Little photo books / albums

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Would anyone like to put a suggested price to this of what they think I could charge.... including first class delivery?

They are hard cover photo books similar to below. 6x4" with 10 pages. I would offer a choice of either 10 full pictures or collages similar to that pictured below (40 to 50 pictures could be used). I'm always trying to think of a way I could make a little extra income, and owning £1000 worth of dye-sub printer for my photobooth business that just sits there most of the time seems an opportunity wasted.

My initial thought was £9.99 posted or 2 for £15, but then I think it might have to be lower (say £6.99) to get the interest and demand levels. Any thoughts please?
album.jpg
 

Thehooperman

Well-Known Forumite
Would anyone like to put a suggested price to this of what they think I could charge.... including first class delivery?

They are hard cover photo books similar to below. 6x4" with 10 pages. I would offer a choice of either 10 full pictures or collages similar to that pictured below (40 to 50 pictures could be used). I'm always trying to think of a way I could make a little extra income, and owning £1000 worth of dye-sub printer for my photobooth business that just sits there most of the time seems an opportunity wasted.

My initial thought was £9.99 posted or 2 for £15, but then I think it might have to be lower (say £6.99) to get the interest and demand levels. Any thoughts please?
View attachment 5128

I'm pretty sure the likes of Asda and co. offer this type of service so it may not be viable unless you can compete with them.

You may be able to differentiate from them by offering to print customers' text on each page to make them even more personalised.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Of course, most photo printers offer similar books and albums. I realise that there is alot of competition out there, hence my asking about peoples thoughts on pricing. I'm hoping that maybe someone has had photo books printed before and knows what it can all cost. Unfortunately, it's hard to get an idea of pricing from such websites, as usually you have to go through the complete process of creating one to reach the checkout and find all of the hidden extras and postage price etc etc. I might have a play with a few and see if I can get an idea of like-for-like pricing.

I'm only curious at this stage because of the printer sitting looking at me. And like I've said, it seems a shame to own a high cost printer capable of tens of thousands of prints every month being used for just 3 to 9 hours a month. It would be nice to put it to other uses :)
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Seems that a lot of them only offer 6x4 in a softcover book, for hard cover you have to step it up to at least 8x11.

Snapfish - 21 pages - standard thickness pages, soft cover = £8.98 posted
Mine would be hard cover but only 10 pages, but board type pages with glossy prints not lustre. Pros vs. cons.

If I could manage to get £6.99 including delivery it would possibly still be worth my time
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I remember attempting to create a calendar, probably on Snapfish, and giving up in despair, as the whole thing seemed more like a puzzle or competition than a service. An aspect of 'service' in actually getting what people really wanted to create might be a major selling point?
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Thanks @Gramaisc I've actually thought the same thing myself before. My books would be created fully automatically. All they would have to do is upload the 40 to 50 pictures they'd like to use, and their album would be created & posted out first class within 24 hours.
I could send a preview link, but at the price point I'd hope they'd just be happy to order and wait to see how it looks when it arrives.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Thanks @Gramaisc I've actually thought the same thing myself before. My books would be created fully automatically. All they would have to do is upload the 40 to 50 pictures they'd like to use, and their album would be created & posted out first class within 24 hours.
I could send a preview link, but at the price point I'd hope they'd just be happy to order and wait to see how it looks when it arrives.
Yeah, my problem was that it automatically did things that I didn't want. No doubt the whole thing was meant to be intuitive and user-friendly, and I just wasn't intuiting properly or responding incorrectly to its friendly insistances.

I'm sure they thought it was all added-value, but it was actually just irritating fluff. I just wanted one front picture and twelve other pictures, one for each month, but they would, out of the blue, decide that a month needed three small pictures and use the two for the next two months as well, not in the month that they were intended for, not that they knew that, of course...

There were other issues, but I can't remember what they were.

Keep it simple and produce what people say they want, that's my advice.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
I've got just a few coming in so that I can give them a try. They are now going to be 20 pages and not 10. A 6x4 landscape will be £10 (White cover) and a 6x6 square will be £12 (Black cover).

