings. They needed, on the contrary, something as traditional and as pathetic as possible (and preferably without Soviet contexts).
Stalemate: on the one hand, there was an unequivocal request for a new cover; on the other hand, I did not want to give up the existing one, which personally suited me completely and in which a lot of money was invested. Especially since the cover has already been rhymed stamping on the binding and half-title (pages with pictures at the beginning of each chapter). I even thought about printing a book with two cover options, but it was too expensive. Moreover, the dust jacket, in general, is a consumable: it is needed to protect the book in the store and attract the attention of visitors, and before that it was even accepted to be thrown out after purchase (now, however, many leave it).
Then came the original way out: to make a book with a two-sided dust jacket, which readers can turn to your liking. This, on the one hand, was much cheaper than making two different covers; on the other hand, it allowed us to show additional loyalty to the audience (“you asked for a new cover - we did it! Specially for you to come to another!”) Subsequently, I instructed the stores to also put books in both covers on the shelf - buyers had theillusion of of choice.
When the text was sufficiently formed, and the photos accumulated indecently (about 50 gigabytes), I decided to start the layout. “Layout is easy,” I thought, having considerable (as it seemed to me) experience working on a student magazine and printed books. But everything did not go according to plan, and the layout finally became one of the main expenses.
The layout can be very roughly compared with cooking. Say, you often cook cheesecakes and know that one serving will require 250 grams of cottage cheese, two eggs and 50 grams of flour. Now imagine that with this experience you are sent to the kitchen, where there are five kilograms of onion, a package of butter, a plucked dove, a bag of rice and a brick. From this you were asked to prepare a dessert for 12 people. (Do not swear, could not come up with a better analogy).
That's how I felt myself when I was faced with the realities of the layout of the book. Firstly, my material consisted of highly disparate content, including multi-format color and b / w photos, frames from videos and scans of Soviet books; Moreover, the ratio of content in different chapters was different. Secondly, I did not have any idea what book format to choose and what size it would be. Thirdly, I absolutely did not like those references that I met.
In a good way, I needed a real art director who would be able to fully assemble the concept of the book in my head and then, with my help, collect and create content for it. I began to look for options for friends.
The first coder was not bad. The problem is that he immediately offered to work for free “for the portfolio”, and I agreed. In fact, layout is a very tedious process that can be briefly described (don't be afraid, no more food analogies) like the endless redoing of what has been altered. Somewhere added a line, and the picture left after five pages. And somewhere the illustrator does not want to fit into the frame of the image and the text has to be transferred to another strip. As a result, the coder made a piece of work, minimally suitable for the portfolio, but not at all suitable for the book, and disappeared.
I already found the first version of the layout of the Second typesetter (more precisely, the typesetter) for money, but it turned out that she had never done such serious things from scratch. It turned out without a zest, although very conscientiously (the only designer in my memory who always follows deadlines. A great rarity). I tried to criticize the result, but it got worse. I realized that I need someone with a different qualification. The advance, of course, did not require back.
Second option
The third coder was (and still is) a real professional, a Designer with a capital letter. However, during the project he worked in the largest design studio, and if at first he was able to find time for the weekend, then as he grew, the tasks became more and more lengthy. In addition, it was felt that he was much closer to the modernist style, and not the pathos of the books of the 50s: for example, he insisted that black and white photographs be painted in gradients. The material was desperately resisting.
Third option
It seems that I quickly describe everything, but in reality, a year has passed behind these ups and downs of the layout. Of course, I tried not to waste time, got some new materials, the unsigned text rules. But subscribers already started to worry seriously.
From the very beginning of the project, I decided to maintain maximum communication with graduate Becker. I got an account on the mailing service, began to regularly notify them about the project news. But over time, news appeared less and less, and more and more stinging answers began to come. Bekers appeared regularly in public or on planet.ru, who shouted “they threw us! There will be no books! ”, And if I did not react promptly (within 1-2 hours), the srach began in the comments.
For Moscow, 400,000 rubles is not such a significant amount to acquire the reputation of a rogue for life; nevertheless, I was accused of stealing money more than once. There is nothing to be done: probably, when the deadlines are so serious, people simply have no other way to put pressure on the creator of the project. I returned the contributions to a couple of the most persistent commentators - this turned out to be the right decision. The supervisor, who was observing all of this, was either jokingly or seriously sentencing me to be put to prison sooner or later.
However, most of the campaign participants behaved very decently. Even when after three years from the beginning of the project I repeated “we are finishing the layout, we are finishing the layout”, many sent not irritated letters, but words of support. Thank them for that!
