I really don't want to lead a discussion into oblivion with this topic as i know it has some controversial history here. But, if I could refer back to the HP contest (without rehashing that whole thing) I would like to know what does sound reasonable as a price for a full copyright sale. I realize that this is not hystorically the typical business model for image usage, but let's assume that this image hypothetically belongs to a pro, but is not necessarily bringing in substantial usage fees, what would be reasonable? I understand the idea that a really stunning image that can be licensed for a magazine cover and pull in $500. It can then go on to draw future sales and it may go on to pass that $1000 mark that was the center of the contraversy. In reference to the hypothetical image I mentionned, i can see how this number can seem outrageous. I guess what I'm asking is what prices have been obtained by pros for full copyright sales in the past?
Was it because the number was too close to what has been obtained for an image on a single usage basis or was it because the price was too far from what has been obtained on a full rights basis?
Scott
Posted by Steve Foss on October 11, 2007 at 8:44 PM
I have a friend who also is a photographer who has been negotiating around $40,000 for a coporation to buy the full copyright to one of his images.
Posted by Mark Windom on October 11, 2007 at 8:57 PM
I sold full rights to an image a few years ago to a company that wanted to use it on the packaging for their product. Price was $25,000.
Won't go into the specific price, but I'm driving a new Tundra and there's more in savings. A friend got about half that ten years ago. The difference between the two was more a case of the uniqueness and future prospects for the images than any reflection of market increases (none such) over the ten year span.
Posted by Scott Linstead on October 12, 2007 at 10:43 AM
Wow! Would you all say that this is a once in a career kind of thing, or have there been similar full rights sales that were a fair fraction of what was obtained here? Also, would you say that this sort of return is more likely to happen with, say, landscapes vs. some other natural history image?
It used to be more common, even standard, depending on the specific market sector. Too many amateur photographers are giving their stuff away these days in all sectors of the market, or darned near so in terms of what photographs should be worth commercially. Basic attitude of some potential clients is "If you won't sell your work cheap, there are others who will." On top of that the markets are working in a changed environment. The markets are still there if you're willing to work for it, but you won't catch me or anyone else talking about who we have (or will) sell to. When asked I have one pat answer: "Find your own damn markets!!!!" I know you're not asking that here, so that's not directed at you. But it is certainly getting harder to find the markets. Sad to say, it is in fact becoming more of a once-in-a-lifetime type of sale, but the only way you will get one or several is to look for them and hold out for fair pricing.
Thanks for your thoughtful and insightful feedback. I find how this market has evolved fascinating. As a recent turned-full-time guy who is slowly building a clientele, I find this both encouraging and discouraging. Encouraging in that these sums have been obtained, discouraging in that my very presence in the market diminishes the likelyhood of it happenning again. Either way, these are exciting times for me.
No diminishing in the market with you there, Scott, provided you work for fair rates rather than yielding to the temptation to give your work away for less that it's worth. Lots of that going around. But there's always room in the market for good work. The best advice is to stay on top of pricing and to let your work speak for itself. In our experience over the years, potential clients that shy away from the price eventually come back for the quality.
Posted by Steve Foss on October 12, 2007 at 10:44 PM
I've had two incidents that echo Hank's advice. On a MUCH smaller scale than full rights sales, of course (uh, Hank, you SURE you don't want to let me in on your markets? I could use a new Tundra myself.)
In one case, a potential wedding client got great recommendations about me from two previous clients and then tried to talk my rate down by 50 percent. I politely refused and used the line I always do when I feel someone is questioning my rates. I describe the hours of work that go into the shoot and tell them that, when the math is done, I'm being paid about as much as their plumber. The implication being (I never come out and say this) that if they're paying that much money for having their shnit cleaned up by a guy whose butt crack is showing, they can pay me that much money to immortalize their daughter through art and deliver a lifetime of memories. I didn't hear back from the man, but his wife e-mailed me a couple weeks later to book the wedding at my rate. They were very pleased with the work I did and have recommended me to others.
