How does the total 2008 editorial revenue of $700 million break down among breaking news, editorial features and books? Roughly in thirds. There is, of course, some regional variation: in some areas, book uses make up a larger percentage of editorial use; in others, a greater percentage is attributed to newspapers and magazines.
In addition to the stock industry’s major players, large editorial suppliers include The Associated Press, the European Picture Association, Reuters, Bloomberg, Agence France Presse and Newscom. A large percentage of the images these companies supply are produced to fulfill subscriptions, and thus it might be argued these are more like assignments than stock. However, Selling Stock includes their photo revenue into its stills-licensing estimates.
Some of such companies are publicly owned, but even in those cases, their image-licensing revenue is a small part of the total and is not broken out in their reporting. Based on discussions with senior managers in this industry segment, Selling Stock estimates the combined gross still-image revenue of all these editorial sellers at roughly $250 million.