By the way, in addition to the book, participants in the campaign on the "Planet" relied on merch - t-shirts, posters and postcards. So: NEVER make T-shirts as an extra merch! The variety of sizes (requested from XXS to XXXXXL) greatly complicates the logistics; besides clothes, unlike printing, can not be sent cheap parcel (only expensive package). If I could repeat the campaign again, I would point out some dimensionless canvas bags and greatly simplify the task.
T-shirt project. Lomonosov is depicted (monument in front of the Main building) in the pose of Buddy Christ from Dogma
In the end, coder number 3 advised his colleague, who was relatively free and agreed to take on my project. At the same time, firstly, his design option was perfect for a book on style; secondly, after the epic with the layout, I myself had some understanding of the process and prepared a page plan and the materials that were prioritized.
The final version of the layout
Even in this format, almost a year passed from the beginning of the layout to the publication of the book. At first we agreed on the layout. Then the coder made a draft version for a long time, after which I searched for new photos and modified the text. Perfectionism did not allow putting pictures into a book just like that, in different quality and with scanning defects - so we processed each of the 1000 photos, removing creases, artifacts and a typographical raster from them.
At the same time, I concluded contracts with copyright holders, searched for materials in optimal quality - in general, did the remaining boring technical work. After finishing the layout, I could not resist and printed out a couple of books on a color printer to boast to readers.
As a result, three years after the start of the crowdfunding campaign, I reached the press. I was offered contacts with all kinds of printing houses (from small copy-centers to large-scale productions), but I already had some experience and understood that such a large order (one and a half thousand books of large format) can only be completed by a full-fledged printing plant. I went to the book shop and studied all the products presented there: following the results I selected three combines (in Riga, Moscow and Tver), which I liked by the quality of printing, good paper and the absence of jambs.
This is how a large printing production looks like, where books are made.
After a request for commercial offers, the Latvians unexpectedly won. At the same time, the cost still came out much higher than I expected in 2015 - under a million rubles. It turned out to be very expensive fabric binding, about a third of the cost of the book (it is clear why it is so rarely done). Of course, demanded money and full-color printing, and high-quality European coated paper. But surprisingly, the fabric tab (bookmark) turned out to be quite cheap: it costs almost nothing. Publishers often throw dust into the eyes of such trifles.
Unstitched sheets of the book in the printing
The printing itself in a huge printing house took no more than a couple of days. And then the book went to Moscow - or rather, to the logistics center in Domodedovo - about a month more. Then I made another fatal mistake: I hired a car to transport books by volume, not by weight. As a result, the small “Porter” naturally bent from a half tons and the rear doors stopped closing. We, of course, took the books, but more than 40 km / h did not even accelerate along the Warsaw highway.
After delivery, I began to organize the presentation of the book. The free hall for 400-500 people could not be found, and as a result I divided the presentation into several parts: for backers, “just” subscribers, and for all those interested. By the way, it turned out that of those who showed interest after the crowd campaign (subscribed to groups of books in social networks, overcame me with messages, etc.) only every third bought a book - the process was more important for the rest than the result.
Speaking of mail. At the beginning of the campaign, I foolishly promised delivery in Russia. Why foolishly: firstly, during the crowdfunding, many have moved, and our backers were scattered around the country. Secondly, delivery to some regions turned out to be quite expensive: for example, in some Siberian cities in spring and autumn, while the ice had not yet risen / had not yet melted, it could only be reached by air, which is reflected in tariffs. Thirdly, I did not anticipate what kind of hemorrhoids it is: pack wrappers and parcels, carry them to the post office, wait until the employee reads everything, etc. In total, I sent about 70 parcels and spent several days on it.
At some point, the parcels and parcels lay absolutely in all corners.
Part of the books I gave to stores for sale. I remember when we printed scientific literature at the department, the biggest problem was to sell it; we handed over the books to the store at cost (100-150 rubles), and with the distributor's commission (stores in stock and ships to stores) and the seller’s price was 450-500 rubles.
With the book about MSU everything turned out better. The higher the price of the book, the lower the relative commission of the distributor: as a result I handed over the book for 1400-1500 rubles, and it costs about 2000-2500 rubles in a store. However, the long sales cycle is frustrating: until the distributor picks up the book, and while the sellers buy it, sell it and return the money through the chain, it takes up to six months. As a result, sales are transformed into money with a huge lag. Track the dynamics of sales, respond to indicators in individual stores - for the book industry is nothing more than science fiction; for now, stores are not able to even quickly replenish stocks of books. As a result, on the same "Ozone" book periodically drops out of sales for a couple of weeks (stocks are over, delivery and posting take 2-3 weeks).
