A photo book is an easy product to want and a hard one to sell online. Every copy is different, the customer has to do the design work, and the file that reaches the printer has to be right the first time. This guide goes through what a print lab, a photographer or a shop needs to have in place before the first order comes in.
Decide who designs the book
There are two kinds of photo book sales. In the first, you design the book yourself, as a wedding photographer does, and the customer approves it. In the second, the customer designs it alone on your website, from their own photos. This guide is about the second kind, the one that runs without you once it is set up.
For that, you need an online editor: a tool in the browser where the customer uploads photos, picks layouts, writes text and sees the result before paying.
Choose how the editor reaches your site
You have roughly three options.
- Resell or link to a consumer brand. It costs nothing to start, but the customer designs on someone else’s site, their brand is printed on the book, and the next order often goes straight to them.
- License an editor and integrate it. You get your brand, but these licences are often quoted with a setup project and a monthly minimum before the first sale.
- Plug a white-label editor into the store you already run. On Shopify it is an app, on WooCommerce a plugin. The editor carries your brand and the order lands in your store.
Whatever you pick, check three things: whose name the customer sees, who owns the customer account, and what you pay in a month with no sales.
Build a catalogue people can choose from
A short catalogue is easier to choose from. Two or three formats, one or two papers, a soft and a hard cover is enough to start. Each extra option is one more question the customer has to answer before buying.
Set a page count range per format, with a minimum your printer accepts and a maximum the binding can hold. Then build the price from the format, the material and the page count, so a thicker book costs more without you writing a price for every case. On the product page, showing the lowest price with the word From is clearer than a price grid.
Sort out printing before the first order
You can print on your own equipment or work with a lab. Either way, ask the printer for their file specification: page size, bleed, resolution, colour profile, and how the spine width changes with the page count. The editor has to produce exactly that, for every book, with nobody checking by hand.
Order a proof copy of each format before you open sales, and agree on the turnaround time and on who ships. Customers will ask you about both once they have paid.
Take the payment where you already take it
If you have a store, keep payment, taxes and shipping there. The customer pays in a checkout they trust, and the order sits with your other orders. Sending them to a third-party checkout for one product adds a step to the purchase.
Work out your margin per book
For each format, write down the selling price, the printing cost, the packaging and shipping you pay, the payment fees and the platform fee. What is left is your margin. Do it for the minimum page count and for a thick book, since printing cost grows with pages.
Platform fees come in two shapes: a fixed monthly fee, or a share of each sale. A fixed fee is cheaper once volume is high; a share costs nothing in a quiet month. As an example, with a fee of 5% of the price excluding VAT, a book sold 40 euros excluding VAT costs 2 euros in fees, and a month without sales costs nothing.
Where Bindl fits
Bindl is the white-label option above. It installs as a Shopify app or a WooCommerce plugin, the editor carries your brand, and every paid order produces the print-ready PDF for your printer. There is no subscription: Bindl takes 5% of the price of each book sold, excluding VAT and shipping, as explained on the pricing page.