In another case I had someone try to get me to cut the price of a framed image on display at my show. I also politely declined and did not offer any other comment. He bought the image the next day. I'm about in the middle of the pack on prices for prints, and I'd rather cart home a truckload of images and have them for the next time out than drop my price. Period. I'm a bit below the mid range for wedding gigs, and I won't drop my rate there, either.
Sorry. That may sound a bit off topic but it's really only a matter of scale. If you let someone talk you down from the price you've set for the small and medium stuff, you'll let them talk you down on the big stuff. I won't say that depresses the market for the rest of us because I don't believe in the accuracy of that statement. But I DO think allowing that depresses the value of your own work. If you don't value your own work highly and show it through your pricing structure, others will tend not to value it highly either.
Posted by Scott Linstead on October 12, 2007 at 11:10 PM
One of the ways that I compete as a new-comer to this market is that I write natural history pieces to go with my images. Generally speaking, the higher end mags are harder to break into because of their use of repeat freelancers, staff writers/photogs or all out assignements approaching the "fellowship" model of National Geographic. One cruddy little, low-paying quarterly was the subject of my queries recently and they blew me off as if I was knocking on the door on National Geo. with a handful of slides. Man oh man was I insulted! Without getting into the details of my approach -- suffice to say that it is original and the "my images are great and I can save you time" aspect gets across efficiently -- the editor of this little rag just effectivley said "Listen, pal, we get a lot of unsolicited material, so just see the guidelines" Now, I am not naive and I know this is true for EVERY mag, however, I am very conscious of this in my approach and given my mid-level mag clientel I would like to think that this decidedly low-level mag would be appreciative of the fact that I can fill their pages with excellent material at THEIR price scale in the name of building a regular client list. Anyhow, I'm hijacking my own thread here, but, I'm done!
Scott
Posted by Steve Foss on October 13, 2007 at 2:53 AM
Scott, better you hijacking your own thread than me doing it.
I've quit trying to market my work to magazines. I have a few of the low-level to mid-level pub clients you mentioned, as well as a calendar publisher or two, but only a handful, and it is intermittent. Lots of banging one's head against the wall for very little return there, given the height of competitiveness of those markets. Probably my work just isn't attractive enough to those photo editors to interest them.
I should add that when I said "you" in my last post, I wasn't talking about you specifically.
No worries, Steve, I didn't get that vibe. But I think you are right about the scaling thing. I bet the justification that "I am not earning a living with this anyway, I just enjoy it" can lead any kind of photographer into that trap of devaluing their own work. I know I have felt that way sometimes when the prospect of a new client outweighs the desire for monetary return.
I'll see your two hijacks and raise you one hijack!
Wedding photography is actually a pretty good medium for discussing this, because most of us have experience with it, but it's pretty far removed from the specifics of nature photography.
Our studio is definitely the "high priced spread" among local wedding photographers, but we shoot a fair bunch of them in spite of much cheaper alternatives. While local fees for weddings range from $300-500, our average wedding brings in ten times that. We use a pricing structure that allows people to adjust the shooting and product spread to suit their budget and interests, while keeping the door open for them to come back later and buy more products. And we generate more than 2/3 of our total wedding income through product sales after the event.
We charge by the shooting hour, letting clients pick how long we shoot and which parts we cover, and let them decide how best to spend their money. Rather than simply charging a flat fee for the event and handing them a disc at the end, we sell them products (prints, canvases, albums, DVDs, etc) after the fact, allowing them to further adjust for their income through their selection of products. Sales can extend to a year and more after the event. Our actual shooting fees are higher than average, but not all that far out of line.
Our "magic" if there is such a thing, is in doing a superb job of shooting, then making darn sure the products are high-end and flawless. Folks really feel like the extra money over a flat fee is very well spent. They not only get very professional images, but also very professional end products. Our best sales reps are clients with our work on their walls. Brides and grooms (and their parents, who often foot the wedding bills) show off our photos to unmarried friends and talk about how professional we were. We have their strong recommendation when one of the friends decide to get married.
