My photography journey # 4
How my book came to life + my first paid family session. (2010-2011).
In the first half of 2010 I made the last photos for my Rome guide. I would run around the city visiting shops, cafes and new neighborhoods, tasting gelato, eating pizza and pasta. It was a tough job…
Sometimes I would even drag my friends along for dinner or ice cream in a specific place, only because I wanted to try it out for the guide book, or because I needed photos from the place. It was great fun.
Around June I finished the manuscript, and I started sending it to Danish publishers. I had done absolutely no research beforehand in order to find out, whether there would actually be an interest for it.
I hadn’t even considered pitching my idea before starting to write, because in many ways this was first of all a personal project, something I had wanted to do for a long time out of pure passion and love for Rome. Of course my dream was to see it published, but the most important dream - to write the book - had already come true.
As you may have guessed by now, nobody wanted to publish it. I sent the manuscript to around 10 publishers in Denmark, and most of them sent me a standard “No thank you” answer. A few of them wrote me, that it was a nice project, but unfortunately the (Rome) travel guide market was saturated.
Luckily I already had new plans. I had started a photography blog called Simple pics from around on the Blogger platform. It was my very first blog ever, and I don’t think, it had a lot of readers, but it was nice to have a space of my own online, where I could share my photos.
Since I already knew the Blogger platform, and since nobody wanted to publish my book, I decided to turn it into a blog and create an online guide.
I knew that my readership would be very limited, if I only wrote in Danish, so I began to translate everything into English.
The title for my Rome guide so far had been “When in Rome… a travel guide to the local Rome”, but when I went to look for the domain wheninrome, it was (of course) already taken, so I had to come up with something else.
I played around with the expression Home sweet home replacing it with Rome, but it sounded weird, and in the end I came up with the name My Sweet Rome.
That summer I was invited to (and photographed) another wedding of a friend - this time in Copenhagen. During the party I spoke with one of her friends, whom I already knew a bit, and who owned a Danish travel magazine.
I told him about my book rejections and my plans to turn the travel guide into a blog, and he told me, that his magazine might be able to publish parts of the book as a small series.
When I got back to Italy, we agreed on a series of six articles focusing on six different neighborhoods in Rome and accompanied by my photos. They would pay me a small fee, which was nice, but I was mostly excited about finally seeing my work published.
In June 2011 I moved to Florence, and it turned out to be (at least so far) a permanent goodbye to Rome, a city I had loved more than any other city in the world.
That year I finally launched the blog. It was nice to see everything online, but… It wasn’t a book. And so I decided to create my own book.
I knew, that I wanted it to be a small sized pocket guide, which would be easy to carry around while on vacation.
I decided to use Blurb, where I could make a 20x20 cm softcover book and sell it at a reasonable price with a good profit for myself. The best part was the fact, that I could sell the book on demand online, so I wouldn’t have to buy a lot of books, which I might not be able to sell.
Although I already had text and photos ready, it turned out to be a huge project to create the book, especially since I insisted on doing everything myself despite not having any knowledge of graphic design etc.
But in the end I managed to finish it. It wasn’t perfect, but I liked it. I had made a book.
I spammed all my friends on Facebook asking them to share my book with their friends, and I shared it on my blog, which by now had quite a few readers.
The book I had made was in Danish, and since I had translated the manuscript into English for the blog, I quickly decided to also make an English edition in order to reach a larger audience.
In the end I did manage to sell some books. I don’t remember the exact number, but my guess is something like 20 books (ebooks and paper). Not a lot but enough to make me happy. (Later on I found out, that I may even have earned more money, compared to what I would have earned, if the book had been published by a real publisher, because by doing everything on my own and selling the book on demand, there were no expenses, which had to be covered, before I could get paid.)
Another important thing happened on my photography journey by the end of 2010: I got my first paid job as a family photographer.
Back then I was on an email list for Danes in Rome. It was a list, which could be used for anything, and we could all send out emails asking or offering things to those on the list.
I had done a lot of kids sessions for friends and family. It was something I loved to do, and since the feedback was positive, I decided to finally take the chance and see, if I could take things one step further.
And so I sent out an email to the Danes in Rome offering my services, and a mum wrote me back asking for a session just before Christmas.
We took the photos outdoor and in their home, while they made Christmas cookies. Everything was very relaxed, the kids were nice, and the photos turned out quite well for a first session. (If you ignore a couple of vintage/sepia colored conversions, which I delivered, after having had a bit too much fun in iPhoto…)
Most importantly they were happy about the final result, and I had done my first paid family session.
Good for you for grinding it out and keeping the dream alive!! Very exciting!