For most photographers, seeing their photo on the cover of a book should be a highlight of their career. It's the cover that does the selling so when a publisher decides that their image is powerful enough to attract attention and pull in buyers, it's a sure sign that they've take a great photo. They'll be able to see their picture on the shelf every time they walk into a bookstore, enjoy the feeling that customers are placing it on their own bookshelves and the remuneration should be nice too. It doesn't always work out that way though. Now that images are available on microstock sites, photos are appearing on book covers without photographers being aware of the sale, without being credited for the picture and without receiving pay that would even cover the price of a latte in Starbucks.
Books and education are changing. Consumer looking for information or entertainment will turn to "vooks" -- books they can watch, instead of the old paper kind they can only read or audio books where they can only listen to narration. These vooks blend text and video into a single integrated and uninterrupted reading and viewing experience that can be accessed and read on the Web or an iPhone.
Textbook publishers now have total control when it comes to setting prices and have no reason to want a dialogue with sellers on the subject of pricing. However, past uses is one area where publishers might want to open a discussion, seeing the outcomes of several recent court cases.
A recent study by U.K. research firm Futuresource sheds light on the numbers of potential entrants into the online stock image and video licensing market: 85% of survey respondents upload stills and video to the Internet. The 16 to 34-year-old group accounts for the most uploads.
As part of an effort to assess the demand for stock photography in China, an American photographer recently talked with the creative director of the Ogilvy & Mather office in Beijing.
Transtock Inc., a stock photography business specializing in transportation images, recently finalized a deal with Hachette Filipacchi Media to exclusively represent the still images and high-definition video footage from the Road & Track and Car and Driver magazine collections.
Previously specializing exclusively in rights-managed deep-content footage, New Jersey-based boutique Global ImageWorks has announced the launch of a royalty-free footage division.
A new Alaska Travel iPhone App from Alaska HDTV, a network of high-definition productions for television, podcasts and other digital applications, uses exclusive Alaska wallpaper images from Alaska Stock Images.
New York-based Shutterstock says its On The Red Carpet editorial offering has grown substantially since its 2007 launch.
Is Flickr a place for a professional photographer to display his work and sell images? Todd Klassy thinks so. Though now he is an amateur devoting three hours a week to shooting and another six to post production and studying photography, he intends to quit his job of 17 years and start working as a photographer full-time after the first of the year.
According to Getty Images vice president of creative imagery Andy Saunders, the combination of recent technological advancements and the current economic climate has translated to the perfect storm for the creative stills end of the stock photography business. Still Saunders sees opportunities--and not just in low-priced content.
Despite the economic doom-and-gloom, Getty Images announced that its coveted grants programs will continue in 2010. Editorial grants will continue to support work focusing on social, political and cultural causes, while Getty's newer program, Grants for Good, will support collaborations between creatives and nonprofits. Some minor changes have been made to the programs' structure.
ImageSpan and Digimarc have announced a partnership the two say delivers a complete solution to manage, monitor and monetize image assets.
In light of pricing declines for textbook use and publisher attempts to avoid paying for future electronic uses, some image producers ask: "Why don't all the sellers just say 'no'? Shouldn't the producer be setting product prices?"
Digimarc for Images Enterprise Edition addresses top customer requests, says the Beaverton, Ore. company known for watermarking content. The newest Digimarc for Images release specifically targets businesses and organizations with large volumes of images by offering batch functions, such as watermarking all images in a given folder.
If Google were to get involved in image licensing, it would quickly take commanding control of the stock industry--at very little additional cost to the company. And it would not necessarily be a bad thing for creators.
On Nov. 13 at 5 p.m., the last of a 10-event series produced by the Stock Artists Alliance Photo Metadata Project will take place at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
The European Commission held hearings on orphan works during the last week of October. Sylvie Fodor of the umbrella group Coordination of European Picture Agencies discussed the challenges presented by the looming legislation to the image industry.
On Nov. 4, the motion of four creative industry groups and several individuals to join on the creators' side of the Authors Guild et. al. v. Google was once again denied on appeal. Organizations that petitioned the court to intervene in the class action against Google included the American Society of Media Photographers, the Graphic Artists Guild, the Picture Archive Council of America and the North American Nature Photography Association. Chief among U.S. District Judge Denny Chin's grounds for denying their request was its untimely nature.
In addition to raising print quantities and extending license durations, textbook publishers are increasingly asking for the rights to publish the same information for the same time period on password-protected Web sites. While publishers intends to charge for those passwords, they expect content producers not to count such uses as part of the circulation.
A year after Getty and Flickr first decided to launch the Flickr Collection, Getty Images has issued a Call for Artists. This provides Flickr users with an opportunity to submit work to the collection, offering a more proactive option than simply specifying they are open to being contacted by Getty within their account settings.
From a stock photography point of view, the future is bleak for those trying to sell images for textbook use. This segment of the stock photography business is on what appears to be an irreversible downward spiral.
San Francisco-based liveBooks has announced the infusion of $5 million in private funding into its photographer Web site business. The company has also introduced subscription-based pricing and templated Web sites, along with plans to expand into graphic and interior design markets.