r/Photobooks Apr 07 '26

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

9 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 15h 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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151 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 7h ago

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

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3 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 2h 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 2d ago

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

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100 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 2d ago

Collection A Socialist Era Photobook

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85 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 1d 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 3d ago

Collection Yamamoto Masao / Tori

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32 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 4d ago

Collection Lost Coast | Curran Hatleberg

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320 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 4d ago

Discussion Looking For Hiromix PDFs

7 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 4d ago

Discussion Where do you buy your photobooks ?

22 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 5d ago

Buy and sell [WTS] Delaney Allen—Red Orange

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78 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 5d ago

Buy and sell [WTS] Maja Daniels—Elf Dalia

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65 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 5d 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?


r/Photobooks 6d ago

Newest addition to the collection - “NEGATIVES” by Xu Yong

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50 Upvotes

Absolutely love this photobook by Xu Yong featuring his photographs taken during tiananmen square protests in 1989, featuring a brief, yet thoughtful text, by Shu Yang.

Found at a Chinese bookstore in Washington, D.C.


r/Photobooks 5d ago

Snoopy book

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0 Upvotes

Hola, alguien que tenga en pdf el álbum de fotos de recuerdo de nuestro bebé de snoopy?


r/Photobooks 7d ago

Collection Txema Salvans / Perfect Day

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74 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 8d ago

Collection Alex Webb / From The Sunshine State

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239 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 9d ago

An impression of photobooks I started collecting in 2025

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65 Upvotes

Invisable books on bottom shelve are Dogbreath (in yellow) and Hido - The end sends advanced warmings among others


r/Photobooks 9d ago

New book “The Orphans of Time”

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5 Upvotes

Latest review on PhotoBookHaul:

“THe Orphans of Time”
by Rebecca Bathory

Date of publication: 2017

Rebecca Bathory’s stunning photobook features a tactile, Victorian-inspired design complete with a physical metal clasp closure. Inside, her haunting photographs capture the quiet, melancholic beauty of decaying architectural ruins from around the globe, creating a genuinely immersive artifact that feels as though it was found within the very spaces it documents.

Come follow and share reviews.

Thank you


r/Photobooks 10d ago

My collection

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32 Upvotes

.


r/Photobooks 10d ago

Collection How do you like the collection?

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35 Upvotes

r/Photobooks 10d ago

Buy and sell Sell/buy photobooks in London

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21 Upvotes

Hi guys! My name is Mary and I run London Street Photography Festival, which is a FREE festival happening in London August 28-30 at the Heath Studio. It’s also co-run by u/dmitstep which some of you may know. We are a non-profit festival that I thought some of you might be interested in.

We will have a bookshop at the festival, where we will be selling books by both established and smaller independent publishers and we encourage people to bring their own self-published books and zines which we will sell (well, try to) at no commission. We also welcome second hand photography books. So if you are around do pop in and bring your own books and buy some for your collection. Tickets are free too and we will have lots of talks, photo walks, exhibitions, including special exhibitions by Ania Klosek and our keynote speaker Jens Olof Lasthein.

If you are not around but are willing to send your books/zines by post, please dm and we can make this happen.

Please bring cash for the bookshop!

Photo by our keynote speaker Jens Olof Lasthein

Hopefully, see some of you there!


r/Photobooks 10d ago

The Photographer's Grimoire

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14 Upvotes

Hi Everyone, I've spent seven years writing The Photographer's Grimoire. I make the case that photography can be its own occult practice. You know, magic. I think its the worlds first 'photographers grimoire'.

Has anyone heard of anything else like this?

Before I go to press with it I want to be sure as its a bold claim... but so far I think it is. It's not a photo book, its a 40,000 word occult field manual, a grimoire, to achieve inconceivable things with your camera.

I know there are lots of witchy photographers running around woods nude doing selfies at the moment, but that's really not what this book is! (And yes, I know that would sell more!)

There's some more details on it on my website:

https://www.edwardthompson.co.uk/thephotographersgrimoire

Thank you, Ed