After the success of the original Underground Reflections and a £135 donation to Derbyshire Cave Rescue, thoughts are finally turning to a follow-up.

In order to work out what form it's going to take, does anyone have any input on what changes (if any) could be made?

A few thoughts, for a start:

Size: whilst the large size is great for the photographs, it does make the book a bit troublesome to find a home for on the shelves. Thus, a change to something smaller might be a benefit, as well as reducing the cost.

Binding: similarly, moving to a soft cover may reduce price, although this would probably change the nature of the book somewhat.

Subject matter: UR was very much a collection of images from around the UK. There are a couple of ways that a follow-up could go:

(i) Again, a general collection of photographs
(ii) A regional, or themed collection - for example, 'Memories of the Welsh Slate industry' or 'Metal Mines of Cumbria'.
(iii) Dedicated to a single mine, with photographs specifically taken for the book.

For the latter two options, there would also be a couple of opportunities to expand on the original UR:
(i) The possibility that the new book would form the start of a series, with further editions
(ii) The ability to introduce some text into the book, for example background, history and some explanation of how the mine was worked. This could expand the attraction of the book and enable wider marketing.

Finally, printing?

The temptation here has to be to go down the route of using something like lulu.com so that there can be an initial batch and then allow people to buy books following that. That may affect the format of the book, ie a size reduction and a softcover may become necessary.

Thoughts on a postcard, please! 😉

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ahem! 😉

I think this vanished off the front page quite quickly: any thoughts, please?!

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Vanoord, Might be an idea to loose the UR label as this limits the subject matter?? Perhaps after some time another .. part 2 could be assembled.

Moving on with some thoughts

If you were to do one on the Welsh Slate industry or the Mines of Cumbria for example it would be good to include surface data too and possibly aerial 😉 I think this would be the way forward using contributions from the forum. I would agree that the format should be smaller too with more text.

This of course would be some undertaking for someone but nevertheless a worthwhile one.

Can I just say what an excellent result for the DCR, every donation helps. Thanks to you all.

Peter.

Cheers Toadstone - I've modified the title accordingly.

My personal opinion is to do something that's focussed on either individual mines or a small selection, eg Blaenau Ffestiniog.

However, the latter would be quite difficult to put a decent history against, unless the book was split into individual chapters on mines - the task of putting together a brief history of the Blaenau slate industry is probably not for the faint-hearted!

So I guess that pushes us towards something along the lines of a series of photo books each dealing with one particular location?

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Anyone else?! 😉

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Photos books are ok but to some extent personal - a lot of people I deal with are a bit fed up with the photos and captions that says bog all about the mine its history etc.

What would be good is a genral guide book on the mines more like Ian Tylers field guide to the Cumbria mines and not just concentrating on slate but a lot more.

I have also found that if you go into a series of books the enthusiam for tyhe first couple of volumes runs out of steam and the later ones don't sell as well until of course they run out of print and then people start wanting the early volumes

excuse the waffle. You might also talk to Pete burgess who has experience of publsihing short run books via Lulu

Mike

Cheers Mike,

I'd agree with most of those comments and the Lulu route is one which seems to make sense to me: it avoids the problems with trying to balance the variation in demand.

My feeling at the moment is to go down the route of a book / books which features the same sort of standard of photography as Underground Reflections, but contains information that goes beyond just captions.

I recently bought a copy of Cris Ebbs' Milwr book and that's a nice mix of information and good quality photographs. Given various time constraints, I suspect that we won't be able to manage anything as detailed as that, but it's certainly something to aspire to.

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Lulu is fine for paperback quality B+W - if you place a bulk order you will get something with as good a quality as the Snailbeach Lead Mine book.

If you want nice glossy paper or colour then forget lulu - it is very expensive.

I am looking at inkylittlefingers.co.uk as an alternative for future books. They will sent a sample pack of what they can do if you contact them. And they are UK-based which has to be good thing, doesn't it? They don't provide a sales route to third parties like lulu, but they will do fairly short print runs, using pretty good quality paper, at a reasonable price I think.

