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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.