Author Archives: CALVENDO-Team

Meet the jury …

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… well, not personally but we’d like to give you an insight into how it works since the quality check performed by our expert panel is a vital element of the service Calvendo offers. In particular for all the newcomers using our platform (welcome!), here’s an overview of our criteria for publication and how the jury decides if a product will be released – or not:

After submitting your project, the Calvendo jury will contact you with one of the three following messages: Your project has been released for publication straight away (hooray!), you’re being asked to make certain corrections (all in your best interest!) or your project has been rejected (shame – but try again!). The jury bases these decisions on a set of criteria in order to establish the overall quality of a project:

• craftsmanship
• creative achievement and degree of originality
• technical quality
• completeness and relevancy of the information for imprint and product description
• legally admissible and ethically unobjectionable
• satisfaction of the needs of the respective target group
• potential demand in the market (i.e. will it sell)
• does it fit with the Calvendo publishing programme

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Each of these elements is important. If, for example, your calendar is technically and visually absolutely brilliant, but missing a product description, it can’t be released because trade catalogues won’t list your calendar without one. As an innovative self-publishing platform, Calvendo needs to make sure to be taken seriously by all the partners we work with in the book retail sector. And this in turns also means that we can’t accept every product submitted to us. In the end, our jury’s decision is final and binding.
In order to make things easier, we’ve put together extensive guidelines in our FAQs covering everything from which fonts to use to how to design a cover. And: Take a look at our checklist before submitting your project. It’ll help! By the way, help – one thing our jury definitely does, is help you, by giving you advice and suggestions how to improve your project.

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“If Calvendo enables me introduce even more people to my photography, that’s a positive”

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Marcus Klepper, a German photographer, loves taking pictures of Berlin and has already won an award for his photographic depictions of the German capital. Calvendo met up with him to find out more about his work and why he’s using the platform.

Aufnahmen von Berlin, die unsere Hauptstadt in seiner ganzen Farbenpracht präsentieren.

Berlin at its best.

Marcus, you’re a photographer who uses Calvendo to publish calendars. Tell us a bit about you and photography.

Well, I was a bit of a late starter with regards to photography and bought my first DSLR camera at the age of 29 in 2005. Before that, I was only a “snapper”. I think what happened at that point was that I saw images that I couldn’t realise with the camera I had used so far but still wanted to try to make those images real. I therefore experimented a lot with different techniques after buying my first DSLR camera. I’m now on my fourth camera gear and have finally found something that fulfils my needs.

What’s your favourite genre and why?

I most enjoy landscape and architecture photography because even if your objects might be static and don’t alter their position, the change in light and season makes for numerous different facets.

How did you learn about Calvendo?

I’ve got a photography page on Facebook and fans frequently asked me if I didn’t want to publish calendars. However, the cost involved and prefinancing needed prevented me from doing so. Then, a friend and fellow photographer told me about Calvendo since he’d been using the platform for some time. I’ve now published a number of Berlin calendars with Calvendo.

What are your aims when publishing calendars?

It’s mainly about being able to offer a calendar to people who were interested and asked for it. If Calvendo introduces even more people to my calendars and they like them, that’s a positive side effect.

How do you market your calendars? And how does Calvendo support you?

I promote my calendars on my Facebook page or via word of mouth and friends spreading the word. At the same time, I don’t want to overdo it with marketing on my page since photography for me is mainly a passion. If I can also earn something with it, that’s great and just a bonus. I noticed that if there’s too much promotion, my fans don’t like that.

In general, I’m very happy with the support I get from Calvendo. With the platform, it onlye takes a few mouse clicks and a week later or so people can already order my calendar on different retail platforms.

Photography is actually more then only a small hobby for you. You also take part in competitions, right?

The competitions I take part in are either run by photography magazines or well known internet communities. There are a lot of competitions out there that only want get hold of loads of images cheaply. Everyone submitting their image cedes publication rights to the respective portal, no matter if you’re among the winners or not. What happens is that a camera worth a few hundred is put up as a prize and the competition organisers are then being sent thousands of images that can be used without asking for further permission or paying for them.

With regards to communities you mentioned: Are you also meeting up in person with those photographers?

Yes, absolutely. I often meet up with fellow photographers and some of them have become friends.

And what do photographers talk about when they’re sitting together?

Very often you meet up with photographers that have similar interests. But then again, also with some who have a completely different focus. So, for example, I might want to know about people photography and the photographer who specialises in this field will then get information from me about my areas of expertise. Another thing is testing equipment if you’re looking to buy something new. Or asking about experiences with specific hardware.

What are you plans for this year?

Getting up my own homepage. And exploring some European capitals such as London, Paris or Rome. Let’s see what happens. I’m happy to let myself be surprised.

Thanks for talking to us, Marcus! We certainly wish you lots of positive surprises and, most of all, great photography motives galore!

Happy users, happy Calvendo

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More than two thirds of Calvendo users in Germany are satisfied or even very satisfied with our self-publishing platform for calendars and poster books. Our latest user survey therefore gives us the thumbs up and makes us very happy! And since we’re about to launch Calvendo in the UK, where we hope to build a similar community of photographers and creative people, that is very good news indeed.

A few of the findings in more detail: Two thirds of the respondents enjoy publishing with Calvendo and more than 70% recommend us to family and friends. “We’re really pleased with this very positive feedback,” comments CEO Hans-Joachim Jauch, who – together with the Calvendo team – set up the platform in Germany in October 2012. “Within a short period of time we’ve managed to reach high levels of acceptance among the photography and creative community which is very encouraging for us. The Calvendo combination of providing an online layout tool, support by a jury and international marketing and sales opportunities seems to be as convincing as we hoped it would be.”

Calvendo users are surveyed at least once per year. The very positive grades for the platform’s technology and creative options it offers that we received last time were repeated in our latest survey. The feedback about our jury’s work that checks each calendar is also a very important indicator for us: Calvendo self-publishers are happy about the jury’s support and advice and respect its decisions, no matter if they were asked to modify their submissions in order to improve quality or even if their calendars were rejected. A large majority of users considers our tips how to make their product better to be useful or even very useful.

The survey also shows that users are happy about the swiftness with which they receive feedback from the jury. This dialogue between our experts and self-publishers is very important for us and an important part of the Calvendo philosophy: Good photography alone doesn’t automatically make a good calendar. In order to market and sell a product successfully, elements such as title, font and keywords used are just as important. And this is where the jury comes in: “Our jury can provide valuable support which is vital because in the end we want our self-publishers and their projects to be successful,” so Jauch.

Further aspects that make our users like Calvendo are the high print quality of our calendars and poster books, the possibility to set up an author’s profile and last but not least the money they can make when they use our platform to produce and sell their work. In order to get the complete picture, we also surveyed users who have registered with Calvendo but not published anything yet. The main reasons here are that they have either not found the time yet or that their projects submitted so far have been rejected by the jury. Nevertheless, their overall verdict about Calvendo and the service it provides is still largely positive.