Hickory for photographers
IPS Without the Living-Room Visit — Sell Books From the Gallery Link
In-person sales works for a reason: nobody buys an album from a price list, they buy it from a finished thing they can see. The cost is the evening — the drive, the projector, the design work you did on spec beforehand. Hickory keeps the mechanism and drops the evening. Your client opens their gallery and the finished book is already there.
Start with a gallery you’ve already delivered. No new shoot required.
Why the designed draft is the sales tool
A gallery of 600 files asks the client to imagine a book. A drafted book, with their cover on it, asks them to buy one. Hickory generates that draft automatically from the gallery, so every client sees a finished product without you speculatively designing for clients who never order.
Everyone in the room can order, not just the client in front of you
An IPS session reaches one household. A gallery link reaches the whole family and, for a team or recital, all twenty-five of them. They order on their own phones, on their own schedule, and each order is drop-shipped to its own address.
You still set every price
Nothing here caps what you charge. You set retail in your storefront; the only fixed number is what a copy costs you — $27.71 on a 36-page hardcover, one copy, printing and US shipping and our flat $8 together, and the same however many sell. The pricing psychology of IPS still works, you just aren't driving to it.
Questions photographers ask
Won't I sell less without the in-person pitch?
Per client, possibly. Across a client list, usually not — because every client gets the pitch instead of the handful who agree to a session, and each of those clients can order more than one copy.
Can I still do IPS and use this?
Yes — nothing here replaces a session you want to run. Open the drafted book on a laptop during the session and the client can check out on the spot from the same gallery link, then order again later from their phone.
What does it cost to run?
Opening a studio is free — set one up, upload a gallery, and look at the book it drafts before you pay us anything. You set the retail price your client sees, and your studio shows you one figure for what a copy costs you: printing, binding, US shipping to your client's door and our flat $8 per copy, added together. On the 100-page hardcover a new studio starts with, priced at $89, that figure is $31.78 and you keep $57.22. The $8 is flat, never a percentage, so we don't earn more because you charge more. Running a studio is a flat $39/month; the first 100 photographers to subscribe lock in a founding rate of $29/month for life. Billing is monthly, cancel anytime, and the pricing page has the full arithmetic.
Related
Try it on one gallery you’ve already delivered.
Upload a finished gallery and look at the book it drafts. That’s the whole evaluation. Books print and ship to your client in two to three weeks, under your studio’s name.