Re: [APML] Payment for astrophotos

["Jim Ives" <flyboy9990@earthlink.net>]

Jerry I see your point. I was contacted by Art at Texas Nautical because he
wanted to use my Veil Nebula shot on his web site (which he has since posted
it up there).  I was so excited that he actually wanted my photo, I gave
consent immediately.  I never thought that someone would actually ask me to
use one of my astroimages.  Anyways, I never thought about asking for money
for it because maybe then he might decide he didn't want to use it.
    Would you say your publishing thoughts apply to web images also?
Jim Ives
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerry Lodriguss" <jml@astropix.com>
To: <astro-photo@seds.org>
Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: [APML] Payment for astrophotos


> Chris,
>
> I can sympathize.
>
> Everyone wants something for free, or almost free. I also get a lot of
> people who don't reply when I quote a fee. But this is normal.
>
> Because amateur astronomers have given their work away for free for so
> long, and because people can get Hubble images for free, that makes it
> tough to compete with "free" when we want to sell our pictures. The only
> leverage we have is the quality and uniqueness of our work, and that makes
> it have value.
>
> I have a basic philosophy that I think is fair. If it is a commercial
> enterprise that wants to use our images, and they make money by selling
> them as content, then we should share in that profit.
>
> A little while ago I had a story published in Astronomy magazine. It was
> one page. They paid $500 for the text. I had a Leonid storm picture
> published in the same issue that was run 2 pages, and they paid $25 for
it.
>
> I contacted David Eicher and told him that I wanted to start a discussion
> about the equity of this. It did not seem fair to the photographers. I
> suggested a payment schedule based on the space that a photo was used.
> Space rates are pretty much standard with professional magazines and
> publishers. Space rates (or per word rates) are also what is paid for
> words. This enables a publisher to have a fixed expense for producing x
> amount of pages of editorial content. The rate can obviously vary from
> publisher to publisher, but the concept is pretty much standard.
>
> I explained to David that people buy the magazine for it's editorial and
> advertising content, and that the pictures were just as much part of the
> reason people buy it as for the words.
>
> My suggestion did not meet with much acceptance. After telling me what a
> friend of photographers he was, he said that the magazine had a fixed
> budget for acquiring pictures, and that it was $25 per picture.  He also
> told me how they paid more for writing because writing was something
> completely different than photography, and that they paid different
amounts
> for the writing based on how much work the editors had to do to the text
to
> make it publishable. I thought based on that, that they should pay a lot
> for pictures because they require little work to publish. I also pointed
> out that astrophotography requires thousands of dollars worth of
> specialized equipment to produce the photographs, whereas writing did not.
>
> A couple of days ago an assistant editor at Astronomy contacted me about
> publishing my winter hexagon photo. They said they normally paid $25 per
> picture and they wanted to use the picture a full page.
>
> I explained that I would be happy to help them, but that now I was going
to
> charge  them licensing fees for the use of my images based on a space rate
> and the circulation of the publication.
>
> The assistant editor said she would talk to David Eicher and she came back
> and said that in this case they would be willing to go to $100.
>
> Well, I referred them to the same page you use, which is what I use for
all
> of my licensing deals, and I said that normal fees for full page use in a
> magazine with a circulation of 180,000 were in the range of $275 to $550,
> but that since this was a new concept to them, I would only charge them
> $200 for the use of the image at the size of a full page.
>
> I reminded them that they recently paid me $500 for a full page of text.
>
> Well, nope, they couldn't afford $200 for a picture. See ya later.
>
> This is disappointing. Not because I didn't make the sale, but because of
> the lack of fairness and respect that photography is given by an editor
who
> claims to be friendly to  photographers.
>
> Everyone on this list should keep this in mind when they give their work
> away for free to commercial enterprises. They are in business to make
> money, and they are, in part, making their profit off of your work. Make
> sure you are fairly compensated.
>
> Jerry
>
>
>
> At 02:32 PM 11/1/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> >This topic has been discussed here before but I just thought I'd share
some
> >recent experiences.
> >Two different people have emailed me over the past two months wanting to
use
> >some of my images in a text book and regular book.  One being on the
cover.
> >I emailed both of these people back with a price and never heard from
them
> >again.  Both were very interested and indicated they really wanted to use
> >the image, specified in their original email, but once I gave them a
price,
> >which was in the hundreds of dollars range, they vanished.  Not even a
> >"that's too much, can you accept this" reply.  Nothing.  I based my price
on
> >the following licensing calculator:
> >http://photographersindex.com/price-ed-calc.htm  I even came in on the
low
> >side.
> >
> >I refuse to give my images away for free.  My guess is that's what they
were
> >expecting......  Too much time and effort goes into them.
>
>
> Astronomical photography: http://www.astropix.com
>
>
>
>
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