Tom Carter’s Advice for Aspiring Photographers and Authors, an interview by Wang Zheng Rui

© TomCarter

Following photographs by Tom Carter, text by Tom Carter and Wang Zheng Rui.

I had the good pleasure of recently meeting travel photographer Tom Carter at a book signing for his masterpiece CHINA: Portrait of a People. I asked if I could interview Tom (I am a Chinese journalism student and occasionally write freelance articles for some Shanghai publications), however he suggested that instead I ought to write an exclusive Q&A feature for Fabiano Busdraghi’s photoblog Camera Obscura.

So here I am sitting with Tom Carter, who is somewhat of a living legend amongst Asian photography enthusiasts for his record-breaking 2-year, 33-province backpacking journey across China and, more recently, his cross-county adventure in India.

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Peter Hessler, author of Country Driving: a Journey Through China, and Rob Giffard, author of China Road, are both high-profile names who have recently monopolized the attention of the international media for their respective road trips. The name Tom Carter remains relatively “obscuro” due to the fact that Carter does not have the publicists, professional connections and funding that Hessler and Giffard do. Nonetheless, anyone who has read Carter’s 600-page photographic tome CHINA: Portrait of a People will agree that the mainstream media are indeed biased against independent artists.

How, then, are indie artists to receive any recognition for their work without mainstream support? These are the sort of questions we will be discussing with Tom Carter today.

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Wang Zheng Rui Hi Tom, thanks for taking time out to chat with me. It must be every photographer’s dream to have their work bound and immortalized in the pages of a book. You already covered some of this information during your book signing speech, however perhaps you would be good enough to reiterate your story for the online community.

Tom Carter: My pleasure. Basically, at the end of my travels across China I had this massive collection of photography and everyone I showed them to had the exact same suggestion: “Tom, you must publish these pictures!” Of course I never set out to be an author or photographer, I was just a dusty backpacker with a little point-and-shoot camera drifting across the frontier. But at their insistence I researched the idea, and I saw that even though there had been dozens of photo books on China already published¹, it seems no single photographer had ever photographed the entire nation of China. Right there I had found my niche. So I contacted a number of publishing houses in American and UK, and their rejections returned swiftly and mercilessly, and I cursed them all and swore my literary revenge, but still I remained unpublished.

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Wang Zheng Rui Why do you think they rejected you if you had accomplished something seemingly no one else in China’s recorded history has ever accomplished?

Tom Carter: Who knows. Probably because I didn’t have a literary agent, or because I didn’t have National Geographic in my portfolio. I mean, few publishers want to take a chance on an unknown artist, no matter how talented he or she may be. Unless you have industry connections or name recognition, you are just one of millions of artists across the world trying to be noticed. So in a way I can understand why I was rejected by Taschen and Phaidon and Thames & Hudson², but it still sucks.

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Wang Zheng Rui Speaking of Taschen, there are rumors spreading on some Chinese photoblogs on Sina.com that Taschen ripped off your book’s theme and released a similarly titled photo book on the same date as you, to kind of steal your thunder.

Tom Carter: I can’t comment on that because I don’t want to fuel the rumor mill or validate people’s gossip. And you Chinese love to gossip³. I will just say that, yes, I did send Taschen a query letter a couple years before they published their ‘China Portrait’ book, so if it is a coincidence, then the coincidence is uncanny. But the content of our photo books are completely dissimilar: mine is street photography from across the 33 provinces, and theirs is old archival stuff compiled by a bunch of editors. Nothing alike.

© TomCarter

Wang Zheng Rui Well I am sure they are regretting sending you that rejection letter. Taschen’s book might have received a lot of coverage in the media, but that book’s sales rank on Amazon is appalling. So tell us what you did after the rejections letters began piling up.

Tom Carter: Actually there weren’t many actual rejection letters. Mostly I was flat-out ignored by the publishers I queried, which is even more of an insult, like being an “untouchable” of the literary world. If Angelika Taschen had had the common courtesy to send me a rejection letter, I probably would have framed it (laughs).

Wang Zheng Rui That would have been acknowledging your query letter and your idea, thereby making it legally harder for them to rip off your book.