Initially, I considered the book not only as a tribute to MSU, but also as a successful and easy business enterprise. However, this was not the case. Later I realized: if nobody has done something good and necessary, then there are pitfalls. So here: the absence of a book about the building of Moscow State University was explained by the closeness of the university, the unprofitability of the whole project and the death of the market of illustrated books.
The cost of the book ultimately amounted to more than 1000 rubles, excluding shipping, despite the fact that participants in the crowd campaign paid 900 each. . The book ate a huge amount of nerves, time and energy; in fact, I spent three years working on this project, and for a long time I will not be able to recover my costs. According to my calculations, only the third edition I will finally be able to get any compensation - if I have the strength to reach it.
Total project budget
On the other hand, the book brought me to a huge number of interesting and caring people. I saw with my own eyes how the book publishing, the museum industry works, I got a lot of experience in photography. I love to learn something new, and architecture has become a wonderful hobby. Besides, I finally got what I missed - a book about the Main Building of Moscow State University, the way I always wanted.
TL; DR - if you want to write non-fiction for money - just forget. But if the soul asks for adventure, life seems too simple - go for it! You will get a lot of unnecessary connections and discover a lot of flaws in yourself. But it will be fun :-)
')
Yes, and this is a longrid; The approximate reading time is 20 minutes.
1. The idea
When I was studying at the law school, I often visited the high-rise building of Moscow State University (Main Building) with the aim of dining in the canteen. Then, in graduate school, I was lodged in a hostel inside the building, and I spent there a wonderful year and a half. Not to say that the building is very comfortable by today's standards, but MGUshniki are in love with it, and I, of course, was no exception. I even tried to find something about the history of the building, its architecture, but I did not find anything fresh from the 50s: neither photographs, nor myths, nor unknown facts about the high-rise modern writers were interested. “This is my chance!” I decided.
At that moment I was not working all the time and was interrupted by one-time orders in my own part - I helped start-ups with Russian legislation. There was a lot of free time, especially in the summer, and I didn’t want to write a dissertation at all, so I decided to take a break for a couple of months and quickly make a photo book about the Main Building. The idea: to quickly hold crowdfunding, if it burns out - to compile the book itself from online sources, add photos and - voila!
First mistake: assess the complexity of a large project in the absence of experience.
2. crowdfunding
I decided to crowdfund on Planet, because there were many similar book projects. The crowdfunding campaign proved surprisingly successful. I did not quite understand how this works, but what is called, the client went. True, I didn’t calculate the budget badly and initially stated the amount of 130,000 rubles - “this will definitely be enough.” This bar was eventually taken in three days. Of course, after that the activity of donors (“backers”) decreased, but we still collected almost half a million rubles and entered the top of the site in terms of recapturing the amount claimed (“top losers who cannot count”).
The second mistake: to estimate the cost of a large project without reference to the indicators.
The success of the crowdfunding campaign was, of course, a huge and quite successful target audience. Nearly 10,000 students live in the Main Building, an average of 4-5 years; it turns out that there are at least 60-80,000 MGU students scattered around the world who lived in this building and managed to fall in love with it. No other high-rise was reflected in the lives of so many people. At the same time, the crowdfunding law was confirmed 100%: if you want to raise money, bring your audience to the site. Local backers (from other projects) contributed at best 2-3% of the total amount; fees provided primarily MGUniki, who came to my links.
Of course, it is difficult to write letters to strangers, especially letters asking to give money, but mailings gave the maximum effect. Especially helped by mailings to graduates of faculties living in the building itself (mekhmat, geologists, geographers, physicists and chemists). Unfortunately, not all faculties had connections with graduates and a lively community - most even the educational part does not keep contacts of their graduates (and why do we need an endowment - they still finance from the budget!) I had to look for curators and heads of certain courses that are already more less widely sent my calls.
Good effect gave blog posts. Firstly, top bloggers like Alexander Popov or Artemy Lebedev (unfortunately, architecture connoisseur Ilya Varlamov refused to help - Ilya, so be that) posted posts about the book. Secondly, I wrote several thematic articles in LiveJournal communities about history and Soviet architecture - in 2015 there were still quite a lot of people in them.
The remaining channels yielded no results. For example, I made two hefty banners and hung it on the fence of the university before large-scale celebrations on May 9: from each of them, a maximum of five people came + the police quickly cut them off. The favorite reps contests and publications on faculty sites turned out to be useless as well.
Our unlucky banner looked something like this.