There's also another marketing force helping us: As an example, we were recently turned down by a bride and groom in favor of a photographer that would do all the shooting, hand over a disc, and produce an album for $600. The images turned out to be amateurish, the "wedding album" was a $10 discount snapshot album with 150 desktop 4x6 prints cut out (crookedly) by hand and mounted in plastic sleeves.
The bride was hotter than HOT!!!! She's subsequently spread the word about her experience with all her friends. Meanwhile she brought the disc to us for evaluation and production of a "real" wedding album. Subsequently she has paid us much more than our original bid on additional products.
We talked to the photographer before taking on the job to make sure it was okay, and she was more than happy to turn this "problem" client over to us. She felt that it was too much trouble and not worth her time to put more effort into wedding albums and secondary products. Yes, she made $600 for a few hours work. But she also passed up close to $2k in product sales while also destroying her rep as a wedding photographer.
In a nutshell, we're making lots more money than the flat fee shooters because we offer better service and better products. We're seen as "worth it."
To swing that wide divergence back into line with the original thread, in our experience the same principles apply to sales and services with nature images. Nature images are, sad to say, a dime a dozen in the market today just as cheap wedding photographers are everywhere. But business professionalism to go with the nature images and wedding shooting is often lacking (to our distinct advantage). Can the photographer work intelligently with a client's graphic artist and art director? Does a model release or property release go with the photo? If a photo is close, but not quite right for the clients need, can the photographer take direction from the GA or AD on an assignment to go out and shoot a version more in line with the needs of the client? Is the photographer knowledgeable about current market standards and conversant enough to enter an intelligent negotiation, or is he/she pretty much a duffus who is likely to sell the crown jewels for pennies on the dollar?
As my wife is fond of saying, a photography business is 5% photography and 95% business. Great photos aren't enough, by any stretch of the imagination. You won't be successful in business unless you are also finding the clients, earning their respect and confidence, and getting paid a fair price for services/photos rendered.
Posted by Steve Foss on October 14, 2007 at 9:37 AM
Good stuff, Hank.
As I'm about two thirds of the way through the transition to full-time photography, I'm pricing and considering offering each of the options you've described. So far my clieints have been impressed and pleased with the work and have passed on great recommendations to others (over the last three years of shooting weddings), but offering the CD/DVD alone does restrict the client base somewhat.
It's still attractive to me to offer the lone CD/DVD option because once I'm done processing a shoot and mail them off, I'm done and formerly could go back to my office job. Now, when I'm done, it means more time shooting NATURE photography! There, barely brought the topic back to nature at the end.
Sorry, everyone, for being guilty of what I hope is a petty misdemeanor: "conspiracy to commit off topic posts."
To bring it more fully back on topic, the friend I mentioned who is negoatiating a full rights nature image sale in the ballpark of $40,000 is not really sure he wants to give up the image, even for that amount of money. He's been in the business over 20 years. My position is that, unless it's the image of a lifetime, it's VERY unlikely to realize $40,000 over a photographer's lifetime through sales of the image in other arenas. Of course, posthumous sales with profits going to next of kin is an issue . . .
I agree with you on the dilemma of full rights sales, Steve. It's a big decision, for sure, but I think images that will generate comparable lifetime income from individual sales are probably more rare than high dollar full rights sales. That is probably not true for well-established individuals like Tom Till with their own galleries selling very large prints for very large dollars, but selling prints from your house or someone else's gallery really cuts your chances. Even for stock sales, your star image is going to be pretty common fodder and worth lots less by the time individual sales start adding up to the income of a good full rights sale.
I can't resist dropping back to the question of providing digital files from weddings as a final product versus keeping the files and selling products. Providing the CD of your wedding images is exactly like a full rights sale of a stock image, except that in the case of the wedding you are letting go of a much more significant income potential.
