The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies, which regularly surveys pricing trends, has released initial findings on the U.K. publishing industry. The industry, which is growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy, is the largest local media segment, eclipsing film, fashion, music and television. While publishers have always been a key image-licensing market, this year’s big trend is the rise of the ebook, both in the U.K. and other leading and emerging global economies.
At the recent CEPIC conference in Malta, Bruce Livingstone, CEO of iStockphoto said the company currently represents 60,000 artists and about 4,000 of them are exclusive. He also pointed out that gross sales in 2007 were $72 million and 30% of that, or about $21 million, was paid out to contributors. Last year, the average price per image downloaded was $4.10, but the price varies depending on the size of the file. Non-exclusive photographers get 20% of the sales price and exclusive photographers get 40%, so the exclusive photographer would receive approximate $1.64 per image downloaded.
The Digital Railroad blog has published details on the rationale behind the company's 50% increase of its share of image sales through the Marketplace. CEO Charles Mauzy also revealed some useful sales statistics and planned allocations of the newly generated revenue. But not all contributors are happy.
We are on the cusp of dramatic changes in the way educational information is supplied to students. The major technological issues have been solved. The potential economic benefits for new players in this market - Amazon.com being the most obvious - are overwhelming. Creatives will make more money. School systems will have more choice in teaching materials and save millions.
The last two Corbis "Creative IQ" reports profile business trends the company said were responsible for current and future image needs. On the entrepreneurial front, startups by ethnic minorities are outpacing their Caucasian counterparts in both the U.S. and the U.K. In addition, retiring boomers are causing a shortage in skilled science, engineering and technical employees.
Alamy's blog has been filled with negative comments relative to Alamy's Novel Use Scheme introduced last month. The concept of selling pictures for low prices is difficult for traditional stock photographers to accept, particularly because an increasing number of their customers are using microstock images for commercial projects.