Whilst you're of course entitled to it, I think that's a dissapointing view Marcus.
I'm not sure of how many $60, well presented coffee table books you've picked up over the past few years that you could show to your friends and say, "I'm in there - and so are the people I spend time with on IIS". If you want a book that you can "ooohh" and "aaaaah" to, maybe go your favourite book store and spend the same money on a book that is just..well.. another book. There are a plethora of very expensive and beautifully printed and produced titles to choose from, but none will have yours or my images in them. I see the book being bought mostly by the actual image contributors, but I'm positive that there are plenty of other wonderful non-imaging people here on IIS that would love to have a copy as well.
I don't think that there needs to be any other angle -at all. Most people haven't had their photography published before - so here's their chance. There's an enormous sense of pride to see your efforts immortalised on paper, and moreso in a beautiful book. A book like this is just, as Mike has stated before, a visual feast and that's all it's meant to be. It's not the best of - in order. It's better than that.
$60 for what is essentially a very specific and personalised book of the people here and their images is pittance. It really is. The whole point of this is to be able to produce a "thing" that you can pick up, feel, and be proud of. All of the images may not all be the best in the world - but the people who took them and are presenting them in their own book are. We're all doing something unselfish here, by each making the effort to spend time (for no collective profit to speak of), on what is going to be a long and complex exercise to produce something absolutely unique. You can't put a website on your coffee table or on your bookshelf. You can't give a URL to your granddad for his birthday.
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probably end up with a committee of people deciding what's in and what's out.
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As far as appointing a committee to "decide" who's in and who's out - maybe you've missed the point. There will be no committee and no competition. I'm donating my own time to organise the collection and carry out the design work. Gratis. Free. It's something I love doing, it's something I'm pretty good at, and for the moment I have the spare capacity to do it. These people here are my friends and I'm proud to be able to contribute in my own way to the sense of community we have here.
People will sensibly provide their best or favourite image of their own free will, and will be able to judge whether they want their image in or not based on how they think it may appear next to all the others. There will be no base-line "wow factor" measure. If it's someones' best image then that's what it is. I'm pleased to be able to print it for them as long as its mechanically acceptable for the task - i.e. is of a suitable resolution to support a 200 line screen at the size printed(200mmx200mm). No-one with a "better" image is going to miss out because a lesser image made it in before theirs. The size of the book will be determined by what I recieve, nothing more, nothing less. If the total pages push the price up a bit then we'll probably not have as many people buying. We can't help that other than to try and find the best and cheapest digital printer we can. Thankfully Ben's (a member here) father runs an Indigo digital press, so we're looking good.
So far, the gathering of statistics has shown that we'll probably end up with fifty to sixty imagers contributing this time around - which determines the size and therefore direct cost of production. That's not exactly a "flood" of people that we'd otherwise have to cull from. This isn't about the images perse, it's about the people. There - I've said it again. It's designed to be a collection of images from people who've provided the best they can given their level of experience, money, time and equipment. I've produced images that I'm just as proud of as Peter Ward is of his own. Peters are way better than mine, and would cream mine in a comp, but that doesn't make me any less proud of mine. The book is essentially a snap-shot in time. Those that were here at this particular time and contributed an image will have something they can keep forever. Those that are happy enough to mill about on a website won't.
If anyone prefers not to have one, then that's their own call I guess!
Sixty dollars is only a number thats been bandied about in lieu of having real production costs finalised yet. It may be more, it may be less. So far, as of today, seventy seven people have indicated (up front - I suspect more when it becomes available) that they'd buy the book. Six of them would even pay $100 or more. I'm one of them. Thirty eight people have potentially committed to contributing with sixteen more being undecided. That's fifty four. A page each, and a couple of intro pages and an index at the back, that's a sixty page book. That isn't insignificant, and is actually an affordable thing to produce and make available to people. Being short run (maybe hundreds over time), it's a more expensive way of producing printed material if you look at the per unit cost - but at least we'll have it, and as more are required we simply order more in small bundles! To print it traditionally on a sheet-fed offset press we'd never be able to even contemplate it as large print runs would be required in order for a printer to even contemplate printing it - for which someone would have to pay thousands of dollars up-front. It's untenable. We'd be forced to look at impersonal and quite frankly boring websites forever.