You don't have any control on how the clients get prints etc from your files either, so your name can be put on some really schlocky work. Clients dont' have ready access to the kinds of pro labs and frame sources we use, so most tend to go the easy Walmart route for prints and frames. By only providing products rather than turning over the files, we're sure that our professional image is sustained any time our work is viewed.
More than that from the financial side, we get the markup on all the products rather than giving it away to Walmart. Based on our hourly rate, most of our weddings come in at $450-900 in actual shooting fees. But from those same weddings our initial product sales range from a low of about $500 to a high of around $4500. Over the next year most customers come back for more, sometimes lots more. They may not be able to afford the big canvas right away, but they save for it and buy it later, or quite often one set of parents or the other buys it for them as a Christmas gift. Add it all up, and total product sales from a wedding usually exceed $1000, and on rare occasions can exceed $5,000. Considering that we take a 5X markup over our cost from labs on all those products, we're talking significant additions to the bottom line over and above simply providing the CD of the files. Yeah, the after-event sales take time, but it's all paid time. And most important for your professional image and rep with future brides, all of your work that they see was produced at a high end pro lab rather than Walmart.
We only do a couple of dozen weddings most years, but do the math and see how much pressure that income takes off our total annual needs. With that in hand, it sure is a lot easier to free up time for nature shooting!
Posted by Steve Foss on October 14, 2007 at 12:28 PM
Yes, the Walmart thing is the one aspect that has continued to give me pause. I don't like the idea that fine work may eventually be displayed poorly. Now that I've been providing wedding photography for three years and feel somewhat established, it may be time to change that, and I have been considering those more complete changes, as well. There is a lot to evaluate, and my experience so far has not extended to the best way to price those kinds of products, though I also use your approximate multiplier for print costs from my pro lab.
Anyway, if you have both the time and the inclination to share more of your product experience in that arena, drop me an e-mail at stevefossimages@yahoo.com. I doubt we'd be competing against each other for wedding photography (haven't had a wedding client offer to pay my travel to Alaska ). If you're too busy or don't feel like it, that's no problem at all.
As for the full rights sale my friend is considering, I'd simply jump at it. That's a pretty large part of a year's income for many photographers.
Will do, Steve. There's no particular magic, but I can point you to some useful resources and marketing approaches.
Posted by Steve Foss on October 15, 2007 at 10:17 AM
Thanks, Hank. Everything I'll need is already available through my pro lab, but it's nice to be able to avoid stumbles.
Posted by Scott Linstead on October 17, 2007 at 10:30 AM
Sorry to be out of the loop on this discussion, Steve and Hank. I was away on my first "shoot" as a full-time, free-lance guy, LOL. I came home with a really unique shot of a Kestrel, but I had forgotten to pay my NPN fee and now I have to wait till my account is reactivated before I can post it. Anyhow, I managed to secure two photo-article sales in the two weeks sice i quit my day job. There are at least 3 other mags that are on the proverbial fence, but I am getting positive interest from them. All in all, I am feeling good about my decision and I appreciate all the very interesting bits of business info that you guys have contributed. Last week I was indeed approached by a corporation interested in full rights to some of my best stuff. They have not made a decision yet, but I'm crossing my fingers that they select those for which I have decent similars!
Discussion
19 repliesWas it because the number was too close to what has been obtained for an image on a single usage basis or was it because the price was too far from what has been obtained on a full rights basis?
Scott
Thanks
Scott
Thanks for your thoughtful and insightful feedback. I find how this market has evolved fascinating. As a recent turned-full-time guy who is slowly building a clientele, I find this both encouraging and discouraging. Encouraging in that these sums have been obtained, discouraging in that my very presence in the market diminishes the likelyhood of it happenning again. Either way, these are exciting times for me.
