There's nothing like the smell of fresh book in the morning
Getting your hard earned labours of love reviewed is a surprisingly stressful event for any creator. The way that we make books here at PhotoCPL is that you've spent the best part of a year living, breathing, celebrating, internalising, externalising and fretting over every single tiny aspect of every page. It's very easy to lose sight of the end game, which is that fine balance between artistic endeavour and commercial sensibilities. To be really honest the latter is only very loosely adhered to. Both The South Seas and Warren Hawke's NZ Surf books were done with the old Wayne's World adage 'If you build it, they will come', both are projects of passion, with a belief that that passion will be shared with the reader. They really are our babies.
The original image used for The South Seas book birth- not far from the truth
Last week the latest issue of Pacific Longboarder magazine hit the NZ bookstands with this review.
Both Warren and I shared another sigh of relief...'ahhh the reviewer got what we did!' Actually in this case the reviewer, while still giving the book an extremely positive review, sort of missed the point that the book was about Warren's career as the South Island's most prolific and published surf photographer. But that's kind of nit picking; it's a great review.
Here's the best review NZ Surf- Captured By A Surf Lens has had so far;
Warren scored the cover and lead feature of The Press Escape Magazine. No biggie, not scary, just a readership of 182,000 according to the AC Neilsen surveys. And that's why reviews can be so scary, you're putting your baby into the hands of a stranger. They could be in a bad mood, the book doesn't hit a chord with them, you just don't know. But you have to do it if you want to share your labours of love.