Pickerell, Jim

Articles by Jim Pickerell

The Long Tail: Growing Traffic

By Jim Pickerell | 738 Words | Posted 3/19/2009 | Comments (1)

Previous articles in this series have addressed the long tail as it relates to stock photography, and why it is an increasingly important concept to understand for those who want to maximize earning. Constantly adding to your customer base, rather than earning more from existing customers, is at the core of the long-tail theory.

Getty's Flickr Strategy

By Jim Pickerell | 238 Words | Posted 3/18/2009 | Comments

Since Getty Images announced that the first 4,280 Flickr images have been added to its collection, there has been quite a bit of speculation about how this will benefit the company.

Fairey Case Sparks Questions on Using Photos as Art Reference

By Jim Pickerell | 328 Words | Posted 3/18/2009 | Comments (2)

As a result of the publicity surrounding Shepard Fairey's use of an Associated Press photograph, taken by Mannie Garcia, as reference for his very successful Obama Hope poster, a university inquired into standard stock-industry practices for the use of photographs as reference for fine or street art.

Local Advertising Decline, Shift to Digital Through 2013

By Jim Pickerell | 104 Words | Posted 3/18/2009 | Comments (1)

The Kelsey Group of BIA Advisory Services forecasts a reduction in local advertising spending in the U.S. through 2013. Kelsey also projects an increasing shift towards digital media.

Is There a Long Tail Among Photo Buyers?

By Jim Pickerell | 993 Words | Posted 3/17/2009 | Comments (1)

The long-tail theory is indeed about inventory and not pricing. Andersons theory is based on giving away things that are abundant in order to get customers' attention and draw them back to buy scarce, unique and relatively controlled items. That does not work in stock photography, where there is no way to determine what is abundant and what is scarce in advance. Still, the long tail exists in stock licensing, and it is entirely the domain of microstock companies, making the discussion inextricably tied to how images are priced.

Defining the Long Tail

By Jim Pickerell | 714 Words | Posted 3/16/2009 | Comments (4)

"The long tail" is a phrase first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article. The concept describes a new way to look at markets and is illustrative of the business strategy of Internet companies, including Amazon.com and Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items, each in relatively small quantities, to a very large base of customers. This buying pattern creates what is called a power-law distribution curve or long tail. In this series of articles, Selling Stock will examine how the long-tail strategy applies to the stock-photo industry.

Supreme Court To Revisit Tasini Case

By Jim Pickerell | 319 Words | Posted 3/9/2009 | Comments

The Tasini case has not reached a final resolution in 16 years of litigation and negotiations. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court had decided that a group of publishers infringed on the copyrights of freelance writers by digitizing and redistributing their contributions. However, not all plaintiffs in the Tasini v. New York Times had registered copyrights in their works. For this reason, a New York Court of Appeals declined to approve a negotiated settlement between writers and publishers, moving the case back to the Supreme Court level.

2008 Survey of Self-Employed Photographers, Illustrators or Graphic Designers

By Jim Pickerell | 354 Words | Posted 3/6/2009 | Comments

How was 2008 compared to 2007? What are industry trends in the production and sale of stock images? Selling Stock has launched a survey to gather information on 2008 stock-licensing income and cost of doing business. Selling Stock encourages every photographer, graphic designer and illustrator who licensed rights to images in 2008 to respond to the survey's nine simple questions. The survey will remain open until April 15, and Selling Stock will publish an in-depth analysis of the results shortly thereafter.

iStockphoto Warns Users of Phishing Attack

By Jim Pickerell | 209 Words | Posted 3/5/2009 | Comments

On Tuesday, iStockphoto experienced a phishing attack in its forums and through sitemail. This attack attempted to scam users into handing over their iStock usernames and passwords.

2008 Survey of Self-Employed Photographers, Illustrators or Graphic Designers

By Jim Pickerell | 551 Words | Posted 3/5/2009 | Comments

In 2008 on behalf of Selling-Stock we surveyed photographers, illustrators and graphic designers designed to provide useful data for all those who license rights to their images. This story provides detailed results of this survey.

About Jim Pickerell

Jim began his career in 1963 as a freelance photojournalist in the Far East. His first major sale, a Life Magazine cover, was a stock photo of the overthrow of the Ngo Dinh Diem government in Saigon, Vietnam.

He spent the next ten to fifteen years focusing on assignment work, first as an editorial photographer, and later in the corporate area. He regularly filed his outtakes with several stock agencies around the world.

As the stock side of his income grew, Jim studied the needs of the stock photo market, and began to devote more of his shooting time producing stock images. At about this time the 1976 change in the copyright law went into effect, and the industry began to see rapidly growing demand by commercial and advertising users for stock images.

In the early 80's he helped establish the Mid-Atlantic chapter of American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) and served as Vice President, President and Program Chairman over a period of six years. He served on the national board of ASMP for two years, was on the committee that produced the ASMP Stock Handbook in 1983, and was active in the fight to reverse the IRS rules that required capitalization of all expenses of stock photo production.

In 1989 he published the first edition of Negotiating Stock Photo Prices, a guide to pricing hundreds of stock photo uses. The fifth edition was published in 2001. In 1990, he began publishing Selling-Stock, a bi-monthly newsletter dealing with issues of interest to stock photographers and stock photo sellers, with particular focus on issues related to marketing stock images. Selling-Stock is recognized worldwide as the leading source of in-depth analysis of the stock photo industry. As a result of his many years in the industry and his work with Selling-Stock, Jim has an expert understanding of the stock photo industry, its standard practices and developing trends. He frequently provides consulting services on stock industry issues to photographers, stock agents and individuals in the investment community.

In 1993, his daughter, Cheryl, joined him in the business. Together they established Stock Connection, an agency designed to provide photographers with greater control over the promotion and marketing of their work than most other stock agencies were offering. The company currently represents selected images from more than 400 photographers.

At age 76, Jim continues to follow stock photo industry developments on a day to day basis and expects to continue to do so far into the future.