Another of the important factors: our first layout designer (well done!) Prepared an early prototype of the book for the beginning of the campaign. It helped: at first, the backers saw with their own eyes what format the book we want to make and how it will differ from the “competitors”
3. Quest
As a result of the campaign, I had almost half a million rubles in my hands, and I was sure that this would be more than enough for materials and for printing a book. At that time, a lot of people sent photographs to me, according to the text, I had already reached an agreement with Nikolai Kruzhkov (a specialist in construction history and the author of the book “Stalin’s High Rise Moscow”), and also had a preliminary discussion with a couple of architects' friends. It remained only to remove the building in the photo, but then again lucky: I wrote a famous architectural photographer Margarita Fedina, who, as it turned out, had already shot GZ a couple of years ago. She offered to share photos for free.
It was August in the yard. I was sure that the book would be ready in three months and had already mentally calculated my millions of money and kilometers of fame.
On closer inspection, everything turned out to be much more complicated. First of all, almost all the sent photos were taken from the same angle. It looks good in the university instagramme, but not suitable for the book. Secondly, I categorically did not like the style of existing books, I wanted something less formal, respectively, the texts also had to be reworked. Thirdly, it was not possible to agree with the architect (unfortunately, they are not taught at Moscow State University). The cherry on the cake: architectural photographs of Margarita Fedina covered a maximum of half of the building (they were not allowed to go further).
Everything else, the project began to take away most of my time, and I was forced to abandon several projects. It hit the bill, and I decided that I had to learn to delegate. I hired a manager.
From the height of current experience, it seems strange that I, having experience in writing a dissertation, took up such a project. After all, firstly, no one can write a dissertation on an unfamiliar subject in three months; secondly, no manager to write a dissertation will help. As my practice has shown, only one person can cope with a thesis and a good book who will closely control the whole process from beginning to end. Do you want to do well - do it yourself.
Third mistake: the manager is useless where there is non-delegable work or work that cannot be paralleled.
A student of journalism acted as a manager; At first I paid her a salary, then, as the tasks were exhausted, I switched to paying for the actual output. She tried to work in good faith, but the work turned out to be too difficult: with all my desire, I could not tell where to look for the material and what to do with it; At times our project was like a blind man wandering through an architectural desert. Of course, we immediately downloaded a bunch of materials from the Internet, but, firstly, they have become boring to everyone, and secondly, there was little that could be used in the book because of copyright (a separate discussion about this). They interviewed the older tenants of the building, but they learned a little - since the time of construction the life of the tenants has changed a lot, and the memory is a relative thing.
Manager Diana keeps tracing paper (drawing of 1953) in the Technical Archive of Moscow State University
4. Soviet press
By academic habit, I decided to go through Soviet magazines and books. Planned economics and corresponding planned journalism had their advantages: it was made to write about important events absolutely everywhere, to broadcast, as they say, from every iron. As a result, almost all the journals in 1948-1953 told about high-rises, sometimes in the format of whole special issues (“Science and Life”, for example, or “Technique of Youth”). By the way, when Stalin died at the beginning of 1953, all the journals also wrote about this absolutely absolutly - the mourning number of Murzilki still remains a hit on Avito.
Not everything was easy to find. So, after tightening the nuts at the turn of the 40-50s, many magazines closed down; In this confusion, whole years disappeared from the libraries. Yes, imagine, there are Soviet journals that cannot be found even in Leninka - like “USSR in construction” or “Moscow City economy” of the early 50s! I had to look for the right copies at Avito (1500-3000 rubles per piece) and ask the sellers to photograph the necessary pages. Of course, not for nothing.
Yes, imagine: there is a journal, but it is not in libraries
Topics high-rises in Soviet journals are presented mostly poorly printed and, even worse, completely identical illustrations. Official photos were staged through, depicting beautiful people in the pathos of the interiors. I switched to foreign magazines and found a lot of funny photos of the life of the 50s; surprisingly, the photos of private foreigners and foreign interns turned out to be the most informative: unlike ours, they did not have an internal censor.
Just for comparison
Unfortunately, 95% of interesting photos were not included in the book: either in quality or copyright. But I do not consider this time to be wasted: digging in old magazines delivered (and continues to deliver) to me a lot of pleasure. So - not a mistake!
5. Harmonization
In parallel with digging in old magazines, I arranged with the photographer Margarita to photograph the rest of the building. As befits a boy raised by
Two months have passed. First, the assistant was on vacation, then the rector himself, then someone else there. Finally, they informed me that my letter was written to one of the vice-rectors. I waited for him to leave his vacation, and went to the reception.
I don’t want to go into the content of the conversation that has taken place - let me just say that it was held in a raised voice. University, they say, he will write any book, and amateur here is not needed. I flew out of the office, and afterwards a letter flew to the faculty - figure out why the teacher was engaged in this nonsense.
