Recently I've been contacted by a student and freelance journalist who has visited Oregon to research a story on the Save Helvetia's fight to keep its farmland. He would like to use some of my images in a published story or eBook. How does one price something like this?
Today I received another email from the student/freelance journalist who says he will be publishing his article for free. I would like to mention that he has emailed me a copy of one of my pictures. Probably a screen shot, but I wasn't expecting that... I saw a link for a quoting program will look that up. Any advice on how to proceed would be much appreciated.
To start, from your description I would expect that this guy is going to expect to use your images for free. He mentioned he was publishing for free, so it's highly unlikely he's going to pay for any image use.
A couple of schools of thought here. Many togs, pro and amateur alike often will "donate" their images to causes they support, The Nature Conservancy, or local charities, conservation orgs, etc. That's a personal choice for an individual but it's fairly common if you feel strongly about an organization and it's cause.
Otherwise, most don't care to give away their work for "free" just for some "exposure." It's tempting, and a fine line and also a personal choice. With the explosion of digital photography, Royalty free images available at the click of a mouse, it's very easy to find and use images for free. The question becomes, what value do you place on your work?
To your question about pricing though. So much depends on things like: circulation, usage(world-wide, unlimited, exclusive, etc.,) term (1yr, forever) media (brochure, calendar, magazine, ebook, etc.) and many other things. For an ebook with probably limited exposure and distribution, small image size, etc. I wouldn't think someone could ask more than $100 or so, even less and certainly no more than $200, all rough guesses.
I'd recommend Googling "stock photography pricing tools" or something like that and run some samples through. YOu might need to register at a site to use their calculators though. Try myloupe.com and just run through a bogus exercise as if you want to buy an image. This will give you an idea of some of the different criteria I mentioned above(usage, distribution, rights, etc.)
Lastly, whatever you do, you will need come up with an agreement (terms of use) that this person would need to agree to, otherwise they might be free to think they could use your work for anything they want, for as long as they want. You need to protect yoursefl.
Discussion
1 repliesToday I received another email from the student/freelance journalist who says he will be publishing his article for free. I would like to mention that he has emailed me a copy of one of my pictures. Probably a screen shot, but I wasn't expecting that... I saw a link for a quoting program will look that up. Any advice on how to proceed would be much appreciated.
Matthew Lippert
To start, from your description I would expect that this guy is going to expect to use your images for free. He mentioned he was publishing for free, so it's highly unlikely he's going to pay for any image use.
A couple of schools of thought here. Many togs, pro and amateur alike often will "donate" their images to causes they support, The Nature Conservancy, or local charities, conservation orgs, etc. That's a personal choice for an individual but it's fairly common if you feel strongly about an organization and it's cause.
Otherwise, most don't care to give away their work for "free" just for some "exposure." It's tempting, and a fine line and also a personal choice. With the explosion of digital photography, Royalty free images available at the click of a mouse, it's very easy to find and use images for free. The question becomes, what value do you place on your work?
To your question about pricing though. So much depends on things like: circulation, usage(world-wide, unlimited, exclusive, etc.,) term (1yr, forever) media (brochure, calendar, magazine, ebook, etc.) and many other things. For an ebook with probably limited exposure and distribution, small image size, etc. I wouldn't think someone could ask more than $100 or so, even less and certainly no more than $200, all rough guesses.
I'd recommend Googling "stock photography pricing tools" or something like that and run some samples through. YOu might need to register at a site to use their calculators though. Try myloupe.com and just run through a bogus exercise as if you want to buy an image. This will give you an idea of some of the different criteria I mentioned above(usage, distribution, rights, etc.)
Lastly, whatever you do, you will need come up with an agreement (terms of use) that this person would need to agree to, otherwise they might be free to think they could use your work for anything they want, for as long as they want. You need to protect yoursefl.
Hope this helps