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Shelf life

Exhibition visitors still often like to pick up a catalogue, but museum publishing is being challenged by rising costs
Some people say print publishing is dying, not so in the museum world. Many visitors still want to take home a visual, and tactile, memento of an exhibition they have enjoyed. Despite this, the museum publishing industry is facing a number of challenges.

Jan Green leads a small team in the National Gallery Company, the trading arm of the National Gallery in London. She says her remit is “to publish high quality and profitable books around the collection”.

For Green, the printed product is still vitally important, which might seem surprising in the digital age. “For high-quality art books, the appeal of the physical object and its status is greater than ever,” she says.

Indeed, printed exhibition catalogues – usually scholarly records covering important research and the exhibition inventory – have an enduring appeal for visitors. They generate revenue for museums and galleries, and also keep private lenders happy, as they like to be name-checked in them.

“Sales of Royal Academy exhibition catalogues are strong, and they are an important revenue stream for us,” says Nick Tite, the head of publishing operations at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in London.

The RA produces softback and hardback versions of its catalogues, with prices varying between £19.95 and £28 for the former and £30 and £48 for the latter.

“Recently, our pick-up rates [a forecast percentage of exhibition attendees that will buy the accompanying catalogue] have been around 4.8% for the softback and 1% for the hardback,” Tite says. “Monographs sell better than compilations.”

But museum publishing is feeling the squeeze. In early 2015, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) set up a commercial and digital development department by merging the museum’s retail, licensing and publishing activities with digital media and international initiatives. The move followed a review that aimed to make the museum’s “publishing activity more effective and efficient”, says a spokeswoman. A restructure of the publishing team took place and involved the loss of several roles, she adds.

In-house publishing departments at regional and national museums cite rising costs, both for print runs and image use, as a pressing issue.

The RA is paying more for production, paper and binding “to make our books look and feel as beautiful as possible”, Tite says. His strategy involves “trying to make our books as visually arresting as possible, while ensuring they fulfil the academic requirements of being important reference material for scholars and academics”. He is also being more strategic about pricing.

Green, of the National Gallery, says print runs for publications tend to be shorter and opportunities for language co-editions are becoming limited. “If the exhibition is not touring to that language territory, co-publisher partners are dependent on shrinking trade sales in an increasingly difficult European market.” She says that translation and editorial costs can outweigh potential returns, making small print runs of co-editions unaffordable.

Useful partnerships

High image costs are often an issue. “The fact that a number of US museums, including Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, now provide free images for all uses is a considerable help,” says Sally Salvesen, an art and architecture editor at Yale University Press in London, which works with several museums, including the National Gallery in London and the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Steven Parissien, the director of the Warwickshire gallery Compton Verney, agrees that issues over image use, including copyright approval, can be problematic. He believes that collaborations, either with external publishers or with other venues that can shoulder the cost of a joint show and catalogue, are the way forward (see box).

For Compton Verney, large-format catalogues costing more than £40,000 to produce are not viable, Parissien says. “Our audience spends between £10 and £20 on publications. We try to produce a book for each exhibition to explore angles left unexplained in the show, so that the books still sell in the trade after the exhibition is over.”

Mari Gordon, the head of publishing at Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales), also emphasises that catalogues must have a unique selling point, such as new research, so they have a longer shelf life.

In the age of austerity, museums are seeking out new organisations to work with. Last October, the V&A announced partnerships with publishers Penguin Random House and Thames & Hudson. The former has a  children’s division that will create a  bespoke range in partnership with the V&A, including baby gifts and activity storybooks.

Thames & Hudson will collaborate on co-branded monographs and books for makers created by renowned designers and curatorial experts at the V&A. The museum will no doubt hope to build on the revenue generated from titles such as Alexander McQueen, which sold more than 80,000 copies during the run of the 2015 Savage Beauty exhibition and made a profit of £1.5m.

New print publishing formats are also becoming more commonplace. The Barbican in London has launched a series of publications linked to the Curve gallery, its contemporary commissioning space.

“They are modest in size and price but they serve to document the exhibition in that they include installation images of the com- missioned project as well as images of previous works, unlike our larger exhibition catalogues,” says Leila Hasham, an associate curator at the Barbican Centre.

Clare Lilley, the director of programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), says that the organisation closely monitors stock control and assesses the size of publication print runs. Some books are created as special editions, like that for the exhibition of work by Yinka Shonibare in 2013 when YSP published 100 signed books that were hand-covered with the artist’s signature batik fabric and sold for £100 each.

“They sold quickly, demonstrating visitors’ desire for beautifully produced books and special editions,” Lilley says.

If several publications dedicated to a particular artist are already on the market – for example, US video artist Bill Viola’s YSP show (until 10 April 2016) coincided with a major Thames & Hudson publication last year – YSP will not produce a corresponding major publication.