Tom Carter: Tsk tsk, you really need to drop that subject. There are several similarly-titled books: The Chinese: Portrait of a People (1981); China: A Portrait of the People, Place and Culture; China, Portrait of a Country… Looking back, CHINA: Portrait of a People is not a title I should have used, and I wonder how many people have mistakenly bought those books when they thought it was mine? At that time my book went into production, the Taschen and Dorling Kindersley⁴ books had not been released yet, so I could not possibly know that in 2008 there would be this flood of “China Portrait” photo books. It’s just the gods once again messing with me (laughs). Actually, alternate titles for my book were “Round Eye” or “Watching Me Watch Them” or “Watching Them Watch Me.” I should have gone with one of those titles, but, you know, what can you do? Shoulda woulda coulda…

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Wang Zheng Rui So you contacted some Chinese publishers, right?

Tom Carter: Yes, I queried the publishing houses in Mainland China because at the time I was based in Beijing, so it was easy for me to meet with them personally. And actually I was almost published by Foreign Languages Press⁵, except they were going to have to censor over half of my images according to the rules set forth by the Communist-run publishing industry. There was no way I would allow that: I’d rather not be published. Then I was introduced to Blacksmith Books, which is quite well known in Hong Kong for their catalog of non-fiction literature. If you are an author with an Asian-themed book, definitely query them.

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Wang Zheng Rui So Blacksmith Books agreed to publish CHINA: Portrait of a People in its entirety exactly as you had conceived it?

Tom Carter: For the most part. A couple shots that might have been sensitive to Chinese readers⁶ were excluded, but the book is still 640 pages and over 800 images, making it one of the thickest China photo books on the market, so I can’t complain.

Wang Zheng Rui Your book must have broken some kind of size record, not just physically but the sheer scope of the subject matter: I don’t think there is any aspect of life and humanity in China that you did not capture! It’s a shame it has not been submitted it for any literary awards.

Tom Carter: We were going to submit it for the Kiriyama Prize, but that group shut down in 2008 right after my book was published. Bad timing. And, well, I don’t have the time or money to be mailing my book out for lesser prizes, so, that’s that.

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Wang Zheng Rui What was the production process like? Did you just hand over all your photos, sign on a dotted line and walk away to rest on your laurels?

Tom Carter: I am sure that’s what it would have been like had I gone with a larger publishing house, but one of the reasons I signed with Blacksmith Books is because they gave me the option to be involved in production. So I went down to Hong Kong and together Publisher Pete and I sifted through tens of thousands of my photos to choose the best ones. It took me 8 hours per day, 7 days a week for one whole month. I had to take up residence at the infamous Chung King Mansions⁷ just to afford to stay in Hong Kong because it’s so bloody expensive there. Then I went back to Beijing and I spent another month writing all the captions and chapter introductions⁸. At the same time I also arranged the layout of the images myself, which was not unlike a puzzle in trying to determine which photo would go on what page. That was the most difficult part of the process, but there was no way on God’s earth that any editor could have done that; only a photographer knows how to arrange his or her images so that they tell the story you want to tell. So for any photogs reading this, if you get published I highly suggest you put a clause in your contract specifying that you are present during the layout and design process. This is vital!

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Wang Zheng Rui Did you have any problems with the editors or designers while they were putting your book together? What should new authors expect?

Tom Carter: I mean, look, what artist isn’t going to be overprotective of their art? And what publisher isn’t going to put the interest of their company’s bottom-line before the interest of some eccentric artist? It’s just the contentious nature of the industry. It’s like a hostile holy trinity between author, publisher and retailer. You see duels between rock stars versus managers versus record labels, move stars versus directors versus producers, all the time in the tabloids. The only difference with literature is that it all takes place behind the scenes. There is an artistic gulf between artist and executive: we create art and they commoditize it. So, you know, when an editor turns your manuscript into some heartless, soulless piece of shyte that you can’t recognize anymore, it’s just a part of doing business with the beast. It’s up to you to handle the situation with dignity and grace and try to convince them where they are wrong, so that you guys can compromise. But you will definitely have to make compromises; expect you and your editor to engage in a colorful and heated debate for weeks if not months over the final outcome of your book.

© TomCarter

Wang Zheng Rui You submitted your book to your publisher in the fall of 2007, however it was not published until the summer of 2008. CHINA: Portrait of the People was late for the summer Olympics in Beijing, which was a missed opportunity considering how many foreign tourists were in China at that time.

