Happy hot shots: Print 21 magazine article

In this snap-happy age where everyone is a photographer and has more photos than they know what to do with, frames and albums are no longer enough. The solution? Make your own photobook. Mitchell Jordan reads between the lines of this thriving trend.

Digital cameras have forever changed the landscape for photography. Film has become a rarity, traditional photo albums belong in museums and we now take more pictures than ever before.

But digital photography has also opened up a number of new opportunities for printers. From mugs to mousepads, everyone wants their images incorporated and ingrained into every aspect of their lives.

Photobooks – also known as memory books – have been one of the products to prosper in the digital age. A result of our increasing nostalgia and desire to document every aspect of our lives, the photobook is now a household accessory.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then photobooks bring in big bucks to businesses. According to the Photo Marketing Association (PMA), custom photo gift marketing is expected to reach $2 billion by 2008. A report from the group claims that photo memory books are the most purchased and fastest-growing custom items, totalling $200 million in sales for 2005.

Capturing the moment
Sydney company, Momento Pro, have been local pioneers of photobooks, first opening up for business in 2004 when the products were still in their infancy amongst Australians.

It might have seemed like a risk at the time, but according to managing director, Geoff Hunt, there was an opportunity to take advantage of the digital print revolution by transforming the traditional photo album into an interactive and personalised narrative.

Pictured: Geoff Hunt (left) with David Watson (right).

"When digital cameras exploded onto the scene almost everything about the photographic experience was reinvented," he recounts.

"Suddenly, people were no longer taking 24 photos anymore and nor were they printing them. Hard disks were filling up, getting corrupted or lost and we needed to find a new way to encourage people to print."

It wasn't that people didn't like to hold or display their photos – far from it – but the photo album started to look a little clunky, a little amateur and seemed more than a little restraining.

Recognising that people will never move away from the tangible, Hunt made the decision to open Momento Pro and was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response from consumers.

"Photobooks are appealing because they are different from big, thick photo albums," he says.

"There's a real pride in seeing your photos presented in something that looks like a book and could have been bought in a bookstore."

As the market for photobooks grew, so too did Momento Pro. Now employing 26 staff the company also installed a HP Indigo 5500 digital press and HP Designjet Z6100 large format printer in April this year.

In the four years it has been running, Momento Pro experimented with a number of different printers before finally settling on the HP.

"In the journey of Momento I have tried all the digital presses on the market," Hunt says. "The combination of the Z6100, which we use to produce the book covers and the HP Indigo, has proven to deliver the best results."

Everyone has a story to tell and the company's marketing manager, David Watson, believes that the process involved in making photobooks is in many ways as compelling as the final result.

While every company that sells photobooks has its notable points of difference, the general procedure for making one involves the consumer visiting the website of their preferred company, downloading the necessary software, uploading and arranging their photos and designing the layout of the album. Once this is done, it is a matter of waiting (expect anywhere from three to ten days) before the photobook is printed and delivered.

"People used to see photobooks as photo albums," Watson says. "Now that they are able to make their photos different sizes and embellish pages they look at photo albums as an opportunity to tell their story instead."

Thanks for the memories
Photobooks are one of the many products that online photo service, Snapfish (www.snapfish.com.au) offer, but Verity Batchelder, (pictured) country manager for Australia and New Zealand says that on a month-to-month level, they have proven to be the strongest, most consistent selling products. (Statistics, however, were unavailable).

Snapfish first launched in Australia in December 2006 but did not introduce photobooks to the market until July last year. Claiming to offer "photobooks for the masses", the company ran a promotion through lifestyle program, Better Homes and Gardens, to put the product directly in front of the type of person it is aimed at.

"Our primary audience is mums with kids: they are the ones who take photos, store them and print them," Batchelder says.

Television coverage resulted in "instant success" for the product by entering it into the mainstream arena and showing that there were other ways of storing images besides scrapbooks and CDs.

"It was a really great opportunity for people to gain an understanding of just what photobooks were," Batchelder says. "A lot of people thought that they were something you needed to stick photos in and not something that you could make yourself."

Henryk Kraszewski, production colour marketing manager at Fuji Xerox has witnessed a number of printers entering the market through both retail outlets such as self-service kiosks or online software like Lulu.com or MyPhotoFun. He believes that both avenues have a number of benefits.

"In retail environments, the printer is dependent on walk-up customers," he says. "For online, printers receive jobs through a relationship with a retailer, their own branding, or on the back of a worldwide operation."

Kraszewski prefers to refer to photobbooks as 'memory books'. "Because that's really what they are about – creating and storing memories," he adds. And people are also willing to pay for those memories, which makes it a very profitable business line for printers.

"Photobooks offer high margin opportunities," Kraszewski says. "Customers are often happy to pay a premium price for a memory book."

He notes that the cost to produce photobooks is not high and that online print providers often have fully-automated workflows that drive production costs down.

Jagar Documentation Integration is one example of a printing company moving into photobooks online. Established in 1999, the Sydney-based company began by catering for the corporate colour market and were one of the first printers in Australia to install an iGen press.

It pays to be a pioneer and this led to Jagar's directors, Bruce Jacobs and Malcolm Gasper, being approached by software company MyPhotoFun to be its official Australian and New Zealand vendor in 2006.

"At the time, we were looking to move into different directions and recognised that photobooks were a rapidly growing area," Jacobs (pictured below) says.

While Fuji Xerox products – particularly the iGen3 – are being targeted specifically towards photobooks, Jacobs did not buy his iGen with this in mind. "Photobooks were an add-in to our service," he says.

"You'd be a brave person to buy a machine first and then start doing photobooks. It's got to be the other way around."

The MyPhotoFun software was developed in the Netherlands and is available throughout Europe and the United States. Since being offered to Australians, Jacobs says that there has been "phenomenal take up ... growing month by month."

The web-based service allows consumers to create photo albums, calendars and other bound collections from their digital photos with software they download and use offline. (Note: MyPhotoFun does not currently support Macintosh computers).

Jacobs attributes the success of MyPhotoFun not only to its ability to personalise images and products, but also for livening up the photo-developing process. "Who wants to sit in a kiosk at a photoshop?" he asks. "There is no flexibility. But with MyPhotoFun you can create a document that is customised to your own specifications in your own time, involving multiple people. Basically, it's something fun to do."

Heading for a photo finish?
On a superficial level, it is easy to see photobooks as a mere fad or phase. Sure, they have spawned businesses dedicated to doing nothing else, but how long will it be before the photobook is scorned or treated with a profound indifference from consumers?

Back at Momento Pro in Sydney, Hun and Watson say that this day won't come for a long time yet.

"We are on the steepest part of the curve and it will flatten out eventually - but I don't see this happening soon," Hunt says.

He points to the 2008 PMA Photo Book Report where Paul Worthington writes that: "Custom photo books are a market opportunity on which it is very hard to not be completely bullish. It couldn't be easier to get your feet wet in what may grow to be the biggest print category, and perhaps even the new mainstream photo print product."

The trick is to keep photobooks relevant and exciting, adds Watson.

"Our approach is to add new content and offer new features so that people want to continue engaging with photobooks," he says.

"The danger is that if the product appears stale then people will move away because it looks like last year's trend."