Rangefinder Magazine
April 2002

Profile: Andre Crump by Lou Jacobs
Green Eyes - A Self-Publishing Odyssey

Have you seen a paperback book titled Green Eyes? Andre Crump, its author and photographer, says that in almost every nationality and ethnic group there exist green-eyed people who are often regarded as exotic and rare. And green eyes can occur, he’s found, in races that are black, brown, tan and pale white.

Individuals who appear in the book, usually as full-page portraits, are from the U.S., South America, Europe, India, and Africa. In Andre’s introduction he mentions as visually analogous the green of rolling Irish hills, tropical Amazon jungles, political parties and the season of spring.

Born in the U.S., Andre always had a talent for languages and studied Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French at Dijon University in France. There he also took history, literature, architecture and art. His main purpose was to learn business French in connection with work in marketing technology products and consumer services done later in France and Brazil. In both countries he noticed striking individuals of varying ethnic groups with green eyes, which motivated him to begin a series of color photographs that continued for several years.

About 20 years ago Andre was president of his high school camera club in Chicago, but he’s only worked occasionally as a photographer. “I’ve sold some pictures and shot a few weddings,” he told me, “and I also shot a record album cover, but those were the days when I was young and more naive, and should not have turned my negatives over to the client.”

After making assorted green-eyed images, Andre started a series after moving to San Francisco, where he feels culture is the core of the city. “You can be a bank president during the day,” he declares, “and a poetic sculptor at night. At the time I was also inspired by a Howard Schatz book called Seeing Red, the Rapture of Redheads, so I placed an ad for green-eyed people in a local newspaper. For a year afterwards I heard from people offering their green eyes, or those of their friends and family. During that time I was encouraged by having one of my images on the cover of American Photo (November 1995) and I won several local photography contests, as well.”

During this time Andre also produced Café with Andre, a cultural cable show (shot on 8mm videotape) that focused on the arts, music, dance, and poetry, which ran for about two years in New York City, San Francisco, Summit, NJ, and Chicago. His interviews with potential guests in various cafes around the world lead to meeting more green-eyed individuals whose portraits he shot to expand the series. “Unlike other eye colors,” he explains in a kind of awe, “green eyes are a genetic roll of the dice. They can appear within each generation, or maybe skip many generations.”

Andre’s project began to pick up speed, but he couldn’t find a publisher for the book he planned. The Green Eyes website mailing list was getting hundreds of hits regularly, and the Green Eyes Newsletter was growing—as was Andre’s frustration. In his quest, he found a few interested publishers, but they were too slow making decisions, he says, adding, “They all wanted something that looked like a Steve McCurry National Geographic cover. I solicited publishers for about three years, when one day in Paris I decided to do it myself using an 8x10 format, a good size for full-page photos.”

Then Howard Schatz gave him a tip. “If a book is your passion,” he told Andre, “then do it. Photography books don’t make a lot of money, you’re lucky if you break even, but they are worth it to the photographer and to readers.” With this encouragement in mind, Andre decided to self-publish his book to at least satisfy his own urge as well as the hopes of all the subjects who had posed for him. “It really wasn’t that difficult,” he explains. “I was computer literate, and I had a Mac, Photoshop, Word, and Adobe InDesign. With excellent advice from friends I found an excellent printer in Singapore that had a good reputation, great prices, reasonable turnaround time, and showed good quality in books they’d done. I set myself a publishing budget of about $10,000, to which I stayed pretty close. The costs of shooting and preparation over previous years probably came to another $5000.”

Andre asked his friend Ronald Margulis, a former art critic for Forbes, to write a forward for Green Eyes, in which Ron says the pictures “reveal a full range of human emotions.... [No one] can fail to realize the unique attraction of this physical trait.” Ron has written for various publications and with his wife published an art magazine titled Diffusion, so his experience was valuable to Andre’s project.

I’ve known a few self-publishing photographers in the past, one of whom made the rounds of bookstores, her car filled with copies of a lovely black-and-white picture book of young students from her teaching days. Another was a handsome volume of amusing and documentary black-and-white images, taken by a charter jet pilot during on his world travels. The teacher did hers on a limited budget, the pilot’s budget was much larger, but both had the same problem: how to distribute bound copies widely. Conventional book jobbers, the companies that distribute to bookstores large and small, are rarely interested in self-published work on the basis that unknown writers or photographers will receive weak reception from sellers and readers. Directly solicited, bookstores may stock a book they like, but they do it on personal whim, not anticipating much profit.

Andre says, “Distributing my book has been a challenge, but I’ve found the most profitable and fastest way is to do it online with Amazon.com, Borders.com, and Barnes&Noble.com. Bookstores are nice, but as with the big publishing houses, it takes a lot of time and energy to make the rounds. So self-publishers have to decide what their goal is, and it’s generally to make back the money you’ve spent. I may still try to interest bookstores in the future, but ideally I believe we’ll be able to expand sales by getting the book used as a premium by the eye-care industry, and cosmetic companies.”

Andre explains, “Website book sellers, whether they carry your book in their inventory or not, are linked to the Bowker [a book jobber] database for books in print, and if someone types in an ISBN number [the Library of Congress registry number], that book will come up on the bookstore site. The real issue is speed of delivery. People are more likely to buy books in stock, but I do get orders from online stores who don’t carry Green Eyes. So I can tell people there’s always the Internet to find my book. Green Eyes was definitely a hard sell to bookstores.

“Some big distributors like Ingram, have small-press programs and might take your book if they think it has promise. But you have to promote through press releases and e-mails to potential selling sites. My own Green Eyes website is a key word that search engines can find. I also sponsor green-eye contests and make a big deal about announcing winners, but promoting a book is tricky.”

Brave self-publishers, Andre says, should look for The Self-Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter, The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Ross & Ross, and Jump Start Your Book Sales: A Money-Making Guide for Authors, Independent Publishers and Small Presses. There is also John Kremer’s online book marketing tip newsletter at www.bookmarket.com. “These sources,” Andre says, “give you excellent ways to create, print, distribute and sell your book, and if you have the money, there are good book publicists to help you get reviews and interviews.”

Green Eyes is an unusual book. Its cover is the shot that American Photo used, and subjects’ eyes may have tints of yellow or blue. Most faces show well on plain backgrounds in what appear to be outdoor settings and Andre’s photography serves his theme well. Andre used two 35mm cameras and one medium format, with lenses longer than 100mm, color negative films from Kodak and Fuji (ISO 200 or 400) and usually sunlight for accurate eye colors. “It was rough on people, but I had them close their eyes and open them at the count of three.”

A selection of outstanding Green Eye images is seen on these pages. Interspersed with the photographs in the book are literary selections about the romance of eyes, the charm of green, and some poetry. The people are attractive, a few landscapes featuring green help change the pace, and there’s even an artistic green-tinted nude whose eyes don’t show. In the back of the book are captions that include people’s names, descriptions, some ethnic backgrounds, and titles such as “Medusa’s Spell.” There’s also this information: TCB-Cafe Publishing, PO Box 471706, San Francisco, CA 94147. Green Eyes lists for $24.95. Andre’s website address is http://www.cafeAndre.com.

Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 23 how-to photography books, the latest of which, The Big Picture, was recently published. He has taught at UCLA and Brooks Institute of Photography and enjoys shooting stock on his travels in the U.S. and abroad.