Tom Carter: Heh, I am flattered that you have followed my work so closely. But, yes, there were some delays that I am still unclear about which prevented my book from debuting when it was originally supposed to debut. I don’t want to think about all those missed sales because it’s depressing…and I’m still broke (laughs good naturedly).

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Wang Zheng Rui You are being too nice about this, Tom. It’s now 2010 and your book is still not sold hardly anywhere in China or the world except in Hong Kong! Meanwhile, generic photo books about China that aren’t worth the paper they are printed on populate the bookshelves from Shanghai to San Francisco! What’s going in with your book and why can’t the international audience have access to it? Or is it your publisher’s intent to give CHINA: Portrait of a People a sort of cult-status by making it impossible to buy?

Tom Carter: That would be kind of clever, but the reality is that finding distribution is probably the most difficult part of publishing. Just because you got your book printed does not mean that any book stores will want to carry it. In my own publisher’s case, they are based in Hong Kong, which is in neither Mainland China nor the west, so they had not only one but two massive cultural, commercial and geographical obstacles to overcome in finding worldwide distribution. Not to mention that I am in China, a Communist country where authors used to be executed not but 30 years ago, where books are publicly burned to this very day⁹, and where literature is still considered a kind of novelty by the greater public. So the lack of bookstores, and the lack of distribution channels to bookstores, in the PRC, makes it extremely hard for anyone to navigate, let alone a foreigner. Alas CHINA: Portrait of a People was finally picked up by NBN and is debuting in America and on Amazon.com worldwide this June! So if someone living in Italy or Germany or France or UK or Japan is reading this, you can order my book by ISBN number from your local bookstore, or more easily, and probably cheaper, just buy it on Amazon.¹⁰.

© TomCarter

Wang Zheng Rui Speaking of reviews, you’ve already received endless accolades from the online community for your photos, and I daresay you have mastered viral marketing by the sheer volume of positive word-of-mouth of your book. But are any real newspapers or magazines ever going to review CHINA: Portrait of a People, or will this be a silent release?

Tom Carter: Despite the growing popularity of blogs and online webzines, there are still hundreds of thousands of books published each year. And out of that pile of books, the New York Times and Publishers Weekly, et al, are only going to read titles that either their friends in the big publishing houses personally persuade them to review¹¹ or that they think will help sell papers. They have no incentive to waste space on an unknown author, even though, ironically, a majority of authors are unknown. Not to mention the fact that it costs publishers an obscene amount of money to ship books to newspapers with absolutely no guarantee that they will even do so. Only a big publishing house can afford that kind of coverage. But, hey, there are still several weeks remaining before CHINA: Portrait of a People’s debut in the west, so I remain optimistic that the New York Times Book Review will show me some love.

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To conclude, while publishing houses and newspapers certainly have their bottom lines to consider when deciding on which artists to accept into their ranks, they could stand to divide the contracts and coverage amongst high-profile and lesser-known authors a bit more evenly. After all, the face of traditional publishing is changing as we speak: self-published authors are on the rise while print-media has seen a detrimental decline in readership as more people turn to digital formats. Amazon.com is leading the pace, not only in Kindle sales but with their new self-publishing tool, CreateSpace. Will this spell an end to traditional books? Or will mega-publishers and mainstream newspapers finally open their hallowed doors to unknown artists in an effort to save their fading industry. In less than 5 years we will probably find out the answer.

Please visit Tom Carter’s official homepage or purchase CHINA: Portrait of a People on Amazon.

© TomCarter

1. Editor’s note: National Geographic, Lonely Planet, etc. [↩]
2. Editor’s note: the ‘big 3’ art book publishers. [↩]
3. Editor’s note: this is true! [↩]
4. Editor’s note: travel guide publisher. [↩]
5. Editor’s note: one of the oldest and largest publishers in China. [↩]
6. Editor’s note: a Tibetan sky burial; some frisky Shanghai girls showing their panties. [↩]
7. Editor’s note: setting of the 1994 Wong Kar-wai film. [↩]
8. Editor’s note: a blend of historic overviews, poetry and narratives. [↩]
9. Editor’s note: Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby a notable example. [↩]
10. Editor’s note: if you do, please be sure to write a customer review for it on Amazon, because those reviews really do go a long way in influencing potential buyers. [↩]
11. Editor’s note: in Chinese this is called “guanxi”. [↩]