General Info

CALVENDO is the first publishing house to enable you to publish wall calendars and poster books (we call them “Flipart”) that you create yourself using your own photographs, graphic art, illustrations or text. And not only that – Calvendo also helps you retail your products internationally. As of 2016, the CALVENDO product range includes jigsaw puzzles and canvas prints. However, users can currently only create these products when working on the German-language platform.

The work produced by CALVENDO authors creates the most diverse creative portfolio worldwide, covering a broad range of subjects. CALVENDO produces calendars and poster books individually as they are ordered, as print-on-demand products. This technology is at the heart of our free-of-charge publishing service: There’s no need for minimum orders and no cost for pre-produced stock. Orders generally come via online book retailers (e.g., in the UK Amazon, Bookdepository, hive.co.uk or speedyhen.com) but also via distribution partners in other countries such as Germany where the company was set up and has its head office.

Publishing with CALVENDO costs users absolutely nothing and you earn royalties for each of your products sold. See also here.

Our corporate mission

We …

… enable right holders to fulful their creative ambitions: Authors can publish their work with us and turn their creativity into visible products that are retailed internationally.

... are organisers: We turn bits into atoms. We produce sellable products that are based on an intellectual achievement.

... curate visual creative achievements.

... manage networks for creation, automated production processes as well as sales and distribution.

... scout modern technologies (such as print-on-demand), automated workflows and innovative partners.

With CALVENDO, you can design wall calendars, poster books, canvas prints and jigsaw puzzles and market them worldwide. We are always looking at including new products and the portfolio will therefore grow even further. Please note that canvas prints and jigsaw puzzles are currently only available on the German-language platform.

Calendars and poster books can be published in the following sizes: A2, A3, A4 and A5. All sizes are available in portrait and landscape format. In the UK, we also offer square (12 x12 Inches) calendars.

CALVENDO is your free-of-charge publishing service provider, providing all the functions of a real publishing house. We have our own publishing programme and if you publish your work with us, you may consider yourself a published author as you will sign our Contract of Publication and, naturally, receive payment (royalties for each of your products sold).

Before publication, CALVENDO will assess the content of your work to determine if it fits with our publishing programme. Submitting a project does not mean that you are automatically entitled to having your work published; the right to decide lies with CALVENDO. It is also CALVENDO who is taking the economic risk as products may not produce adequate sales.

CALVENDO fulfils all typical publishing functions, but uses modern structures to do so. We recognise the opportunities that the internet offers to creative people: With CALVENDO, you can publish your own work as a self-publishing author, while CALVENDO takes on the traditional tasks of a publishing house, such as production and distribution, using the complete infrastructure of an established publishing group.

CALVENDO is therefore not a conventional publishing house but an open platform for independent authors and right holders. It is a professional service provider for people wanting to publish a variety of visual creative achievements, i.e. we provide an easy, quick and free-of-charge solution for right holders to use any type of visual material to create different types of products for international distribution and to be sold on online retail platforms. This concept is worldwide unique and CALVENDO the only platform offering these options to creative people.

There are many good reasons, for example:

• Because you have photos, graphic art and/or written work that deserve to be published.
• Because, with CALVENDO, you can publish your works quickly and easily without assuming economic risk.
• Because you can have fun and earn money at the same time – our most successful authors bring in € 10.000 per year!
• Because you can make a name for yourself, sometimes internationally.
• Because a published product is powerful PR and you or your firm will be found more easily by search engines.
• Because it's fun.
• Because you’ll be recognized for it.
• Because with Calvendo, you’ll have a business behind you that supports you in terms of layout, production and distribution.

Unlike other publishers, CALVENDO does not understand itself as the licensee of its authors’ copyrights, but rather as their publishing service provider. With Calvendo, there is no mandatory minimum print run as is the case with large publishers, and there are no additional printing costs the author must pay as is the case with some small publishers.

This creates opportunities and advantages for everyone involved: authors (photographers, graphic artists, writers, etc) can take a risk-free step into the market, the publisher can expand its programme, and above all, customers can enjoy a whole new range of products.

Simple: CALVENDO is not an online print shop. Instead you could say that we are a digital art publisher and therefore much more than a printing service: CALVENDO interfaces with the retail sector. As soon as your product has been approved for publication, it receives an ISBN and can be sold in the book retail market – practically by all book retailers. With a little luck, it will also appear in many other places, nationally and internationally.

Practically everything. We contribute by investing in the CALVENDO online platform and by sustaining the company’s running costs. You contribute with your content.

As author you pay nothing for

• registering with and using the CALVENDO website
• creating your calendars or poster books (Flipart) (after all, you make it yourself)
• the quality check by the CALVENDO jury after you have submitted your work
• the ISBN (you save fees: in Germany: € 98.00, in the UK: £ 132 pounds for the minimum purchasing quantity of 10)
• production and distribution
• listings in the official book retail databases, such as the VLB for products with an ISBN for the German-language area and Nielsen Database for English speaking regions; CALVENDO takes over the cost for listing your products in these databases which is vital for them to be retailed.