To say that I was upset means to say nothing. I shared my pain with the graduates and here, instead of hugging and comforting, I was cursed again. The main complaint was reduced to why I generally useful to coordinate anything and spent on it for three months instead of engaging in business. I thought. Several other acquaintances in the administration, to whom I molested, said, in general, the same thing: why did you even need permission? After all, it still will not give until you show the result. Therefore, in any case, it is necessary to begin with the shooting.
Well, shooting is so shooting.
The fourth mistake: getting the highest approval for every sneeze is not necessary. If coordination is inevitable, you need to go with something material on your hands.
6. Shooting
You may ask: is it true, why did you decide to coordinate everything in advance? In fact, this is not because I am a human robot, accustomed to acting on instructions, no! Simply architectural photography itself is a very slow procedure, eliminating unnecessary fuss.
First of all, for shooting interiors requires a large dynamic range. The reader should see in the photo and the contents of the shaded corners, and the shape of the lampshades included lamps. The areas of the spaces that we filmed started from 500 m2, so we could not install our own light. Consequently, the technology of exposure bracketing remains - from one point several photos are taken at different exposures, and then the result is combined using presets in a special editor. This is similar to HDR, which is now absolutely everywhere, only HDR is usually done in three frames, and we have more than a dozen of them.
Since it is impossible to take ten identical photographs, including those on long exposures, we need a tripod. Moreover, it is big, because we will be shooting on a hefty camera, which stands at the level of human eyes (our interiors are designed for this type). And, of course, we will need to turn on all the available overhead lights (ideally, put the same light bulbs in all the lamps, but this, of course, is fantasy). As a result, we get a very long shooting (5 minutes per frame), we carry large cameras and tripods with us, as well as everywhere we demand to turn on the whole world. And without coordination, so that you understand, we do not even open the door.
But the problem began to be solved slowly. Somewhere (library, club) met with local heads and they turned out to be benevolent and adequate people. Somewhere they used student wit: for example, in the lobby of the club we simply asked electricians to turn on the light with the necessary intonation - they say, we are shooting. They took and turned on, and we all took off. Somewhere I had to go into the premises insolently, seizing the moment, and shoot until the guard came. As a result, we filmed the entire building from the inside, except for technical premises, sports halls and, of course, the university administration. The administration is a pity, there are many artifacts in it - from Soviet paintings to jasper columns near the rector's office. But not at this time.
Working moments (hello dontsov !)
Fifth mistake: on specialized shootings call specialized people. A photographer who only takes women without clothes has neither the equipment nor the skills to beautifully remove the de-energized elevator from the inside.
The process of shooting that same elevator and the result. The camera on a tripod stood inside the elevator, and the photographer, sitting under the tripod (not to get into the frame), illuminated the walls of the elevator with a flashlight. On a long exposure turned out very badly.
7. Museums and archives
I almost immediately agreed with the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum, the owner of a large collection of Soviet photos. They were as adequate as possible: they sent a huge archive with thumbnails, and later, before printing, they provided hairej on request.
With other museums turned out not so smooth. I sent a manager to negotiate. Calls:
- Yes, they have a lot of photos. But they only give a look, you can not take anything with you.
- At least you can sfotkat?
- No, they are watching this. I can scan. One scan - 3000 rubles.
Although at that time I did not spend half the money, 3,000 rubles per scan already seemed transcendental. Moreover, while the layout is not ready, I didn’t know which of the photos would fall into the book at all, and which were needed only for previews.
As a result, a year later, when we finished filming in the building and started the layout, I decided to go to the museum again. It turned out that both museums and archives, in the overwhelming majority, are budget organizations. They are obliged to provide their materials to other state employees, including scientists like us. But since the manager positioned herself as a private buyer, they immediately seized upon her as a source of extrabudgetary funds. And there was something to do - to give them a confirmation letter from the leadership of the university.
One of the theses devoted to MSU. 50s, reading hall of the RSL in Khimki
So I opened huge museum funds for architecture, as well as my own talent as a negotiator. Subsequently, the deleted archives even sent me scans to e-mail without any letters and contracts.
The sixth mistake: to discuss commercial cooperation, without having learned about all possible options.
8. Rights to photos
With photos I stepped on another rake, and, despite my legal education, I did not know about this feature of our copyright before working on a book. It turns out that a huge number of Soviet works (both texts and photos) are not published, since the rights to them belong to no one to whom. In the literal sense.
Look: in the 50s the rights to photographs were only five years old from the moment of shooting, and the absolute majority of the photographers were correspondents and were shot on request. Accordingly, all rights were immediately transferred to their employers (newspapers, magazines, etc.), in other words to the state. Because of this, no one particularly sweats about fixing rights - anyway, in five years they will be exhausted. As a result, for example, in illustrated magazines, photographers were often indicated at the end with a comma-separated list, and now it is impossible to restore authorship of photos.
