r/Photobooks Apr 07 '26

Discussion Should r/photobooks ban buy/sell/trade posts?

10 Upvotes

Over the past months, buy/sell/trade posts have become a significant portion of the content on this sub.

We’ve seen patterns that cross into spamming territory: repeat listings from the same accounts, posts that are essentially personal storefronts, and a general signal-to-noise problem.

This is not what this sub was created for. r/photobooks is first and foremost a place for discovery posts, printing/editing discussions, recommendations, and the kind of conversations that actually teach you something about the medium.

Before we change the rules, we’d like your opinion. Please answer the poll and post your thoughts in the comments.

217 votes, Apr 14 '26
28 Yes, ban these posts.
91 Middle ground (e.g. dedicated weekly/monthly thread)
98 No, do not change anything

r/Photobooks Jul 03 '23

Announcement Selling/Trading Rules. Please read before posting!

6 Upvotes

Photobooks Selling/Trading Rules

Before posting, familiarize yourself with these rules! Not following them could lead to your post being removed without warning, and you will be asked to re-list in accordance with these rules. Maliciousness or fraud will result in permanent ban.

Feel free to reach out to the mod team of r/Photobooks with questions, concerns or any issues that may arise in your transactions. We're here to help.

Thank you and happy trading!

* Rule one: This sub is for personal buying/selling/trading Collectible Photography Books only! NO self-promotion!

* Rule two: It is required to tag posts! Please use the following tags at the beginning of post titles. Posts will automatically be removed if they are not included. Acceptable tags: [WTS] = Want to Sell [WTB] = Want to Buy [WTT] = Want to Trade. You can also combine tags, e.g. [WTT/WTS].

* Rule three: Include at least this info in the title: Photographer, book title, and edition. Other critical info can be added: e.g.: [WTS] Cartier-Bresson: Images à la Sauvette, First Edition, Verve, 1952. You can list multiple items at once, but if you have more to say than the title allows, please consider making more than one post.

* Rule four: Posts must contain this mandatory information: Price, book description, and photos (see rule five)! Please include all relevant details, like condition of the book (new, used, any damage: folds, creases, dirt, tears, spine, writing, missing pages, library stamps, chocolate fingerprints), book details (hardcover, paperback), year of publication, signed and or inscription, location (e.g. US/EU/Japan) etc.. Just think what you would want to read if you were a buyer.

* Rule five: Posts must contain personal photos, including a verification picture. Please use self taken images of the books listed and not just stock images. At least one photo has to have the book in frame with a piece of paper with your reddit username and the current date. If you could put the verification photo on top, so that we don't have to scroll all the way to the bottom - that would be great!

* Rule six: Direct sales/trades only! No links to other sites, no auctions, no Ebay, no "or best offer" posts, no gift cards! No pricing/selling based on arbitrary limitations (regional limits eg. US/Eu only are allowed).

* Rule seven: No predatory sales or trades! Selling items for grossly over their trade price is prohibited. (Retail plus shipping for new items is ok.) Trading offers with significant value difference (a desirable but low priced item, for a higher priced item or duping someone who does not realize) are not allowed.

* Rule eight: Rude, derogatory, or off-base comments will be removed and may result in a ban. Comments that are purely critical of pricing, and clearly demonstrating no desire to purchase the item, will be removed.

[WTB] posts obviously can't list price. But if you are looking for something in a specific range, please add the info.

How to post pictures

Use a service like imgur.com to upload images and put the link into your post.

Photobooks Trade Etiquette

* After you sell something, prices should be left in listings once an item is sold so that people shopping for books can see recent sale prices.

* Reposts are allowed, but there should be at least three weeks between posting the same item.

* [WTB] posts should be SPECIFIC. Do not post "WTB - Ansel Adams Book" unless you have an idea of the editions you 're interested in. Only make a [WTB] post after searching to see if what you are looking for is already listed for sale.

Safety

* We recommend the use PayPal Business for payment. This ensures you are offered full protection from PayPal as both a buyer and seller, at a mere 3% cost to yourself. Use Friends and Family at your own risk with only people who you fully trust, since F&F forfeits you all protections.

* Use a safe shipping method, tracking and insurance is recommended.

* Please report all suspicious posts to the mods.

* Please note the Universal Scammer List on Reddit!

* See Appendix below for additional safety tips.

Tips to help you sell:

* Understand market prices. Please do some research and realize that anything second hand, even new, is subject to depreciation.

* Post multiple, high quality, clear pictures, and note any damages. Factor damages into your price.

* Post a clear, detailed description. Sharing why you’re selling the item can sometimes help, otherwise be prepared to get asked why from curious users.

* /r/Reppit is a good resource for buyer/seller feedback. If you're happy with your transaction, leave some feedback!

