I passively made £4282.49 this April through book cover photography
It seems insane, even writing that title I’m still amazed.
I’m not bullshitting either, here are the totals of two statements from April 2020 (one I’ve cut down just to show the final statement). I haven’t actively worked on book covers since last October either, this is all passive income. And it’s still continuing through lockdown thankfully!
Book sales have increased as people are in lockdown so if anything I’m expecting to see sales increase.
All my best selling images (ones that made over £200.00 each are ALL self-portraits bar one) one of which isn’t my face and two are the back of my head wearing a wig! Only one really of my full face. It’s why I really encourage photographers to try and take self-portraits, you’re a free model after all!
I wanted to write about this because I’ve often spoken about how successful book cover photography income can be but I can sense and have been told of the hesitancy around the believability of it. I don’t write about it to toot my own horn, I don’t do it as a humblebrag, trust me some months when you get less than £400 and it’s your main source of income, those are some damn scary months! But thankfully few and far between. I do it to truly show and express how others can do the same and easily.
Also, I’m aware a lot of photographers like myself have years of shoots just sitting on their hard drives doing NOTHING for them, some they might deem unsellable when in fact they could be making them money.
During this isolation period, I’ve been going through my old hard drives and just in one hard drive alone I’ve edited over 200+ extra photos for submission and I’ve got another 8 hard drives to go! So I know I’d rather be making money through creativity through this lockdown!
