87
NEW NAME
September 17, 1997
As we move into our eighth year of publication it is time for a name change that better reflects what this newsletter is all about. As we look at the issues we've dealt with in the last few years it is clear that the focus of this newsletter has revolved more around marketing stock photography, than the issues of how to take good stock pictures.
Clearly, a lot of care must be given to what you shoot if you expect to be able to market the images effectively. SELLING STOCK will continue to deal with those issues.
But, it does little good to produce great pictures for which there is little or no demand. Potentially, this kind of activity will hurt the photographer most because the photographer must absorb all of the production costs, as well as a large portion of the marketing costs.
Thus, in the future, the focus of this newsletter will be to supply photographers with the information they need to more effectively SELL the images they produce.
Some in the industry still maintain that all a photographer needs to do to be successful is keep shooting and produce better and better images. We don't think so. We have seen too many cases in recent years, where experienced photographers, as well as those just getting started, produce outstanding, top quality images, and have tremendous difficulty getting them seen in the marketplace.
In today's market, photographers must give a great deal of attention to how they are going to SELL their production, before they rush out to spend huge amounts of time and money TAKING pictures.
We will trumpet this message over and over.
A secondary reason for the name change is that there is a West coast stock agency with a similar name. Neither I, nor the owner of that agency, want anyone to think the two organizations are related.