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Opportunities and hazards in reprints
Reprints can be a nice supplement to your revenue stream, provided you price them wisely and have a strategy for policing their use. We asked members about their experiences.
Each image you make has the potential to become a wellspring of extra income through reprints, but without an understanding of the potential value of the reprint to your buyer, you could be losing out. The fee you can command depends not just on the market you’re in, but also on how a buyer plans to use your image. Is it for personal, editorial, public relations, advertising, marketing or corporate use? If it’s for use in a magazine article or advertising campaign, is the market regional, national, or international?
Once you understand the nuances of the potential value of your images, the next question is how to communicate your prices to potential clients. According to Gloucester, Mass.-based shooter Jason Grow, the best way to handle reprints with potential clients is to be very clear in your communications with potential clients from the outset. To that end, he lists costs for editorial and advertising usage on his Web site, www.jasongrow.com.
With subjects ranging from politicians to pundits to rock benefits, Washington, D.C.-based photographer John Harrington has to be able to react quickly to questions about image pricing. To handle the volume of the demand, he streamlined the communications process by incorporating pull-down menus on his Web site, www.johnharrington.com, that allow clients to define their exact usage needs and find pricing.
ASMP members have a wealth of information to share on issues and experiences relating to reprints. Take a look through their responses for ideas on pricing, best practices for handling negotiations with potential clients and smartest ways to process requests.
I use a reprint service called Pictage. Any clients who want reprints are welcome to go to their own password-protected site to order reprints. It requires no effort on my part. I simply receive a check each month for the sales, minus Pictage’s commission and cost. I can set each client’s price independently, so I can charge various prices for various clients. It’s simple.
Jared Platt — Arizona
jared @ plattphotography.com
www.PlattPhotography.comI had a recent positive experience with a reprint order from Forbes that yielded me an extra $4,756 for 2,000 reprints. I went to the Editorial Photographers web site (where I am a member) and worked up an estimate from there. I also use Fotoquote quite a bit.
Bob Rives — Raleigh, NC
brives @ mindspring.com
www.bobrives.comWe were just asked for worldwide rights for an image that originally was licensed for US only concerning a court in 1999 for use in an American Justice series documentary. The original fee was $750. We recharged the original fee plus a third for a reuse fee of $1,000. This seems to be a common reuse fee, I was told.
Eric Crossan — Townsend, DE
ercrossan @ aol.com
www.ericcrossan.comThe only experience I’ve had with reprints was about two years ago with Newsweek. They called to get permission for a reprint of an assigned job I did for them about a year earlier. They wanted reprints of a reader letter about Cheating Medicare, for which I shot an environmental portrait of the author in Alaska.
Before I quoted them a fee, I checked the Editorial Photographers web site, www.editorialphoto.com. I also talked to a few photographers who had finalized reprint fees with Newsweek and others, to get a feel for the price charged.
They wanted to pay a few hundred dollars; I think I quoted them about $1000, plus a per-reprint charge above a certain print run. I never heard back from them and never knew if they actually printed the piece with or without the image.
Ron Levy — Soldotna, AK
rlevy @ gigr.com
www.ronlevyphoto.com, www.gigr.com, www.hispanicimages.comFor my business, additional reprints from my shoots in 2005 resulted in over $10,000 in sales. I post images from everything: editorial, commercial, advertising and social events. If people express any interest at all in having prints for themselves, I refer them to my online gallery. I use a service to post the images, www.estudioresources.com. It links through one of my Web sites: www.kmkstudios.com. They charge a flat fee per month, and I process the credit card orders myself.
My prices are as follows:
4x6 — $11
5x7 — $17
8x10 — $22
11x14 — $45
20x24 — $125
Shipping & Handling — $12.50The difficulty I am beginning to find is the time it takes to process small orders with low returns. i.e.: one 4x6 only makes me $23.50, but takes just about as much time as processing a big $300 print order. For this reason, I am considering raising my print rates.