Scott
In one case, a potential wedding client got great recommendations about me from two previous clients and then tried to talk my rate down by 50 percent. I politely refused and used the line I always do when I feel someone is questioning my rates. I describe the hours of work that go into the shoot and tell them that, when the math is done, I'm being paid about as much as their plumber. The implication being (I never come out and say this) that if they're paying that much money for having their shnit cleaned up by a guy whose butt crack is showing, they can pay me that much money to immortalize their daughter through art and deliver a lifetime of memories. I didn't hear back from the man, but his wife e-mailed me a couple weeks later to book the wedding at my rate. They were very pleased with the work I did and have recommended me to others.
In another case I had someone try to get me to cut the price of a framed image on display at my show. I also politely declined and did not offer any other comment. He bought the image the next day. I'm about in the middle of the pack on prices for prints, and I'd rather cart home a truckload of images and have them for the next time out than drop my price. Period. I'm a bit below the mid range for wedding gigs, and I won't drop my rate there, either.
Sorry. That may sound a bit off topic but it's really only a matter of scale. If you let someone talk you down from the price you've set for the small and medium stuff, you'll let them talk you down on the big stuff. I won't say that depresses the market for the rest of us because I don't believe in the accuracy of that statement. But I DO think allowing that depresses the value of your own work. If you don't value your own work highly and show it through your pricing structure, others will tend not to value it highly either.
Scott
I've quit trying to market my work to magazines. I have a few of the low-level to mid-level pub clients you mentioned, as well as a calendar publisher or two, but only a handful, and it is intermittent. Lots of banging one's head against the wall for very little return there, given the height of competitiveness of those markets. Probably my work just isn't attractive enough to those photo editors to interest them.
I should add that when I said "you" in my last post, I wasn't talking about you specifically.
Scott
I'll see your two hijacks and raise you one hijack!
Wedding photography is actually a pretty good medium for discussing this, because most of us have experience with it, but it's pretty far removed from the specifics of nature photography.
Our studio is definitely the "high priced spread" among local wedding photographers, but we shoot a fair bunch of them in spite of much cheaper alternatives. While local fees for weddings range from $300-500, our average wedding brings in ten times that. We use a pricing structure that allows people to adjust the shooting and product spread to suit their budget and interests, while keeping the door open for them to come back later and buy more products. And we generate more than 2/3 of our total wedding income through product sales after the event.
We charge by the shooting hour, letting clients pick how long we shoot and which parts we cover, and let them decide how best to spend their money. Rather than simply charging a flat fee for the event and handing them a disc at the end, we sell them products (prints, canvases, albums, DVDs, etc) after the fact, allowing them to further adjust for their income through their selection of products. Sales can extend to a year and more after the event. Our actual shooting fees are higher than average, but not all that far out of line.
Our "magic" if there is such a thing, is in doing a superb job of shooting, then making darn sure the products are high-end and flawless. Folks really feel like the extra money over a flat fee is very well spent. They not only get very professional images, but also very professional end products. Our best sales reps are clients with our work on their walls. Brides and grooms (and their parents, who often foot the wedding bills) show off our photos to unmarried friends and talk about how professional we were. We have their strong recommendation when one of the friends decide to get married.
There's also another marketing force helping us: As an example, we were recently turned down by a bride and groom in favor of a photographer that would do all the shooting, hand over a disc, and produce an album for $600. The images turned out to be amateurish, the "wedding album" was a $10 discount snapshot album with 150 desktop 4x6 prints cut out (crookedly) by hand and mounted in plastic sleeves.
The bride was hotter than HOT!!!! She's subsequently spread the word about her experience with all her friends. Meanwhile she brought the disc to us for evaluation and production of a "real" wedding album. Subsequently she has paid us much more than our original bid on additional products.
We talked to the photographer before taking on the job to make sure it was okay, and she was more than happy to turn this "problem" client over to us. She felt that it was too much trouble and not worth her time to put more effort into wedding albums and secondary products. Yes, she made $600 for a few hours work. But she also passed up close to $2k in product sales while also destroying her rep as a wedding photographer.
In a nutshell, we're making lots more money than the flat fee shooters because we offer better service and better products. We're seen as "worth it."
