Fund the publishing of the Pug Headshot Project

Hi, my name is Stefan Glazer. I'm a pug dad and a published professional pet photographer. I am starting this funding campaign to get the funds to publish my first book in a series of Coffee Table Photography books.

The Pug Headshot is a small specialty of mine. Small in terms of “Not too many people know that I do this,” not in “I don’t do this too much, nor am I good at it.” Because I’m going to brag right now… I’m good at it and love doing it whenever possible.

So, the idea of every photographer at some point comes down to, “How do I get my work in front of as many people as I can?”.

I sat and looked at my portfolio, and I have tons of great work that I know would look amazing in a coffee table book.

Landscape Work

Macro Photography

Night Photography

Astrophotography

Long Exposure Shots

I had a LOT to choose from, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. I wasn’t known for any of that beyond friends and family, and I saw that the only people out there with that sort of work were big names with huge followings, and publishers loved them because they sold these crazy books. So I shelved the idea for a few… years… yes, years, which was a lot of self-doubts bubbling on the surface.

I didn’t know how publishers worked or about self-publishing (which seems to be the only way to go). So, a chance to wander into a furniture and other home furnishing store in Sandy Springs sparked something.

I picked up a coffee table book and said out loud, “Wouldn’t it be funny if I put out a book like this, but doing those Pug Headshots like the ones I’ve done for Matilda, Phil, and Penny?” To my wife and our friend Mandy (Matilda’s Mom). And we all laughed, and I said I would love to do a book like this with my crazy “The World Around Us: Macro Mundane” Series or a book of Pug Headshots.

And the seed was planted.

A couple of weeks later, while getting ready for bed, Nina had said, “That would be cool getting a bunch of pugs to do headshots, and eventually make it something big, with more than one book, where we can travel to different cities and states and capture the pugs. Who knows, maybe a book like that will take off”.

Then I went ahead and drafted a Facebook post.

And I drafted a landing page with an email signup and posted it.

https://mailchi.mp/bc2c7dc5a188/the-pug-headshot-coffee-table-photobook-project

Then the emails started coming in. And they kept coming in. Which seemed unreal; then I remembered a KEY factor in life. Pug People are CRAZY. I know; I am one of those people.

So, I had to break down the cost of everything to get this book published.

I reached out to a myriad of publishers and had long talks with salespeople, COOs of companies, and dog lovers who also happened to be figureheads in publishing.

The whole idea was to get publishing to make a book! It seemed so easy, but it was not and is not as easy as it seems. Getting a publisher to sign off on a book and get the ball rolling wasn't something that I could do. The only reason why was that I was an unknown in the book world. I wasn't established.

Even with all the work I've done over the years with Pugs and the recognition I've attained from that work, it was not the same as being an established book-published photographer.

That's when I learned that the first part of this dream of getting all of my work out there wasn't impossible or improbable, it just costs money.

In some avenues, a lot of money. The one publisher was looking at $30k to get the project started, and I would just have to provide the photography and sign off on the design and layout of the book.

While that sounded great, it was too daunting to source myself or ask the pug community for that sort of money on this project.

And, there were other caveats that I hadn't even factored in yet, travel/studio rental (gotta get those puggies photographed!), distribution, advertising, and most importantly, to me, getting proceeds available to donate to Pug Rescue.

With Self-Publishing being $3,500, Distribution being another $1,000 (I learned about that as well, just getting a book published has nothing to do with getting the book out there to be bought in most cases). I started adding up all the costs associated with this project and saw it snowballing.

$3500 Publishing

$1000 Distribution

$1200 for Studio Rental / Travel for the shoot

I also wanted to start this off by donating towards Pug Rescue and having a percentage of proceeds going to Pug Rescue.

It's going to be a fun journey. And I appreciate your help to get there!