I've not tried them yet, but I shall probably use them in the next 12 months for something.

A serious word of caution regarding lulu publishing. This year, their support infrastructure appears to be in a bad way. I recently had cause to contact them regarding three major printing issues (wrong contents inside right cover). I have had absolutely no response to my requests to get this resolved, unlike on 2 previous occasions when it was dealt with promptly. lulu's message board is currently full of messages suggesting that my problem is nothing in comparison with others. Maybe they will sort themselves out, but they may be in big do-do's, so I am now creating an account with inkylittlefingers for future publications, and will enquire about transferring my existing books to them.

Hi Peter. have you tried Blurb. seems to be a decent co. I have books ready to do on Lulu but think will try blurb.
regards

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Thanks - I haven't heard of them. I'll fire up google.

Cheers Peter :)

We used Blurb for the first Underground Reflections and the service was good, with the print quality speaking for itself.

The only two quibbles I'd have are:
(a) the price was quite high, which was in part due to the size of the book and the fact that it was hard cover; and in part due to the shipping charges, which push the unit price sky high unless you order several books at the time;
(b) They had a curious habit of sending the books two at a time, taking about a week for them to turn up and causing some concerns about whether or not they'd all actually appear!

With regard to the carriage charges, I guess the trick is to find someone who actually prints in the UK - I've had similar carriage issues with Apple (via iPhoto), which adds about 50% to the order price.

The useful thing with Lulu is that books can be ordered direct by the customer, without the "publisher" having to order a stock of them.

Ho hum, I'm sure there's an answer out there somewhere...

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Have a look at www.inkylittlefingers.co.uk - they are not POD, but they do small print runs at sensible prices. They don't appear to have a hardcover option, but do have free delivery within the UK. I requested a sample pack and quite liked what I saw. I did send an email request for a quote for a non-standard page size two days ago, though, and have yet to receive a reply - so the jury is out until I see if they can help me.

Blurb has I understand recently launched PDF to book. Which is a major improvement if you want to produce more of a book book rather than a photo book. But as Vanoord says I suspect the pricing is prohibitive and it is aimed more at photo books.

Will be interested to hear your opinion of inkylittlefingers Peter.

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Having some small contact with major printers (polestar) in my job (probably too big for small print runs), We
probably could approach a small digital printing firm directly if someone were willing to do the typesetting and layout work and save in an acceptable format for printing (Pdf I think is acceptable, but most printers use software running on Macs).
This would save being in a queue with lots of others on a publishing website.
Requires a willing volunteer though!
It will depend on the minimum print run that they will accept.

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^ a gentle bump for this 😉

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I agree about the change of name but think it would still be nice to have a variation of mines as it will appeal to more and maybe a bit more info about each photo would be nice.

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Personally a photo book is not that appealing as many of the photos are online.
A contributors based guide to selective mines of interest in each region would be good ( with a few photos). It could contain some interesting history and tips on which areas of the mine to look at based on visits by site members.

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Yes perhaps with surface and underground stuff...

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(writing on a tiny keyboard on my mobile, so apologies for any typos!)

The original Underground Reflections was put together as a way of showing the underground photography aspect to mine exploration; as a way of showing people some underground sites that many may not see first hand. It sold in small numbers and raised a bit for Derbyshire CRO.

The ideas discussed for any future books seem to be:

- Another photo book from all over the UK, along similar lines, but I quite agree with the points made that aside from some initial interest this has limited appeal

- A mixed photo / narrative book featuring several mines, some background information on each mine and a mix of underground and surface photogrpahy, to keep the niche interest I think a bias towards underground photographs would be preferable; I don't think there is scope to cover anywhere in the detail that a dedicated book might and which would typically cover the mine itself and the associated infrastructure and transport

- A collection of articles written by members (ages ago an articles section was suggested for the web site, infact I wrote the code to run it) but nothing was ever done to carry the project forwards

- An annual of mine exploration, based around trips attendended by site members over the year, again however this requires a lot of material to be contributed (and a good memory to recall trips several months ago!)

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