Then, at some point, the USSR began to ratify international conventions on copyright, and the terms of protection began to grow: first up to 25 years, then up to 50, then up to 70. As a result, many works passed into the public domain several times and back: the most famous example is the series “The Master and Margarita”, which was filmed on the basis of a free work, and when they were ready to be released, the heirs had already returned their copyright to themselves.
In general, the situation with photographs is as follows: first, you can reprint them from the old newspaper for free (if you wish, there is no one to pay, and there is no newspaper for a long time, and the author cannot be found). Secondly, you can find a negative in some archive and scan it - already for money. Neither the first nor the second option does not remove the risks: the heirs of the author can always arise and demand their share. And what is interesting is that if the heirs prove authorship, the court will support them! After all, the archive / museum / magazine is unlikely to have an agreement with the author, rather, just the original negatives (which do not give any rights). As a result, most publishers are afraid to take such (so-called "orphan") content.
Since I was my own self-publishing company, I decided to take a chance on “orphan” photos: in the end, it is unlikely that anyone will be seriously tried. I also acquired some of the photos from museums and archives, and some I found in the public domain. Unfortunately, I practically did not use the work under copyright - I didn’t draw for money. For example, the photographs of the famous Henri Cartier-Bresson, who also shot Moscow State University, belong to the oldest photo agency Magnum, which never makes discounts to anyone.
Those photos of Cartier-Bresson (for informational purposes only)
9. Cover
During the search for information and typing was the first year. Graduates slowly began to grumble in response to my letters about the next postponement. I decided to please them with a little blood and make the cover while the main material is not ready yet.
Seventh mistake: never make a cover until you have written the book itself.
Through my friends, I found an excellent illustrator Natasha , who became interested in the project and was ready to take on moderate money. At that moment I dreamed of the architectural part of my project and therefore I planned a collage of characteristic elements of the epoch: people, locomotives, airplanes should have been shaped into the shape of a GZ silhouette.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think that the illustrator works in his own style, and Natashin’s style implied graphics, not photo collages. And the 50s were just the time for the boom of color photography: the graphics almost completely disappeared from the pages of magazines that filled the faces of smiling milkmaids and steelworkers. As a result, we don’t associate these years with graphics, unlike, say, the 1930s. Natasha tried very hard, but in the first version neither the Main Building, nor its era were read.
The first version of the cover
Then, in search of inspiration, I came across the collages of Matthias Jung, and an idea occurred to me: to make up the silhouette of the Main Building from elements of other “Stalinok” to demonstrate its relationship with the monuments of this period.
One of the works of Mathias Young
That's what happened in the end
When I showed the result on the MSU forum, the majority of the reviews were, let's say, disappointed:
Of course, I was upset and for a long time I could not understand that I was still not satisfied with the graduates. At some point, I realized that the reason was in the target audience of the book, or rather, in the wrong definition of this very audience. I planned the cover primarily for hipsters, visitors to the architectural departments of bookstores. But it turned out that the main reader of my book is a graduate of Moscow State University 30-50 years old, who takes this book as a gift to his friends, possibly to his parents who lived in the hostel of the Main Building. And for them everything in this cover seemed to be wrong: Stalin, pink color, incomprehensible references to the architecture of other buildings. They needed, on the contrary, something as traditional and as pathetic as possible (and preferably without Soviet contexts).
Stalemate: on the one hand, there was an unequivocal request for a new cover; on the other hand, I did not want to give up the existing one, which personally suited me completely and in which a lot of money was invested. Especially since the cover has already been rhymed stamping on the binding and half-title (pages with pictures at the beginning of each chapter). I even thought about printing a book with two cover options, but it was too expensive. Moreover, the dust jacket, in general, is a consumable: it is needed to protect the book in the store and attract the attention of visitors, and before that it was even accepted to be thrown out after purchase (now, however, many leave it).
Then came the original way out: to make a book with a two-sided dust jacket, which readers can turn to your liking. This, on the one hand, was much cheaper than making two different covers; on the other hand, it allowed us to show additional loyalty to the audience (“you asked for a new cover - we did it! Specially for you to come to another!”) Subsequently, I instructed the stores to also put books in both covers on the shelf - buyers had the
10. Layout
When the text was sufficiently formed, and the photos accumulated indecently (about 50 gigabytes), I decided to start the layout. “Layout is easy,” I thought, having considerable (as it seemed to me) experience working on a student magazine and printed books. But everything did not go according to plan, and the layout finally became one of the main expenses.
