FPG's Online Pricing

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February 10, 2000

FPG has upgraded their on-line site at www.fpg.com and has added their iSwoop royalty
free products to the site. Users have a choice of searching three separate files --


FPG rights-protected, FPG historical and iSwoop.

FPG also features on-line pricing for the rights protected images.
Their prices are a welcome breath of fresh air after the announcement of SuperStock's
pricing strategy which we published last month.

In their pricing schedule for "Usage Type - Brochures" they ask for information on
Client Industry Type, Specific Industry, Usage Type, Specific Usage, whether the usage
is for consumer or trade use, Circulation, Size of Use, whether the use is local,
regional or national, the duration of the use and the Start Date of the License.

I did not check all the various types of uses but some of the prices for non-exclusive
Brochure use in the Telecommunications Industry, for Consumer Use with
National distribution and a 1 Year License are as follows:

If the client wants some type of exclusive use they also get notified to call for the
price.

Photographers and other stock agents may want to check out FPG's price on a particular
uses before beginning any negotiations with their own clients. All you have to do is
go to the site, select any image from the rights protected area, put the preview image
in the shopping cart and then click on pricing. The schedule comes up and then you
can manipulate the schedule.

The basic 1/4 page prices are much higher than those listed in Negotiating Stock Photo
Prices and PhotoQuote, but the prices for larger uses (full page) are only slightly higher
than the two principle industry guides. FPG has used a much smaller factor
for larger space than we have tended to use at NSPP.

For example, in NSPP the full page brochure use is double or 100% more than the 1/4
page use. We think that is reasonable, and fair to both the seller and buyer,
considering the importance of a full page picture compared with a 1/4 page use. FPG
is charging only 18% more for full page than they charge for the 1/4 page use.

There are good reasons for part of FPG's strategy. If you believe most of your sales
are going to be quarter page sales (which is generally accepted at all agencies as
being true) then you want to push that 1/4 page price as high as possible. On the
other hand to say that the full page picture isn't worth much more than the 1/4 page
picture greatly depreciates the value of larger usages and moves rapidly toward the
point where size of usage is not considered an issue. At NSPP we don't think we want
to move in that direction.

FPG is certainly following the lead of some of their major competitors in pricing full
page uses very close to quarter page. One other factor should be considered here.
Most agencies don't report the size of the usage on their sales reports to
photographers. This if a photographer sees a figure that he thinks is reasonable for
1/4 use, he may be surprised to learn that the picture was used actually used full
page.

Photographers need to try to get more information out of their agencies about actual
usage and be aware of the trends to give away large usages for relatively low prices.