To swing that wide divergence back into line with the original thread, in our experience the same principles apply to sales and services with nature images. Nature images are, sad to say, a dime a dozen in the market today just as cheap wedding photographers are everywhere. But business professionalism to go with the nature images and wedding shooting is often lacking (to our distinct advantage). Can the photographer work intelligently with a client's graphic artist and art director? Does a model release or property release go with the photo? If a photo is close, but not quite right for the clients need, can the photographer take direction from the GA or AD on an assignment to go out and shoot a version more in line with the needs of the client? Is the photographer knowledgeable about current market standards and conversant enough to enter an intelligent negotiation, or is he/she pretty much a duffus who is likely to sell the crown jewels for pennies on the dollar?
As my wife is fond of saying, a photography business is 5% photography and 95% business. Great photos aren't enough, by any stretch of the imagination. You won't be successful in business unless you are also finding the clients, earning their respect and confidence, and getting paid a fair price for services/photos rendered.
As I'm about two thirds of the way through the transition to full-time photography, I'm pricing and considering offering each of the options you've described. So far my clieints have been impressed and pleased with the work and have passed on great recommendations to others (over the last three years of shooting weddings), but offering the CD/DVD alone does restrict the client base somewhat.
It's still attractive to me to offer the lone CD/DVD option because once I'm done processing a shoot and mail them off, I'm done and formerly could go back to my office job. Now, when I'm done, it means more time shooting NATURE photography! There, barely brought the topic back to nature at the end.
Sorry, everyone, for being guilty of what I hope is a petty misdemeanor: "conspiracy to commit off topic posts."
To bring it more fully back on topic, the friend I mentioned who is negoatiating a full rights nature image sale in the ballpark of $40,000 is not really sure he wants to give up the image, even for that amount of money. He's been in the business over 20 years. My position is that, unless it's the image of a lifetime, it's VERY unlikely to realize $40,000 over a photographer's lifetime through sales of the image in other arenas. Of course, posthumous sales with profits going to next of kin is an issue . . .
I can't resist dropping back to the question of providing digital files from weddings as a final product versus keeping the files and selling products. Providing the CD of your wedding images is exactly like a full rights sale of a stock image, except that in the case of the wedding you are letting go of a much more significant income potential.
You don't have any control on how the clients get prints etc from your files either, so your name can be put on some really schlocky work. Clients dont' have ready access to the kinds of pro labs and frame sources we use, so most tend to go the easy Walmart route for prints and frames. By only providing products rather than turning over the files, we're sure that our professional image is sustained any time our work is viewed.
More than that from the financial side, we get the markup on all the products rather than giving it away to Walmart. Based on our hourly rate, most of our weddings come in at $450-900 in actual shooting fees. But from those same weddings our initial product sales range from a low of about $500 to a high of around $4500. Over the next year most customers come back for more, sometimes lots more. They may not be able to afford the big canvas right away, but they save for it and buy it later, or quite often one set of parents or the other buys it for them as a Christmas gift. Add it all up, and total product sales from a wedding usually exceed $1000, and on rare occasions can exceed $5,000. Considering that we take a 5X markup over our cost from labs on all those products, we're talking significant additions to the bottom line over and above simply providing the CD of the files. Yeah, the after-event sales take time, but it's all paid time. And most important for your professional image and rep with future brides, all of your work that they see was produced at a high end pro lab rather than Walmart.
We only do a couple of dozen weddings most years, but do the math and see how much pressure that income takes off our total annual needs. With that in hand, it sure is a lot easier to free up time for nature shooting!
Anyway, if you have both the time and the inclination to share more of your product experience in that arena, drop me an e-mail at stevefossimages@yahoo.com. I doubt we'd be competing against each other for wedding photography (haven't had a wedding client offer to pay my travel to Alaska
As for the full rights sale my friend is considering, I'd simply jump at it. That's a pretty large part of a year's income for many photographers.
Scott