Photos for books/zines on Etsy?

[Carissa Halston]

Hello all,

I'm new to selling on Etsy, but I was wondering how you feel about photographing your zines for Etsy purposes.

Right now, I have scanned versions of the covers as the main photo for all my books. But I'm not sure if taking photos of stacks of the books would be better.

Any words of wisdom?

Thanks,

Carissa
mshalston.etsy.com

[Sabrina]

All I have in my shop is scans of zines, becuase I don't have a camera! And then my scanner stopped working, so two of my listings jsut have generic filler pictures.

I recently did a trade with a gal on this site-- I sent her free copies of some of my zines and in exchange she is going to take pictures of them for me to use in my shop. So time will tell which I prefer: scans or pics.

But in general, I think I prefer pictures. I know with some of my scans, the picture in the shop looks a little funny. Like my zine, Skills -- on the main page of my shop, the way the photo got cropped the title just looks like KILL, which is slightly strange.

[Serah-Marie]

I use photos, except for the newest one I have not had the light to take a good set of images of yet. I want to redo mine to be really stunning so I can maybe get some front page action, but what I've got up now is okay. I was given advice early on to show as much as possible of the interior of the zine and I think that has helped. covers are hard to get to look good both square and horizontal rectangle to suit both viewing methods.

So long story short, yeah, I like photos better.

[Carissa Halston]

Thanks for your advice, everyone! Your items look really great and it encouraged me to take new photos. :)

The new photos are for my novel, my collection of plays, my mini-comic, my graphic novel, and my three book package deal!

http://mshalston.etsy.com

Let me know what you think! :)

[Robin Olson Mayberry]

I love nice photos but I have a fairly lousy camera. I have found more success scanning. The one thing I will say is I like it when people include a page or two from INSIDE the publication, not just the covers. By which you can't judge a book.

[Sabrina]

I totally agree, I think it is important to have inside page scans. I know that I have NOT purchased zines because of a lack of interior shot!

[Anna]

For my zines, I took photos AND provided a scan of a couple of pages (see here for an example). I think it's nice to have photos, to show what the actual object looks like, but the scan allows for a "preview" of sorts that would be tougher to get with just a camera.

[artloaf]

I've found it difficult to photograph my zines well. I suppose I need to learn how to use the macro setting because the text is slightly out of focus. I want a scanner!