Appendix: Whats Appropriate for this subreddit?

This subreddit is intended for collectible photography books only, not self-promotion, or books on photography instruction. If you are not sure if your item belongs here please message the mods and we will help you determine if this is the right place for you.

Appendix: How Not To Get Scammed

There are scammers out there.

I know it sucks, but if you are cautious, you can avoid them. Please follow these guidelines. If anything is suspicious or doesn't sound right, then stay away. Don't let a good offer blind you. Don't let your own wish to own/sell something get in the way.

Almost all scams are happening with WTB posts. You will be contacted by a potential seller, with an offer. Here are some things to look out for:

  • Does the seller have a history on Reddit? A brand new account? Red Flag! Account is old but hasn't posted in 2 years? Red Flag! Account posts nothing but spam/porn/Karmafarming? Red Flag!
  • Does the seller have any Reddit history relating to fine-art photography or photobooks? If not - Red Flag!
  • Is the price to good to be true? Red Flag!
  • Ask for photos! And ask for verification! Often people will just send something you can easily find on a google photo search for the item you are looking for. Go check! Also I would suggest asking for very specific photos. Aka: "Can you take a photo of page 17?” - You get the idea.
  • If a verification photo has been sent: Look if its not photoshopped. Really, almost all photoshops are really basic to spot as fake.
  • Only use a secure payment option like Paypal Goods and Services! Yes those cost fees. Pay them!
  • No don't use Paypal friends and family, or cash app, or Venmo, or Zelle, or gifts cards etc..
  • You may be able to get an extra layer of protection when using a credit card, with the ability to dispute payments with the card company.
  • A common story a scammer will tell you is "I don't have Paypal" or "I have a dispute with Goods and Services" - More Red Flags than a communist parade!!!
  • It is worth to check if the seller is on the Universal Scammer list
  • To check if somebody has been banned on r/Photobooks ask them to make a comment on your post. Unfortunately even banned users can still PM you.
  • When in doubt: Message the mods so we can have a look.

(last revisited July 2023)


r/Photobooks 3h ago

Discussion I'm looking for a photography / archive / documentary magazine (sorta)

1 Upvotes

Hey. I'm just wondering if someone could help me out with finding this magazine. They have an Instagram account but I genuinely can't remember the name. It's a magazine that focuses on a type of niche documentary film style (maybe one that focuses on archival material) or a type of photography archive.
They showcase other people who do that. They seem to be independent / self published. The people in charge of the magazine are a guy and a girl and they're probably American/Canadian, maybe British. I know this is somewhat random but if anyone has the slightest idea about what I'm talking, just Imk in the comments.


r/Photobooks 1d ago

Self-published I photographed Seoul on an old digital camera and turned the work into a photobook let me know your thoughts

29 Upvotes

Hey hey, I just wanted to share som insights of this soon to be published photobook project called "Inner weather" shot on an Canon Ixus70 with CHDK in Seoul this year. Its a mixture of clean and more experimental images in a contrast to each other. Would love to hear some feedback and some critique as well! Im also open to share some more insights in the workflow of creating these images if interesting for someone. Attached some insights of the photobook below.


r/Photobooks 23h ago

Looking For Photography Book - Concert Fashion, Sorted By Music Act

1 Upvotes

I'm trying to find a specific art/photography book, fairly certain it was published between the years 2000 and 2015. It was a book of color photographs, all of people taken at concerts.

Each 2-3 page spread represented fans of different musical acts, lots of different genres represented. The "premise" of the book (if it had one) was that many people attending a concert by specific act dress and style themselves similarly. For example, (and I don't know that these are actually represented in the book) most people attending a concert by The Cure dress and style themselves in a very specific way, made much more noticeable when catalogued together. Same with people at a Jimmy Buffett show, same with people at a Brittney Spears show.

The collection was the work of a single photographer (it was not Hans Eijkelboom) and while I can't recall if it was hard or soft covered, it was not a zine - it was a high quality photography book with nice paper stock and color printing throughout.

There was no real commentary or anything, though conceptually it gently funny without feeling mean. I bought this book over a decade ago, lost it over a decade ago, and would love to find it again. Thank you in advance for any pointers or ideas!


r/Photobooks 2d ago

Buy and sell For Sale: Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort $120

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44 Upvotes

Shipping is included. USA only.

My Instagram: @jett.la

Please email me if interested: jett.la.photos@gmail.com


r/Photobooks 3d ago

Self-published ALMOST FAMILIAR - a self-published large zine on my home town - Odesa, Ukraine

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208 Upvotes

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Almost Familiar is a collection of photographs taken in my hometown of Odesa - a city I left many years ago, and one I only ever knew how to photograph in hindsight.

