Pricing
Evolveimages.com has introduced a new simplified licensing model for Rights Managed (RM) Images that they call EvoRights. EvoRights focuses on four primary price drivers: use type (commercial or editorial), intended media (print, digital or both), duration and geographic distribution and allows customers to determine the usage fee in as little as three clicks.
RM photographers Take Note!! With the launch of
PeopleImages.com Yuri Arcurs has taken away your last best argument for why professional art directors and graphic designers should go to traditional RM sites to license the images they need.
Many photographers, upset with the low prices their distributors are charging for uses, have become enamored with the idea that PicturEngine will allow them to set their own prices for use of their work. That may not work as well as they hope.
Non-exclusive microstock photographers whose images sell frequently on the current microstock sites may want to take a hard look at
PicturEngine’s new portal and marketing strategy.
Photographers set the price for the use of their images and receive 100% of the fee customers pay.
Previously we wrote about the new search engine
PicturEngine. The key question is not how well the search works, the number of images they offer or the chance for photographers to ask for higher prices for their work. The key question is how will they make customers aware that their site exists? The question is marketing.
Back in 2008, in an effort to try to compete with microstock, Alamy introduced its
Novel Use licensing model. This strategy allowed the company to license RM and traditional RF images for very limited small uses without risking loss of revenue when these same customers wanted to make larger uses of the images.
There are a number of stories on this site that will aid you in determining what to charge for a stock photo usage. Below is a list of story titles and the number of credits required to read the entire story. Click on the detailed description link and it will take you to a short description of what is included in the full story. Click on the Story link and it will take you directly to the story and deduct the appropriate number of credits from your account.
Image creator success stories in the current educational publishing environment are few and far between. The strategy one photographer used when licensing educational re-use of an image may be instructive.
ASMP’s “
The Future of Licensing” webinar with Frederic Haber, of the Copyright Clearance Center; Henry Oh, entrepreneur and digital content distributor; Eugene Mopsik, Executive Director of ASMP and Richard Kelly, moderator was held yesterday and can be downloaded here. Licensing was defined as a process that allows a customer to use something that is too expensive for them to own outright.
In the previous series of articles entitled
"Edication: How The Market Has Changed" we looked as some of the factors that have changed the educational market for images. This series of stories looks ahead. Not only have there been dramatic changes in the past, but the business of delivering educational materials to students is still very much in transition. There will certainly be a decline in the use of printed products, a growth in the delivery of educational material online and more use of video. Check out these stories for more about where things seem to be headed.
The Editorial Relations Committee of PACA (Picture Archive Council of
America) has released updated suggestions for dealing with educational
publishers. Digital technology is rapidly changing the way educational
materials are being developed and used. During this transition period
image licensors need to be particularly vigilant if they hope to receive
reasonable compensation for the long range use of their imagery.
Ninety percent of new products fail for a variety of reasons. When photographs are an inherent part of the product it is often difficult to decide what to charge for the use. When a product is first being designed and launched it is impossible to determine how successful it will be. Often product developers are under funded. Here's an explanation of how leasing rather than a one-time licensing fee may be the answer to making the sale.
Recently, a stock agent suggested that the industry needs to establish a
floor price for Rights Managed (RM) images to stop the continued decline in license fees. He is frustrated because his overseas distributors seem to be making an increasing volume of sales at prices that are “close to microstock pricing.”
In an effort to go after a share of the $15 billion educational textbook
market Apple Inc. has launched iBooks2 software with an aim to quicken
the adoption of the iPad in the educational market. The company has been
working with Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to
produce digital textbooks that can be delivered on the iPad. Currently,
these three companies are responsible for 90% of the textbooks sold in
the US.
After reading my story on “
Who Controls The Price” Terri Petrie of Greenhighlander.co.uk asked, “How could a stock agency allow for more creator control of prices?”
Image creators need to recognize that the fatal flaw in the stock photography business model is that there is no way to control supply relative to demand. This was not a big problem in the 1990s when demand exceed supply, but that state of affairs will never happen again. As a result Stock Photography is and will continue to be a very risky business.
Recentlty, a photographer asked what to charge for use of photos on a
travel app that is designed to help tourists discover new places to
visit, things to do, places to eat and drink etc.? Here are my thoughts.
Aurora Photos is excited to announce the launch of the
myPhone Collection of stock photography, a collection of images taken with iPhones and other mobile devices by some of the world’s top photographers and iPhoneographers, and now made available to pictures buyers for both editorial and commercial licensing. To coincide with the launch of the myPhone Collection, Aurora is also introducing a new modified Rights Managed licensing model called
Easy Rights Managed. The model offers simple, quick, broad, and managed rights at reasonable prices.
With its launch of its
myPhone Collection Aurora Photos has also introduced a new simplified Rights Managed pricing model they call
Easy Rights Managed. “The model offers simple, quick, broad, and managed rights at reasonable prices.” The model is similar in some ways to the Rights-Ready model launched by Getty Images in 2006. Getty later abandoned this experiment.
The Occupy Wall Street movement’s “we are the 99 percent” campaign is
basically about a fairer distribution of wealth. Photographers and those
who handle the distribution of images to end users need to launch an
Occupy Book Publishers movement.
After I published “
Moving Forward In Educational Licensing” a reader suggested on the Yahoo Stockphoto group that I had “some interesting ideas” about how stock photographers might deal with educational publishers. Without reading what I had to say, Carl May, owner of
Biological Photo Service & Terraphotographics responded with, “I hope Pickerell isn't really falling for the line that educational publishers don't know how images will be used in the future and therefore need new pricing procedures.” Carl is an experienced photographer/agent who also spent over a decade working on the college publisher side of the business.This article is a colloquy between Carl and myself on the subject. Apologies for the article length.
In the case of DRK Photo vs John Wiley & Sons Inc. in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Arizona Judge Frederick J. Martone
denied the defendant’s motion to seal circulation information for 40
titles that were part of the complaint.
In discussions with stock agents, and listening to publishing clients
explain their needs, at the 16th PACA International Conference in New
York this past weekend a few things became clear. Read this story for information about how the business is changing and what those licensing images need to do.
Why can’t the three major distributors – Getty, Corbis, Alamy – set
reasonable prices for textbook use? As licensors of the images they
should be able to set the price. Instead, they allow the major
publishers to dictate to them what they will pay. This happens
because the agencies are so worried about losing market share that they
constantly try to undercut each other and play right into the hands of
the publishers.
The big distributors are missing a huge opportunity to capture an even larger share of the market than they already control. Learn how visual search could help them grow revenue and take market share from the small suppliers.