Kevin Kennedy — Silver Springs, Maryland
kevin @ kevinkennedy.com
www.kevinkennedy.com, www.kmkstudios.comIt depends. Usually, for regional ads, we charge 85 percent of the original fee. For national ads, we charge 90 percent. For non-profits or those whose efforts we like to support (and who are not commercial enterprises), we charge 65 percent. For editorial projects, we usually charge 85 to 100 percent, if our contract doesn’t state otherwise. For instance, for book projects where we have a fee per photo plus a share of the gross, we charge 85 percent. For book projects where we have a fee per photo, period, we charge 100 percent.
John Hyde — Juneau, Alaska
wildthings @ alaska.net
www.wildthingsphotography.comI recently had a reprint request come up. A clearinghouse contacted me about a photo I had taken for a major film-industry daily of the dean of a major university’s Cinema-TV Department for a special section in honor of the school’s 75th anniversary. The school wanted to reprint the article for publicity handouts and mailers. I negotiated a price based on the press run, image size, usage, and color vs. black and white. I determined the rate using FotoQuote software as a general guide, and the price I got for the reprint was more than Variety paid me for the original image! The most important lesson I learned from this is that it is imperative to get accurate photo credits. Neither the daily nor the university mentioned anything about contacting me for the right to reuse my image, but the woman noticed my credit on the page and contacted me. Now my photo credit reads (c) www.staceyrain.com so that whoever goes there to contact me can also see my portfolio at the same time.
Stacey Rain Strickler — Los Angeles, CA
srs @ staceyrain.com
www.staceyrain.comI’m not sure what details you are interested in regarding magazine story reprints. I price them using the Editorial Photographers estimator as a starting point, then simply negotiate from there.
As far as policing this usage, it’s really difficult. Sometimes I contact my contact person at the company where I photographed the subject to see if they went ahead and purchased reprints from the magazine. Mostly I just wait for the magazine to contact me if they are negotiating a reprint sale. I find that they usually do this prior to the sale to get a price quote from me for the photography.
If I’m ever at a corporation on a shoot and I see reprints from a magazine article, I usually take one and mail it to the photographer. Hopefully this gives them a heads-up in case they weren’t notified.
Eric Millette — San Francisco, CA
eric @ EricMillette.com
www.EricMillette.comI always charge and expect to be paid for reprints. Usually the charges for editorial use range around $350. Normally, magazines call me and notify me that the client is interested in reprints for their own promotional use.
Jeff Rogers — Lexington, KY
jeff @ jeffrogers.com
www.jeffrogers.comI have only had a few occasions where I have dealt with reprints, usually with trade magazines. In those cases, I refer to FotoQuote and have had pretty good luck getting rates close to the average rates there. You have to be a good negotiator, I think, since they come in with an initial offer that is pretty low.
Edward McCain — Tucson, AZ
edward @ mccainphoto.com
Assignments: www.mccainphoto.com
Stock: www.photosofarizona.comI shoot executives for various publications that offer reprints to their customers. Usually, we get a call from the company that the executive works for, or the publisher or the publisher’s reprint agency, to request a quote for using the photo in a reprint, which most of the time is distributed via print and PDF format. We always follow up the quotes and most of the time have had no problems with this practice.
Derek Dudek — Middletown, CT
derek @ derekdudek.com
www.derekdudek.comFor the first reprint, I usually charge 75 percent of the original fee. The second reprint is 50 percent of the original fee. And if they use it a third time, it stays at 50 percent of the original fee. (I don’t usually go lower than that.)
Ann F. Purcell — Alexandria, VA
annpurcell @ aol.com
www.annpurcelltravel.comI don’t have time or energy to worry about it.
Jim Wark — Pueblo, CO
airphotona @ comcast.net
www.airphotona.com
More resources for estimating and pricing
ASMP’s pricing guides page has descriptions and links to a variety of services and vendors that can help you determine a fair, competitive price for your images.
The International Association of Professional Event Photographers, www.iapep.com, provides information on pricing and terms for personal-use reprints and enlargements.