CUE THE FUTURE
A new publishing initiative aims to ride the crowdfunding wave
Volume is the new vehicle for Lucas Dietrich’s foray into crowdfunding of books. Set up in partnership with Barcelona-based graphic designer and publisher Darren Wall, Volume is not so much a publisher’s imprint but what Dietrich calls a “semi-independent” concern that, according to website Vol.co, is “powered by Thames & Hudson”.
Wall had submitted a blueprint for a Kickstarter-style initiative, which received “the green light from Thames & Hudson, who paid to establish it, and now operates like a start- up,” said Wall when I spoke to him on Skype. “But crowdfunding was all about Pebble watches and drones — big, half- million- pound raises for products. The fact that books, with no dedicated platform for them, were also doing well was incongruous.”
“Volume is run day-to-day by me and Lucas, without touching many of Thames & Hudson’s resources. The tech world would call it an incubator project.”
The Volume era will be heralded with the book Look & See, featuring the work and collections of printed ephemera of graphic artist and printmaker Anthony Burrill. That publication, coming soon, is fully funded, but, said Wall: “We’re leaving a lot of avenues open as to what Volume could become, because we’re still experimenting with how to fund books and reach the right audiences, what we’re doing wrong and how long funding periods should last.”
“It’s a case of getting a Volume community together, seeing that the project is working, then finding out where we can push it. Essentially, Volume belongs to Thames & Hudson, but no one’s breathing down our necks and we’re dedicated to making it a success without any company targets being set.”
“Books we’re now crowdfunding, we’re seeking the sort of authors and books we might like. If a book fails, backers will receive a fee; if it exceeds its funding target, the extra money goes back into the book, no doubt improving on our original specification. And the project creator will benefit financially too.”
Thames & Hudson’s reward comes later in the process, as Dietrich explains: “With a Kickstarter campaign, you’ve got your backers, you raise the money, you fulfil the backers and it’s over. Here, you raise the money and serve the backers, but you also print books to sell in the usual way. So you’re getting a broader audience: Hardcore fans who join that initial community, then conventional buyers of books partly subsidised by the enthusiasm of the early supporters.”
All this allows Thames & Hudson, which provides print support and handles payments, the freedom to explore relatively exotic titles at reduced financial risk, as well as collect on the cover price.
“When we sit around this room in a publishing meeting,” adds Dietrich, “the commercial constraints of supporting 150 people working in London, Hong Kong and across the world mean the demands on our books are very high, making commissioning challenging. So this venture is born of a realisation that we need to adapt.”
“It’s about judgement, which makes or breaks a publishing house anyway; we have to choose the right books and find their fans. It’s the challenge any publisher has, we’ve just put it in a dierent context.”