Photographers regularly ask why the royalty paid on RF sales is only 20% of the net received by their agent, when the agent pays 40% to 65% on RM sales that are made in the same manner. Royalty percentages have little to do with reality, and nothing to do with the cost of production.
By 2012, digital advertising is expected to eclipse traditional advertising, according to 52% of respondents to Accenture's 2008 Global Media Survey of more than 100 senior business executives in North America and Europe.
iStockphoto's Q1 2008 revenue increase was impressive compared to Q4 2007, but many image producers are worried about the declining number of downloads. Till the end of last year, virtually all iStock suppliers with reasonably sized collections could count on downloads and revenue rising steadily month to month.
Getty Images has reported revenue of $233.2 million for Q1 2008, up from $218.1 in Q4 2007 and up significantly from the $220 Q1 estimate supplied at the end of January. Revenue increased 9.7% compared to $212.7 million in Q1 2007 and came mainly from increasing licenses of editorial and micropayment imagery.
Unless pricing and distribution outlets change, it will be very difficult for an individual photographer living in the United States to earn his entire living from producing stock photography.
Several Corbis photographers complain that they've had two and three new editors in the last year. Dan Perlet, director of communications at corbis, says this happened as "a result of natural attrition and staff reductions Corbis had last year." He also pointed out that, unfortunately, similar reductions have been "happening in many parts of the industry as companies seek ways to be more competitive."
There is general agreement that the industry's No. 1 problem is oversupply, but what can be done about it? It appears the three majors are in the process of cutting supply by editing tighter and taking less from both individual photographers and small, specialized production companies. New production companies find it next to impossible to get accepted by the three major distributors that combined represent close to 70% of commercial sales industry wide. Without selling through at least one of them, it is next to impossible to generate enough sales from other distributors to support a production operation.
Nature Picture Library (NPL) has acquired Bluegreen Pictures, a library specializing in sailing, boating, marine wildlife and landscapes photographs. Bluegreen was established by Karren May on the Isle of Wight and represents some of the top names in yachting photography.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company (HMH) is asking image providers to agree to an addendum to current and new agreements that limits HMH's liability in the event more copies of a book are sold, or more online uses are made, than were initially authorized. It is expected that other publishers will follow suit.
Twenty years ago, when images were color slides and researchers went through drawers of images to fulfill a customer's request, there was great concern that duplicate images were stored at multiple agencies. Shopping around would net the best price. In fact, this almost never happened, even in cases where the same image was available in multiple agencies.