The layout can be very roughly compared with cooking. Say, you often cook cheesecakes and know that one serving will require 250 grams of cottage cheese, two eggs and 50 grams of flour. Now imagine that with this experience you are sent to the kitchen, where there are five kilograms of onion, a package of butter, a plucked dove, a bag of rice and a brick. From this you were asked to prepare a dessert for 12 people. (Do not swear, could not come up with a better analogy).
That's how I felt myself when I was faced with the realities of the layout of the book. Firstly, my material consisted of highly disparate content, including multi-format color and b / w photos, frames from videos and scans of Soviet books; Moreover, the ratio of content in different chapters was different. Secondly, I did not have any idea what book format to choose and what size it would be. Thirdly, I absolutely did not like those references that I met.
In a good way, I needed a real art director who would be able to fully assemble the concept of the book in my head and then, with my help, collect and create content for it. I began to look for options for friends.
The first coder was not bad. The problem is that he immediately offered to work for free “for the portfolio”, and I agreed. In fact, layout is a very tedious process that can be briefly described (don't be afraid, no more food analogies) like the endless redoing of what has been altered. Somewhere added a line, and the picture left after five pages. And somewhere the illustrator does not want to fit into the frame of the image and the text has to be transferred to another strip. As a result, the coder made a piece of work, minimally suitable for the portfolio, but not at all suitable for the book, and disappeared.
The eighth mistake: never entrust laborious work to enthusiasts
I already found the first version of the layout of the Second typesetter (more precisely, the typesetter) for money, but it turned out that she had never done such serious things from scratch. It turned out without a zest, although very conscientiously (the only designer in my memory who always follows deadlines. A great rarity). I tried to criticize the result, but it got worse. I realized that I need someone with a different qualification. The advance, of course, did not require back.
Second option
The third coder was (and still is) a real professional, a Designer with a capital letter. However, during the project he worked in the largest design studio, and if at first he was able to find time for the weekend, then as he grew, the tasks became more and more lengthy. In addition, it was felt that he was much closer to the modernist style, and not the pathos of the books of the 50s: for example, he insisted that black and white photographs be painted in gradients. The material was desperately resisting.
Third option
It seems that I quickly describe everything, but in reality, a year has passed behind these ups and downs of the layout. Of course, I tried not to waste time, got some new materials, the unsigned text rules. But subscribers already started to worry seriously.
9. Graduates gesture. Merch
From the very beginning of the project, I decided to maintain maximum communication with graduate Becker. I got an account on the mailing service, began to regularly notify them about the project news. But over time, news appeared less and less, and more and more stinging answers began to come. Bekers appeared regularly in public or on planet.ru, who shouted “they threw us! There will be no books! ”, And if I did not react promptly (within 1-2 hours), the srach began in the comments.
For Moscow, 400,000 rubles is not such a significant amount to acquire the reputation of a rogue for life; nevertheless, I was accused of stealing money more than once. There is nothing to be done: probably, when the deadlines are so serious, people simply have no other way to put pressure on the creator of the project. I returned the contributions to a couple of the most persistent commentators - this turned out to be the right decision. The supervisor, who was observing all of this, was either jokingly or seriously sentencing me to be put to prison sooner or later.
The ninth mistake: do not wait for the backers to put pressure on you: keep them informed even when there is essentially nothing to say
However, most of the campaign participants behaved very decently. Even when after three years from the beginning of the project I repeated “we are finishing the layout, we are finishing the layout”, many sent not irritated letters, but words of support. Thank them for that!
By the way, in addition to the book, participants in the campaign on the "Planet" relied on merch - t-shirts, posters and postcards. So: NEVER make T-shirts as an extra merch! The variety of sizes (requested from XXS to XXXXXL) greatly complicates the logistics; besides clothes, unlike printing, can not be sent cheap parcel (only expensive package). If I could repeat the campaign again, I would point out some dimensionless canvas bags and greatly simplify the task.
T-shirt project. Lomonosov is depicted (monument in front of the Main building) in the pose of Buddy Christ from Dogma
10. .
In the end, coder number 3 advised his colleague, who was relatively free and agreed to take on my project. At the same time, firstly, his design option was perfect for a book on style; secondly, after the epic with the layout, I myself had some understanding of the process and prepared a page plan and the materials that were prioritized.
The final version of the layout
Even in this format, almost a year passed from the beginning of the layout to the publication of the book. At first we agreed on the layout. Then the coder made a draft version for a long time, after which I searched for new photos and modified the text. Perfectionism did not allow putting pictures into a book just like that, in different quality and with scanning defects - so we processed each of the 1000 photos, removing creases, artifacts and a typographical raster from them.
At the same time, I concluded contracts with copyright holders, searched for materials in optimal quality - in general, did the remaining boring technical work. After finishing the layout, I could not resist and printed out a couple of books on a color printer to boast to readers.
