CALVENDO self-publishers in conversation: Dee Sweeney

Irish photographer Dee Sweeney has been taking pictures all her life. Here, she tells us about her passion for capturing life’s special moments and why she feels half French. 

Dee Sweeney at work

Dee Sweeney at work

1. Dee, can you talk a bit about your background as a photographer and how and when you took up photography?

Since I was a kid I always loved photography. I remember my parents having the old box camera and I used it many times guided by my dad. When my smaller brother was born I was obsessed with taking his photograph, and my mom had to hide the camera as it was costing her a fortune to develop the photographs! I always loved photography and was admired for my keen eye on catching special moments. Throughout my life in college, my work and travel all over the world I always would have some sort of a camera with me. I have thousands of photographs in my attic with so many precious moments and memories which are irreplaceable. My photography has always been about my love for it and this is portrayed in my work. I was born with this gift and I love to share it with people. The most rewarding part is to see the happiness I have brought and bring to people because of my photographs. There is simply no better feeling.

Seven years ago, I decided to take my Diploma in Photography with the Photography Institute in Ireland and enjoyed it very much. I am developing my photography business more, and I sell my prints online and directly.

'Colors of Provence' calendar

Colors of Provence‘ calendar

2. How would you describe your style and interests as a photographer? Continue reading

Pin it: why Pinterest helps with your calendar marketing

Pinterest, a digital pin board, is perfect for presenting and sharing your visual work and calendars. Why? Because as a social network Pinterest is all about images and if there’s one thing you can show off it’s your pics, paintings, graphic work and illustrations.

Social media experts talk of Pinterest as the platform of the hour in the UK, with huge growth and lots happening on the site. What using Pinterest means for you is the opportunity to show your calendars to potential buyers, and with more than two million users in the UK, there’s quite an audience out there. For your own marketing purposes, Pinterest therefore offers:

–       wider reach – for your work as well as for your own website via repins, “likes” and
comments

–       visibility and attention – you can reach people who share your interests and
potential buyers looking for ideas, inspiration and gifts

–       link generation – Pinterest facilitates backlinks which will have a positive effect for
your own website and ultimately your Google ranking

Thousands of creative people already use Pinterest as a showcase for their work. Here’s how you can get started:

–       Set up a number of boards on different topics, choosing meaningful titles and
eye-catching cover images

–       Regularly pin your own images

–       Add some short copy to each pin, and use hashtags such as #calendar

–       Don’t forget to repin which will attract new visitors to your boards

–       Follow other users and/or interesting boards

–       Use other channels (website, Facebook, Twitter) to inform your followers that you’re
on Pinterest

Don’t forget to take a look at Calvendo’s Pinterest presence where we promote your work and follow us there. We’ve also put together a special board featuring lots of tips how to use Pinterest.

Happy pinning!

The nitty-gritty of author payments

How many calendars did I sell? Where can I find information? When will I be paid? These are questions that always crop up in conversations with our  self-publishers so here’s a short overview of all things sales and royalties:

First of all, Calvendo is not a B2C retail platform. We’re not selling your Calvendo calendars directly to consumers but to business customers, i.e. retail platforms and retailers such as Amazon, Hive or Speedyhen. Customers are then buying our (your) products from these retailers. As a consequence, reliable and accurate real-time information about sales is, unfortunately, not available to us and hence not to you. Because of the complexity of the supply chain, things simply take a bit longer in the publishing industry.

With our specific digital print-on-demand system the procedure is as follows: A calendar is ordered by a customer, the order is taken and processed by the retailer, the calendar is printed and then dispatched. However, the retailer that has taken this specific customer’s order has at that point not paid Calvendo for the calendar yet. We carry the production risk, and then have to wait for sales reports from retailers and wholesalers. Since our products are sold on a multitude of platforms, in the UK and other countries such as Germany and France, the amount of data that has to be processed is considerable and while some partners are fast in reporting their sales data, others aren’t. In the end, we always have to wait until we receive all the sales information in its entirety. Otherwise, we can’t prepare a correct royalties statement for you.

In your personal Calvendo account, you will therefore find preliminary sales projections starting from the end of each quarter and over the weeks following these cut off dates. However, this data is not final and is based on information we’ve received up to this point which is, see above, not complete and still subject to a lot of adjustment. It’ll take at least another eight weeks after the end of a quarter until your final statement can be prepared based on the complete sales figures of every retailer who’s sold your calendars. Your statement will then be available for download and you will be paid, as long as your share is at least EUR 30. Otherwise, the payment via bank transfer from our head office in Germany is being deferred to the next quarter. You’ll also find a short summary of the payment cycle and general information about author’s shares in our FAQs for further reading.