However, if anyone here on the forum would like to give one a try then I'll offer a couple of one-offs at cost. £7 for the 6x4 and £9 for the 6x6 (in return for your thoughts and opinions).

Anyone interested, please drop me a message and I will send you a link to upload your image files to me. They will be intelligently cropped to fit so no need to worry about aspect ratio. You would have the choice of 20 single images OR 60 to 80 images for a collage book.
 

highguyuk

Well-Known Forumite
We ordered one from Bonusprint a few months ago as a mini book for our honeymoon pics. My OH put it together, but really liked the bespoke software they provide for placing/shaping/editing all the pics and background etc.

As you already know, the problem is your competition - and most of the time someone is offering discounts of around 50% in the hope of repeat business.

Minor point though, we would never have ordered without having seen the layout first and having been able to sort and place the photographs as we wanted.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
We ordered one from Bonusprint a few months ago as a mini book for our honeymoon pics. My OH put it together, but really liked the bespoke software they provide for placing/shaping/editing all the pics and background etc.

As you already know, the problem is your competition - and most of the time someone is offering discounts of around 50% in the hope of repeat business.

Minor point though, we would never have ordered without having seen the layout first and having been able to sort and place the photographs as we wanted.

Thanks for your comments. As gramaisc has already pointed out though, this is a nightmare to some people. Not everyone has that level of time and/or patience required, so maybe my target customers would be different. Also, price-wise even with their discounts there tends to be alot of hidden extras. For example, does your mini book have a hard cover or soft? How many pages? Are the pages a standard matt finish or did you pay extra for a glossy finish? Most of these come with flimsy regular book-like pages and not stiff pages using genuine photographic papers, unless you're willing to pay the extra.

For example, the Aldi photo service offers photo books with many options. As of today, a 20 page 6x4 booklet (soft cover and matt thin pages) would cost over £7 with postage. The cheapest hardcover would be an 8x6 with 24 matt pages costing over £15. Make them glossy and it would be over £18 - and that is still not true photographic paper. Those options start on an 8x8 book with 26 pages at £22.49 with postage.

This was part of my reason for asking on here as I've never personally ordered any before. If you wouldn't mind sharing, then I'd be keen to know...
How many pages it has?
Matt or gloss finish?
Genuine photo paper or regular photo book paper? (although you may not be sure)
Hardcover of softcover?
How much you paid with delivery?

I'm unable to offer people their own layout editing features etc so you're quite right that it won't appeal to all, but I doubt there are deals as good for thick board type pages using genuine photo paper (not photo book paper) with hard covers etc and postage price included.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
I've just looked at bonus print. For a 14cm squared with gloss finish added, 24 pages and leatherette cover it comes to £24.58 plus postage. Even with their half price offer that would be £12.29 plus postage at £4.99. That's £17.28 total for a book that still has standard pages and not rigid. My same size book would have rigid pages with genuine photographic paper for £12 delivered. 4 pages less but overall a much better offering in terms of quality.
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
Well I've just put my first book together and I'm super impressed with how they turn out.

Would somebody on the forum, preferably someone keen on their photography or somebody that has married recently like a photo book for nothing? All I would like in return is for them to comment here afterwards about quality and what they would expect to pay for such an item, good or bad.

I can only afford to do a one off, so please comment or message me ASAP if you are interested.

Thanks :)
 

wmrcomputers

Stafford PC & laptop repair specialist
I've managed to get some reasonable pictures taken of my first 6x4 book. Hopefully these will give people a better idea of the quality and book type.

@highguyuk - I assume this is completely different to what you got from bonus print? Were your pages thick and rigid like these? Curious to know.

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highguyuk

Well-Known Forumite
We were able to choose to have the front cover printed with a wrap around photograph and the covers were rigid (although I doubt as thick as yours), but the pages instead were definitely not boarded like yours.

If I knew where it was kept, I'd take a picture for you! :)
 
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