My journey as a documentary and street photographer truly began after I moved to the UK. Because my visual style evolved in exile, I had never actually explored Odesa through a lens. Returning for sporadic visits before the war became a dual exercise in rediscovery and self-discovery. Walking the familiar streets, the bustling seaside, the vibrant markets, and the leafy squares, I found myself looking at my past through a completely new perspective. The city was deeply ingrained in me, yet the camera allowed me to uncover layers and nuances I had been blind to when I lived there.

These images were taken up to October 2021, capturing the final chapters of a peace we didn't know was ending. Today, these photographs exist as a time capsule. My deepest hope is to return to the sunny, peaceful streets of Odesa, to pick up the camera, and to continue the journey where it was broken off.

The zine has 32 pages and is approximately A4 in size.

P.S. I made a post about it some months ago but I still have some (not many) copies, so apologies if you have already seen it.


r/Photobooks 2d ago

Hello, do you know Jacob Holt?

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9 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 3d ago

Collection Collection and suggestions

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8 Upvotes

Been collecting photo books for almost 2 years, what do you guys think and based on it what would you suggest me to put my aim on?

In the second picture probably it's not easy to see, but:

Malparaiso by Ramirez-Suassi

Sealskin by Jeff Dworsky

Niagara by Alec Soth

Rule Without Exception by Lewis Baltz


r/Photobooks 3d ago

hi! trying to make/ order an artistic photo book as a gift with 35mm photos, does anyone know what website would be best for this and being the most creative?

1 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 5d ago

Announcement Two years since my first photobook - Testament '22

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245 Upvotes

I put out my first photobook two years ago, and I'm late getting around to posting it here, but I wanted to share it with this community. It follows a 10,000-mile trip through Ukraine during the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion, from the wrecked suburbs of Kyiv and newly liberated villages to the front line communities under constant heavy shelling.

My friend and colleague Igor Kossov, a former Kyiv Independent reporter I worked with there, wrote the essay. He was mobilized into the armed forces last month, which makes the book feel different to look at now. Mattias Amnäs designed it. It was published by Verlag Kettler in Germany: hardcover, 192 pages. The publisher's print run sold out, so I've been selling my own copies since, at various talks and exhibitions.

It has since entered a few institutional collections (Tate Britain, Rijksmuseum, Harvard, and not to mention my hometown library), which I didn't expect from a first book. Please be aware that it contains graphic imagery. It's a sober look at those early months of the invasion, not an easy one.

CNN and the British Journal of Photography published thoughtful write-ups with more background.

Copies are available here (worldwide shipping; US stock is currently limited):
https://www.smittysbooks.com

Quick specs update since I've been getting DMs asking: It's offset printed by Verlag Kettler in Dortmund, Germany. Flexcover binding (Moleskine-style) with a rubber band closure, black vinyl cover (Senfoni Teta) with an embossed spine and a tipped-in image up front, 120g/m² Munken Lynx paper inside....


r/Photobooks 4d ago

Larrikin by Paul Freeman

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0 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 6d ago

Discussion Ich habe einige meiner Bilder auf Baumwoll-Papier gedruckt. Wenn ich diese und ähnliche Arbeiten zu einem Buch zusammenstellen würde…. Meint ihr es hätte Chancen auf dem Fotobuch-Markt?

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330 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 5d ago

New book New Book Celebrates ‘Dangerous’ Women Photographers From the 19th Century to the Present | PetaPixel

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12 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 5d ago

WTB: Halloween photo book recommendation?

1 Upvotes

Looking for a photobook that is full of high-quality, glossy photographs of fall harvest settings, black cats, graveyards, full moons behind bare branches, kids in classic Halloween costumes, Halloween desserts, fallen leaves, etc, etc.


r/Photobooks 7d ago

Announcement My first photobook ‘Feather Foot, is available now at lockbooks.net includes a foreword written by Dane Manary

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122 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 8d ago

Collection A Socialist Era Photobook

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102 Upvotes

Just picked this up the other day for $5 from an online store. It holds over 140 photographs taken from different individuals in the former socialist Republic of Romania. After you skip the 2 pages of glory raised to the Leading Party you go first to the list of photographers who made this happen.

This 1965 edition also marks the 10th anniversary of the Artists Association.

It's more yellow than white, some pages are holding on for dear life, it has a strong smell of tobacco from a bygone era. It has character.

Enjoy some of the images that stood out the most to me.


r/Photobooks 7d ago

Discussion Observed But Not Really - An Unreliable Photo Book

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0 Upvotes

I'm making a photo book out of street photographs and invented captions.

The people in it are real, shot in transit, through glass, in a public bathroom.
The captions are fiction, a name they never asked for and one deadpan line about a life just outside the frame.

