Founded in 2014 by three photographers, Red Hook Editions, named after the Brooklyn neighborhood where it is based, specializes in high-quality photography books. Described as a “publishing community” by its founders, RHE relies on its authors to fund the publication of their titles and work collaboratively with the publisher on production, distribution, and sales.
One of RHE’s most recent works, The Diagram of the Heart by documentary photographer Glenna Gordon, was chosen by author Teju Cole as one of the New York Times Magazine’s best photo books of 2015. Although planned for late 2015, the book was not published until February 2016 because of delays in shipping finished copies. The book’s photos document the lives of Muslim Nigerian women who write romance novels.
The women live in Northern Nigeria, where the terrorist group Boko Haram operates, and write their books despite pressure from Islamic censors and so-called morality police. The books sell for a dollar or two in marketplaces sometimes targeted by Boko Haram suicide bombers. Gordon discovered the women while searching for African weddings that she could photograph. The 6” × 8” book is priced at $35 and had a 1,500-copy print run.
RHE publishes two to three books a year. It is operated by cofounders Alan Chin, a New York Times contributing photographer, and award-winning photographers Jason Eskenazi (the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize, among others), and Peter van Agtmael (the W. Eugene Smith Grant, among others), the latter of whom is also a member of the famed photography agency Magnum. Its four backlist titles are We All We Got by Carlos Javier Ortiz; Disco Night Sept. 11 by van Agtmael; and The Americans List: By the Glow of the Juke Box and Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith, both by Eskenazi.
It was Eskenazi’s experience publishing Wonderland that led to the formation of Red Hook Editions. A distillation of his work during the 10 years he spent in the former Soviet Union, the book was originally published in 2008 by Demo, a multidisciplinary international design and publishing firm. Because of the recession and the financial crisis, the publisher returned the rights to Eskenazi, who took control and published 2,000 copies on his own through Red Hook Editions. Originally priced at $100 each, the run sold out, and used copies are currently selling for $400 and up on Amazon.
It’s not unusual for emerging photographers to subsidize the publishing of their own work. Chin said he’s adapted that model to Red Hook Editions. “A publisher will tell you, ‘We love you, but you have to bring half the money,’ ” Chin explained.
“Financially, it’s 95% DIY, but the production is 100% traditional,” Chin said. “We hold people’s hands through the process. We give the photographer advice, tools, and all-important peer review of the work. And it’s not print-on-demand. Books are printed in Italy, China, and other places we are currently sourcing.”
The author gives Red Hook a small percentage of sales, which Chin declined to specify, though he said that “it’s in the single digits.” The partners only work with authors whose projects they consider to be strong works of art, who don’t mind the collaborative model, and who can potentially sell half or a third of a typical print run of 2,000 to 5,000 copies.
“For each book, we try to identify the natural audience: who’s going to shell out $60, why, and how many people like this are there? Typically, the audience is photographers, photo-industry people, and collectors,” Chin said, noting that RHE has turned down some works. “If the book has more mass market appeal we say, ‘If you can get Random House to publish your book, go for it.’ ”
Most of the sales come through the Red Hook Editions website; the rest are sold at a handful of selected bookstores, including the Strand and Dashwood Books, both in New York City. “Ultimately, I’m not interested in how long it takes to sell out the edition. If we did 10 books a year, the quality would suffer. [Our business model] is modest, but it works,” Chin said.
Wonderland has almost completely sold out, he said, and We All We Got and Diagram of the Heart have received great press. “The numbers are very humbling compared to bestsellers, but people in the art book market tell me they have trouble selling a thousand copies.”
Gordon is also pleased with her choice of publishing house. “Red Hook is a collective; people I know and trust, whose opinions I value. When I met with Alan and Jason, they played good cop/bad cop [while critiquing my work]. It tore me apart, but I got better!”
