Education
In January Pearson provided a regular trading update and on February 28, 2014 it will announce preliminary results for 2013. While overall the company expects an operating profit of approximately £865m they had “lower underlying margins in North American Higher Education, particularly in the important fourth quarter.”
If there is something related to photography or illustration that you want to learn more about, chances are that Shutterstock’s Skillfeed (
www.skillfeed.com) has a video tutorial on the subject. Some of the tutorials are designed for beginners while others are aimed at people with more advanced experience. When searching a subject you can sort the tutorials by your skill level.
Educational publishers are telling stock agencies and image creators that they need more and “better quality” still images. Despite declining prices many still photographers are continuing to try to improve on the images of educational subjects already in stock agencies. This may be a losing strategy for photographers.
Given the changing and growing demands publishers are facing when developing an educational program, PACA’s Editorial Relations Committee and Cengage Learning have worked together to create a new “Preferred Provider” Insert License Agreement that helps meet the publisher’s needs while providing image vendors of a better understanding of how their images are being used.
Art Directors and Graphic Designers lament the
decline in creativity. They say this results from a lack of Time and a lack of Funding which leads to a lack of Inspiration. 75% say they have too many competing priorities to leave time for reflection.
How fast is the education market moving from print to digital delivery? In its Q2 2013 earnings conference call with investors last week, Pearson, PLC, the world leading provider of educational materials and services provided some interesting data.
Earlier this month Cengage Learning Inc., the second biggest publisher of college-course material in the U.S., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it tries to restructure its debt of about $5.8 billion. Under a deal with some of its senior lenders, the company will try to use the bankruptcy case to eliminate $4 billion in debt,
Here’s the second in our continuing series of things I’ve found on the web that might be of interest to readers. Rather than my trying to summarize each article it is better for readers to just check out the link. The first article deals with using discarded cell phones in the Philippines to replace costly textbooks. Next National Geographic gives cell phone users guidance and on how to produce great pictures. There is a great photographer’s review of Stocksy and finally brief biographies and pictures taken by 10 of the world’s most famous art photographers.
Given the prices publishers are charging for their digital products, they are establishing a precedent that images – in fact, all the content – is essentially worthless. See what publishers are charging and what that makes a single photo worth.
If supplying pictures for educational use is a significant part of your business plan you need to be aware of how the market is trending toward digital delivery and how that is likely to affect the prices that will be paid for images used in digital products. In case you’ve missed them the following are links to a few stories we’ve published that deal with this subject in the last few years.
Anyone interested in a career as a photographer – as well as those photographers in mid-career -- needs to carefully consider how the business is changing. If we look at image use on the Internet it is undeniable that more images are being made available for viewing. However, for professionals this is not good news.
More image use does not mean more demand for professionally produced images. It does not mean that there will be more opportunities for photographers to earn their living taking pictures. In fact, the opportunities to earn a living as a photographer are declining. Here’s why.
A major shift is coming in the education market, and more rapidly than many expect. In Pearson’s recent
Q4 2012 earnings call John Fallon, CEO and Chief Executive of International Education business discussed many of the “fundamental structural change” that are taking place in Pearson’s education business.
Image Source has announced the dates and locations of its latest series of
photographer workshops, starting in London on March 12, 2013 and ending in Los Angeles on March 21st with additional workshops in Copenhagen, Milan, Munich and New York.
Universal Images Group Limited (UIG), has extended its regional content management facilities by opening offices in Florence, Italy and Sydney, Australia. UIG already has such facilities in Chelmsford, Essex and London in the UK, as well as Chicago and New York, and a video editing studio in Anchorage. The new facilities are managed by experienced editors with college degrees in art history and prior long term services with Alinari, and Photolibrary.
At the PACA International Conference in October, Christie Silver of McGraw Hill School Education Group provided details on where her team found images for a major reading program they have been working on this year. She also provided insights as to how educational publishers will be sourcing images in the future and pointed out that the main focus of all educational efforts these days is digital.
If you think there is still a decent market for textbook usage of stock photos – think again. The following is a summary of a conversation yesterday between a picture researcher for a major U.S. textbook company and renown travel photographer
Wolfgang Kaehler.
One of the programs at the recent PACA International Conference asked five industry visionaries to explore emerging trends and predict what the stock photo business will be like in 2022. There was general agreement that the current business model of licensing based on usage is
broken and that in a few years (probably a lot less than 10) it will be necessary to develop a completely different approach to licensing.
In October after
Image Source acquired Cultura Creative (
see story) the company immediately launched a series of photographer-centered workshops designed to inform top professional photographers of current industry trends.
At the PACA International Conference in Chicago in October the keynote
speakers was Ken Carson, EVP and General Counsel of Cengage Learning. He
outlined many of the challenges educational publishers face today and
provided insights as to where content licensing for educational use is
headed.
For more than 30 years “Collecting Societies” in many countries have had systems to compensate photographers when their images in books and periodicals are photocopied. U.S. photographers are not so fortunate.
Photographer Jacques Jangoux reports that Alamy has licensed two of his images - A3N0PR (2 boys in a canoe in the Amazon region) and A3AB62 (waterfall of Jari River, tributary of the Amazon) – for just
$25.00 each for textbook use. Of course the photographer will only receive 60% of these figures.
When you discover that a large educational publisher has made extensive use one of your images beyond the rights they licensed is it wise to try to collect for the unauthorized use? In a recent discussion on the Stockphoto@yahoogroups.com forum it was pointed out that publishers often “blacklist” suppliers who try to collect for unauthorized use. Thus, it was argued that it may be better to accept a loss on one sale in hopes that in the years ahead you’ll make it up through additional sales to that same publisher.
Education Companies have recently settled copyright and trademark claims against several textbook distributors. However, these same companies have no remorse about knowingly, intentionally and systematically infringing the copyrights of image creators who have supplied images for use in many of the books they publish.
For some time professional image suppliers and many educational publishers have been at odds over unlicensed use of images. Image creators and suppliers claim they have not been properly compensated for the use of some images while publishers either try to hide the unauthorized uses or argue that what they have done is not copyright infringement. Now publishers and image creators are on the same side against alleged infringer
Boundless Learning.
In the future, will it be possible for more photographers to earn a
better living than they are currently earning producing stock images? More and
more photographers are jumping into the stock photo business every day
and many hope to make it a career. Here’s
a dozen reasons why future
revenue growth for this industry seems unlikely. I’ve discussed all
these issues before, but it seems useful to briefly itemize them all in
one place.