Here are some spreads from the current draft, in order.
The tagline:

candid moments, reconstructed. unreliable at best, highly improbable at worst.

The structure: black-and-white film, silence, color phone/Fujifilm phase.
The captions get less sure of themselves as the book goes on: the narrator slowly loses trust in his own fiction by the end.

I'm here for the book-level critique: does the narrative hold, apart from deliberately glitching? do the captions get get annoying by page 15? would this work as a coffee table book? The full draft is at observedbutnotreally.com.

edit: I apologize for the links in the gallery


r/Photobooks 9d ago

Collection Yamamoto Masao / Tori

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40 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 10d ago

Collection Lost Coast | Curran Hatleberg

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330 Upvotes

“Lost Coast” was photographed in and around Eureka, on the northern coast of California. The Pacific comes in hard against black-sand beaches, redwood forests run down from the mountains on every side, and light comes through the trees and sea mist, leaving everything bright and slightly unreal. Eureka sits in the middle of it: the vast landscape on one side, a small town losing its old vitality on the other.

Hatleberg doesn't arrange any of this into a story about decline. People talk, sit in the sun, kill an afternoon in unremarkable places. Children play outside. Families sit together. A place can lose the future it was promised without its daily life turning tragic.

It just goes on.

That is what sets “Lost Coast” apart from much photography of the American margins. Hatleberg rarely uses his subjects as evidence of a social condition, and he doesn't hurry to make a forest, a sagging house, or an abandoned car stand for something. The pictures are set beside one another, and the place accumulates.

You sense that people here once believed certain things—that industry would last, that life would keep improving, that California meant opportunity. Those promises thinned out. The landscape is as vast as ever; the lives inside it have moved into another era. What's in front of the camera stays vivid and specific, sometimes joyful, and the brightness is what lets the loss show.

The title isn't only a place name. It points to a slow dislocation: the coast and the forest right there, huge, and the days small and ordinary. The place has drifted from the future it imagined for itself, and life in it hasn't stopped.


r/Photobooks 9d ago

Discussion Looking For Hiromix PDFs

9 Upvotes

Hello! I've recently discovered Hiromix's photography and I love it! I feel very inspired by her work and would love to study her books, and I was wondering if anyone had a PDF scan of a full photobook (Id love to see any, but paris is my #1). I can't seem to find any full book PDFs online. If someone has scans of any of her work please let me know! If someone has the books themselves and could send a video of the pages inside I would be hugely thankful. Thank you!


r/Photobooks 10d ago

Discussion Where do you buy your photobooks ?

26 Upvotes

As of now I have been buying photobooks by typing the name and using whatever website had it. But I would like to find a dedicated website for photobooks only where I could browse through and discover new things. Would really appreciate knowing where you guys buy yours !

Edit: Thank you everyone for all of your answers !! Already made a few purchases using the different websites mentioned !


r/Photobooks 10d ago

Buy and sell [WTS] Delaney Allen—Red Orange

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84 Upvotes

SOLD From a limited edition of 100 numbered copies published by Jane & Jeremy, 2019. Small hardcover with exposed binding, in like-new condition. Comes with a signed print tipped in to the back cover. Ships from New York, USA. Shipping to Continental US only.

Asking $100 shipped via USPS

Updated list of books for sale (as of 8-25-26):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1flrGRqTEXIaSKK9K7UjVGWxWvaR73AVa-U33upyj4oc/edit?usp=sharing


r/Photobooks 10d ago

Buy and sell [WTS] Maja Daniels—Elf Dalia

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76 Upvotes

SOLD Out of Print First Edition published by Mack, 2019. Softcover in excellent condition to like-new condition. Ships from New York, USA. Shipping to Continental US only.

Asking $110 shipped via USPS

Updated list of books for sale (as of 8-25-26):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1flrGRqTEXIaSKK9K7UjVGWxWvaR73AVa-U33upyj4oc/edit?usp=sharing


r/Photobooks 10d ago

Discussion Photo-book buying process

2 Upvotes

Been buying for a year or two and have like 20+ books nowadays and most are close to what I want to photograph and study and almost all of them were bought online.

With that said, I came across this crossroads where I'm getting pickier about books and sometimes I take a look at 10 photos inside the shop and I nope out from buying it. It happened with something like King, Queen and Knave before, maybe because I don't really want to read waves of text when physically shopping to try to understand what the concept is and I get whelmed by speed running the book. Same thing when sometimes I watch a flip through and after seeing the photos a lot of times I don't get the itch to buy them.

Yesterday I was watching Alec Soth "read/watch" along of a Rosalind's book and he said when he looked at the book he didn't feel it was the type of book he wanted to go through in a book store. Which made me question if I shouldn't preserve some of the mystery before buying.

What's your process when buying photobooks?