“For all major shows and a few others we publish a guide, although in reality they’re more than that and, at £5-£6 a copy, they always make a profit,” Lilley says. “Our Ai Weiwei, Bill Viola, Henry Moore and Yinka Shonibare guides sold like hot cakes.”

YSP shows often have long runs, with visitor numbers of up to 300,000, so the accompanying books are often reprinted.

Print or digital?

Not everyone is convinced that new print formats are the most effective option for museums and galleries.

“There is a decline in the number of scholarly, object-based catalogues being published,” says the art historian Bendor Grosvenor. “Now we tend to see collections of essays, which take the focus away from analysing each object properly.”

He points to the “scrupulous publications” of the Royal Collection Trust, including the catalogue for the 2014 exhibition The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714-60, which was held at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace. “I don’t think enough museums are taking advantage of digital technology, let alone the online catalogue end of things,” Grosvenor says. “Online catalogues allow for an extended and more responsive scholarly analysis of artworks.”

YSP produces its own publications, with- out assistance from external agencies. Its staff have designed, edited and overseen the production of its books for 20 years.

“Over time, our publications have become more ambitious, and digital technology has enabled greater control and lower costs,” Lilley says. “We have a high degree of autonomy, but also run the financial risk – though often commercial galleries will pre-buy our books so the costs are fully or partially covered before they go to print.”

YSP also works hard to secure sponsorship for its print titles. Lilley says that, in time, digital publishing and platforms will play a part in YSP’s portfolio, but have not so far because of limited resources.

Dan Giles is the founder of the London-based specialist publisher D Giles, which provides digital publishing services to museums. “Delivering digital content offers huge opportunities to museums in terms of presenting both their permanent collections and temporary exhibitions,” he says.

“It enables them to reach new audiences and pushes online visitors to interpret a visit to the museum’s website, special exhibition app or ebook as a visit to the museum – even if it’s not a physical visit.”

Some museums are making inroads into digital publishing. The Barbican has created bespoke microsites detailing research on its wider arts seasons, such as Dancing Around Duchamp in 2013. In early 2014, the National Gallery produced its first digital-only catalogue for Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting. Green says that the academic material used was not viable for a printed exhibition catalogue.

Pricey proposition

Giles breaks down the cost of building a digital product: “We have produced and published three iPad-only ebooks in association with the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which sells them on iBookstore for $12.99, or around £9,” he says.

These ebooks are all accompanied by illustrated print publications. “We produced the ebooks in a programme called iBooks Author because we feel that it is the best ebook software in which to render these complex, illustrated art books,” Giles adds.

Exhibition catalogues must have a unique selling point, such as new research"


Such ebooks cost between $3,500 (£2,400) and $5,500 (£3,800) each to produce. This is much less than creating an app or printing a book equivalent, according to Giles. On top of that, ebooks can incorporate video and animation, as well as zoomable images, plus text searches and links to social media and sharing. But D Giles only sells about one to two copies of these ebooks a month.

“While these digital products are impressive, they have not been about making large sums of money, especially when one factors in the cost of production,” Giles says. “This is the key challenge in the digital arenas we are working in.”

Finding the solution to these publishing issues is the holy grail for museums. There is no one platform, no one perfect means of delivery and no easy financial solution.

“It would be a mistake to give the impression that we, or our peers, are making any headway with digital publishing,” says Green. “We have yet to see any business model that is self-financing. And we’re not seeing the death of the printed book in favour of digital products.”

Gareth Harris is a freelance arts journalist

Money spinners

Steven Parissien, the director of Compton Verney, says his institution made money on the book accompanying its exhibition Canaletto: Celebrating Britain (14 March-7 June 2015), which focused on work created by the artist between 1746 and 1755 when he was in Britain.

“Neither Compton Verney nor the exhibition partners had to put in any subvention money; having a three-venue tour assured the publisher [Paul Holberton Publishing] of some guaranteed sales,” Parissien says.

The publisher changed the title to Celebrating Britain: Canaletto, Hogarth and Patriotism to broaden the book’s appeal, and a production grant of £2,500 from the Paul Mellon Centre paid for image reproductions.

“Our principal lender, the Royal Collection, rightly stipulated that the exhibition must be accompanied by a scholarly publication,” Parissien says.

Nick Tite, the head of publishing operations at the Royal Academy of Arts says the book for the Ai Weiwei show last year (19 September-13 December) “proved extremely challenging to produce”.

“Ai Weiwei was keen to include photographs of the installations so our challenge was how to do that, as the installations wouldn’t be complete until the last moment and the books had to be delivered in time for the exhibition’s press view,” Tite says.

The solution was to print enough copies for the first week. The finished installation was then photographed and a revised edition delivered a week later. More than 18,340 softback, compared with 2,602 hardback, catalogues were sold.

“The pick-up rate for both was really high,” Tite says. “The book proved successful and stands as a record of one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the year.”


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