Ask the average American to name one of our country's famous photographers, and he or she will probably say Ansel Adams; the artist's b&w images of the American West are ubiquitous in conference rooms and dorms. Although Adams died in 1984, his popularity may be at an all-time high: at a recent auction, a rare 1948 print of Adams's Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico sold for $609,600, a record for the artist.
It's no surprise, then, that Adams's publisher, Little, Brown, values its relationship with the artist. The partnership began 30 years ago—eight years before Adams's death—and has resulted in the sale of more than five million books. With most of the 20-odd titles priced between $24.95 and $150, the partnership has been a profitable one by any measure. David Young, Hachette Book Group CEO, calls the books' enduring success "something we all dream of."
Bill Turnage, who was the artist's business manager and now runs the Ansel Adams Trust, attributes the sustained sales to the timeless accessibility of Adams's work to both photography experts and amateurs, and to Little, Brown's enthusiastic commitment to publishing his work.
While the Ansel Adams books are huge moneymakers, they also cost a lot to produce. As many publishers of illustrated books now turn to Asian printers to save on production expenses, Adams's books are, for the most part, still produced domestically, at Meridian Press in East Greenwich, R.I., a company that Turnage says is able to re-create "the experience of seeing the original, to the extent that can be done with ink." He adds, "We're using the most expensive printer in the world. It took some convincing and [Little, Brown] came through." Still, executive editor Michael Sand says, "We're not going to close out the possibility that Ansel may someday print in Asia, but we're not there yet."
The Adams catalogue includes coffee-table books (in hardcover and paperback), postcard books, calendars, posters and an address book. Among the bestselling titles are Ansel Adams at 100 (a $150 hardcover Turnage says has sold 56,000 copies), Ansel Adams: An Autobiography ($65; 350,000 copies), Yosemite and the Range of Light (published more than 20 years ago) and the paperback Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs. The most recent Adams hit is the October 2006 republication of the 1938 work Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail. Two versions are available: a trade edition (hardcover, $50) and a $1,200 high-end edition produced for Little, Brown by San Francisco's Arion Press (500 copies are available). The book is sold mainly through art galleries, not bookstores, and editor Sand says interest in it has been extraordinarily high: "It's a big, expensive undertaking, but it's nice to see it can work."
Most of Adams's backlist sells briskly at art exhibitions; a current show at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in Las Vegas has been drawing record crowds, and the gallery's president, Andrea Glimcher, is stocking about a dozen Adams books in the gallery's gift shops. She has noted that the pricey (and weighty, for those flying home) autobiography has done exceptionally well. Of course, bookstores love Adams, too: Borders Group Inc. calendar buyer Adriana Whitten said Adams's wall and engagement calendars continue to be the chain's top-selling calendars. And Borders book buyer Brian Armbrustmacher is hoping for strong holiday sales of the trade edition of Sierra Nevada.
Turnage sums up Adams's appeal: "You don't have to be an art history graduate to understand what Ansel's trying to get at. His work resonates with all people who have a strong relationship with nature."
