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Mr. Stock Smarty Pants answers questions about fair royalties
Dear Mr. Stock Smarty Pants: I have been reading your columns in About The Image and think they’re great. I’m a photography student who is hoping to graduate soon and get into the stock photo business. My problem is this: I have never signed a contract with a stock agency and I don’t know what sort of arrangement would be fair regarding royalties on sales of my pictures. Is this something that varies a lot? Do I have to be careful? Can you brake down what sorts of splits are typical in the business today?
Sincerely yours,
Christopher in Atlanta
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Dear Christopher:
Thanks for the praise…which, of course, is totally deserved. But, since I see that you are a student, I’m going to share two valuable lessons with you that you can use throughout your life: 1) READ THE INSTRUCTIONS: you get ONE question, not a laundry list…Mr. Stock Smarty Pants is a busy guy, you know what I’m saying? 2) LEARN TO SPELL: we’re not talking about cars here, so “brake down” doesn’t apply.
If you follow those two simple rules of life and apply yourself, who knows…you just might graduate some day.
Now, despite the fact that you broke the rules, I’m going to answer your questions because I think it’s important for all photographers to get a handle on the issues you’ve raised.
First of all, you’re a student…that means you’re young, idealistic and naïve, which is why you bring up the issue of “fairness.” Christopher, “fairness” is about the LAST thing you’ll find in the stock photo industry…or any business, for that matter. If life was “fair” Mr. Stock Smarty Pants wouldn’t have to sweat his brains out answering dumb-ass questions on About the Image just to earn enough to make bail this month…but, I digress. If you want “fairness,” join a Buddhist retreat or a kickball team; anything else will, I fear, be a bit too “unfair” for you to handle.
On the other hand, let’s put this in a broader, more philosophical context: what constitutes a “fair” deal?
Now, back in the good old days of the stock picture industry (prior to the 1990s), life was simple: if you were represented by a stock agency, and they sold one of your pictures, they kept 50% and you got 50%. That was the universal compensation structure, with very few exceptions. Then, things got complicated. Along came the digital revolution, necessitating huge investments in equipment, scanning, keywording, websites and related personnel. This investment in infrastructure and people was a great excuse for the stock libraries to cut their payments to their contributors: “See, we’re doing all these great things now to get your pictures out into this new-fangled thing called cyberspace, but that costs a lot of money, so we can’t pay you as much as we used to.” So now, instead of a 50-50 split on rights managed photography, the norm seems to be set at something like a 60-40 split in favor of the stock library.
Further complicating the picture was the advent of royalty free about a decade and a half ago. This was an entirely new model for the industry, and what the RF producers told photographers was, “OK, we’re going to sell your pictures for a lot less than RM rates, but we’ll make up for it in significantly higher volume. We’ve got huge marketing costs, though, and we have to produce all those CDs that some day are going to end up being drink coasters, so we can’t pay you as much as the RM guys.” Thus the split on RF sales is often in the range of 15-25% for the photographer and as much as 85% to the producer. And then there are hybrid situations: many stock libraries want “wholly-owned content” these days, so they hire photographers to shoot specific productions/subjects on a work-for-hire basis, with the shooter either getting some sort of day rate OR a combination of perhaps a lower initial shooting fee but also some percentage of resulting image sales.
Another relatively new (meaning since the dawn of the 21st century) entity is the online image distributor, like Alamy.com. These look a bit like stripped down versions of stock agencies in the sense that they will accept your images, put them online, market them on their website to a (potentially) global audience, handle sales transactions and send you money if your pictures actually sell. However, they won’t assign a specific editor to you, they won’t keyword your images, they won’t send you “want lists” of what to shoot and they won’t hold your hand. These companies are for experienced photographers who can function independently and their reward is a much greater percentage of the sales proceeds (could be something in the range of 60-70% in YOUR favor).
The thing to remember in all of this is: EVERYTHING is negotiable, and you should never jump at the first number or deal that’s put on the table in an agency contract. Do the math, figure out if you are REALLY going to make money or not, then grit your teeth, sign on the bottom line and hope for the best. And remember: a “fair” deal is fair to BOTH parties. You have to make money, but so does whoever is working on your behalf, so play nice, share reasonably and everybody goes home happy.
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Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, a powerful yet highly unstable figure in the global stock picture industry, answers your questions about the business of stock photography every other Monday (or whenever the mood strikes him) on About The Image. Although MSSP is constantly on the move around the world due to his innate sense of wanderlust, coupled with a very strong desire to not be prosecuted under the Mann Act, your question regarding anything about the stock photo business will be forwarded to him and, so long as Mr. Stock Smarty Pants is within reach of an Internet café in some far-flung land, he will consider responding to you in an upcoming edition of About The Image. E-mail your questions to: . Oh, and MSSP categorically denies any affiliation whatsoever with the company called Stock Answers™ LLC.
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