As a result, three years after the start of the crowdfunding campaign, I reached the press. I was offered contacts with all kinds of printing houses (from small copy-centers to large-scale productions), but I already had some experience and understood that such a large order (one and a half thousand books of large format) can only be completed by a full-fledged printing plant. I went to the book shop and studied all the products presented there: following the results I selected three combines (in Riga, Moscow and Tver), which I liked by the quality of printing, good paper and the absence of jambs.
This is how a large printing production looks like, where books are made.
After a request for commercial offers, the Latvians unexpectedly won. At the same time, the cost still came out much higher than I expected in 2015 - under a million rubles. It turned out to be very expensive fabric binding, about a third of the cost of the book (it is clear why it is so rarely done). Of course, demanded money and full-color printing, and high-quality European coated paper. But surprisingly, the fabric tab (bookmark) turned out to be quite cheap: it costs almost nothing. Publishers often throw dust into the eyes of such trifles.
Unstitched sheets of the book in the printing
The printing itself in a huge printing house took no more than a couple of days. And then the book went to Moscow - or rather, to the logistics center in Domodedovo - about a month more. Then I made another fatal mistake: I hired a car to transport books by volume, not by weight. As a result, the small “Porter” naturally bent from a half tons and the rear doors stopped closing. We, of course, took the books, but more than 40 km / h did not even accelerate along the Warsaw highway.
Tenth mistake: never ship more than a ton to Porter :-)
11. Presentation and distribution. Sales
After delivery, I began to organize the presentation of the book. The free hall for 400-500 people could not be found, and as a result I divided the presentation into several parts: for backers, “just” subscribers, and for all those interested. By the way, it turned out that of those who showed interest after the crowd campaign (subscribed to groups of books in social networks, overcame me with messages, etc.) only every third bought a book - the process was more important for the rest than the result.
Speaking of mail. At the beginning of the campaign, I foolishly promised delivery in Russia. Why foolishly: firstly, during the crowdfunding, many have moved, and our backers were scattered around the country. Secondly, delivery to some regions turned out to be quite expensive: for example, in some Siberian cities in spring and autumn, while the ice had not yet risen / had not yet melted, it could only be reached by air, which is reflected in tariffs. Thirdly, I did not anticipate what kind of hemorrhoids it is: pack wrappers and parcels, carry them to the post office, wait until the employee reads everything, etc. In total, I sent about 70 parcels and spent several days on it.
The eleventh error: do not send the items by mail of Russia. Offer Pickup or Private Delivery Services
At some point, the parcels and parcels lay absolutely in all corners.
Part of the books I gave to stores for sale. I remember when we printed scientific literature at the department, the biggest problem was to sell it; we handed over the books to the store at cost (100-150 rubles), and with the distributor's commission (stores in stock and ships to stores) and the seller’s price was 450-500 rubles.
With the book about MSU everything turned out better. The higher the price of the book, the lower the relative commission of the distributor: as a result I handed over the book for 1400-1500 rubles, and it costs about 2000-2500 rubles in a store. However, the long sales cycle is frustrating: until the distributor picks up the book, and while the sellers buy it, sell it and return the money through the chain, it takes up to six months. As a result, sales are transformed into money with a huge lag. Track the dynamics of sales, respond to indicators in individual stores - for the book industry is nothing more than science fiction; for now, stores are not able to even quickly replenish stocks of books. As a result, on the same "Ozone" book periodically drops out of sales for a couple of weeks (stocks are over, delivery and posting take 2-3 weeks).
12. Results
Initially, I considered the book not only as a tribute to MSU, but also as a successful and easy business enterprise. However, this was not the case. Later I realized: if nobody has done something good and necessary, then there are pitfalls. So here: the absence of a book about the building of Moscow State University was explained by the closeness of the university, the unprofitability of the whole project and the death of the market of illustrated books.
The cost of the book ultimately amounted to more than 1000 rubles, excluding shipping, despite the fact that participants in the crowd campaign paid 900 each. . The book ate a huge amount of nerves, time and energy; in fact, I spent three years working on this project, and for a long time I will not be able to recover my costs. According to my calculations, only the third edition I will finally be able to get any compensation - if I have the strength to reach it.
Twelfth mistake: never expect to earn on books
Total project budget
On the other hand, the book brought me to a huge number of interesting and caring people. I saw with my own eyes how the book publishing, the museum industry works, I got a lot of experience in photography. I love to learn something new, and architecture has become a wonderful hobby. Besides, I finally got what I missed - a book about the Main Building of Moscow State University, the way I always wanted.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/444728/
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