Answers to most questions can be found here in our very detailed FAQs, and in our Info Center. We also provide an online cover design course which we highly recommend to anyone planning to create wall calendars.

If you are unable to find the answer you are looking for, please get in touch with the CALVENDO Team at: co.uk@support.calvendo.com. Should your questions be of a technical nature or regard issues you might have encountered while using our online editor, please also indicate the title of your project along with the project ID. We will get back to you as soon as possible then!

CALVENDO products are well made and use very good paper. Calendars and poster books are printed digitally in several European locations using a four-color process (CMYK; color profile ISO coated v2 (ECI)) and state-of-the-art machinery. The paper is high-quality FSC-certified and multi-coated. All processes comply with current ISO standards and therefore their quality is hardly distinguishable from offset printing.

All calendars have a transparent cover page, and calendars in DIN formats are additionally equipped with a sturdy cardboard back. For protection during shipping, all products are plastic-wrapped. Our square calendars are additionally protected with a strong piece of cardboard. Products are packaged in such a way that the cover and the index page with thumbnails and the imprint are visible.

Despite state-of-the-art printing processes and the use of high-quality image printing paper, a print will not achieve the brightness and brilliance displayed by a good monitor. For this reason, it might be advisable to adjust the settings of your monitor in such a way as to simulate the appearance of the printed page.

For this purpose Adobe's Photoshop or Lightroom provide a softproof function. This requires a monitor that can be calibrated and a softproof profile capable of simulating a print.

This is called an ICC profile and you may download it by clicking on this link:

http://download.calvendo.de/Indigo_ProfiSilk170.icc

Please refer to your user manual to learn how to integrate this profile into your software.

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. The number identifies, for example, the publishing house and a "group," i.e. a country code that actually refers to a language area: 0 and 1 stand for an English-speaking area, 3 for German-speaking areas.

Each ISBN applies internationally and is assigned only once. In this way books, calendars and other independent publications can be unambiguously identified. ISBNs are primarily used by the merchandise management systems of book sellers, but also by many libraries in their ordering systems and for library network catalogues.

The cost of your ISBN is covered by CALVENDO: € 98.00 for German-language areas, £ 132 pounds for the minimum purchasing quantity of ten in English-speaking areas.

Products that have been selected for publication by our CALVENDO jury receive an ISBN, a CALVENDO logo, and we enter them in the official book retail databases. For German-language products, this is the VLB, the list of German books in print (www.vlb.de); for English-language products, it is the Nielsen database BookData (www.nielsenbookdata.com); and for French-language products it is the Sodis catalogue (www.sodis.fr). Now wholesalers and retailers can place orders with us for these products and sell to customers.

Please note: French CALVENDO products are currently given an English-language ISBN, but they can be ordered in France without any difficulty.

Projects that are not selected for publication do not receive an ISBN or a CALVENDO logo, and they are not entered in the VLB or Nielsen database. Retailers and wholesalers cannot order them.

Yes, products that have been selected for publication by the CALVENDO jury bear the CALVENDO logo on the index page, an ISBN, and we enter them in the official book retail databases (see also question 11 for more information on the latter).

Yes. Each product that is offered in a different format (e.g., DIN A4 and A3) counts as a separate publication and receives its own ISBN. This is the only way to ensure that products on the market are unambiguously identified.

Yes. When the calendar grid needs to be updated with every new year, a new ISBN will be assigned. If you choose the option “flexible calendar grid” when setting up your calendar, it will automatically be updated every year. You don’t have to do anything!

We are not interested in formalities. You do not need a degree or a diploma to publish with CALVENDO. CALVENDO’s publishing service primarily targets experienced creative people, such as professional photographers, illustrators, artists, cartoonists, writers and so on. However, just as many non-professionals, i.e. creative people who pursue photography or other artistic endeavours as a hobby or part-time job, use our platform and publish their work with us. And we’re particularly curious about you if you pique our interest with a unique and perhaps completely new perspective, subject, technique, motif or composition!

Think of subjects you would be most interested in seeing in calendars or poster books (Flipart) and consider the following questions:

• What motifs and subjects do I know best?
• What kind of interesting images do I have that represent one theme and can be put together in a calendar?
• What interests my friends, co-workers or other people I know?
• What might potential customers be looking for?
• Is there a market niche that is yet to be tapped?
• What can I accomplish with my abilities and equipment?

Tip: Always narrow it down and be specific, i.e. instead of “Asia: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” how about “Food Stalls in Beijing”?

CALVENDO reserves the right to reject submissions whose subjects are overrepresented in our programme. We are looking for creative ideas, not imitations.

By all means, do! You can refer friends and family to the CALVENDO Product Gallery and pass on the URLs for your products. In the product gallery, you will also find options to share your work on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ and you can download a catalogue page of your product in PDF format. Spread the word wherever possible – promoting your products is an important part of publishing!