A San Francisco-based photographer recently asked: "There is a lot of speculation about tablets like the Kindle and the iPad possibly leading the way for more image use and therefore a possible boon to stock-photo licensing. Do you have any thoughts on that?"
For much of the past decade, textbook publishers have licensed rights to print a minimum number of copies of the books they published and proceeded to greatly exceed the authorized press run, without informing the content creators. Only recently have photographers become aware of this problem, which we covered last month. Here is a summary of the settled and pending actions.
Current established
usage fees are so low that many photographers and small agencies that
have specialized in selling to textbooks have either gone out of
business, or are on the verge of doing so. Nevertheless, the
excessively low prices were still not enough for the publishers. To
press their advantage it now appears that many of the larger publishers
have systematically, not occasionally or accidentally, printed many
more copies of books than they licensed rights to print.
Textbook publishers now have total control when it comes to setting prices and have no reason to want a dialogue with sellers on the subject of pricing. However, past uses is one area where publishers might want to open a discussion, seeing the outcomes of several recent court cases.
Books and education are changing. Consumer looking for information or entertainment will turn to "vooks" -- books they can watch, instead of the old paper kind they can only read or audio books where they can only listen to narration. These vooks blend text and video into a single integrated and uninterrupted reading and viewing experience that can be accessed and read on the Web or an iPhone.
In light of pricing declines for textbook use and publisher attempts to avoid paying for future electronic uses, some image producers ask: "Why don't all the sellers just say 'no'? Shouldn't the producer be setting product prices?"
In addition to raising print quantities and extending license durations, textbook publishers are increasingly asking for the rights to publish the same information for the same time period on password-protected Web sites. While publishers intends to charge for those passwords, they expect content producers not to count such uses as part of the circulation.
From a stock photography point of view, the future is bleak for those trying to sell images for textbook use. This segment of the stock photography business is on what appears to be an irreversible downward spiral.
As prices for stock photo uses drop, the joke has been that pretty soon, publishers will start asking photographers to pay for publication of pictures. That idea may not be as ludicrous as it sounds.
The following is a list of general categories of imagery that are often used by educational publishers. This list is used by the Universal Images Groups and by Encyclopaedia Britannica in categorizing images for their purposes. In one sense the list might be viewed as covering all types of imagery, but if you think of each category in terms of images that might have an educational application you see that many images that might broadly fit into the category will have little or no education value.
This article provides prices for use of images on Educational and Retail Posters. For more information about educational uses see Stock Photo Prices - Textbooks, JHP2067
Microstock sites seem ideal for book publishers -- until one looks closer at the license agreements. Repeat usage prices soar.