Offer To Purchase Photo on Flickr

Freddie59

I've just been approaced by a publishing company wanting to use one of my images for a flat fee ($50). I'm pretty new to all this, so I suppose I'm just asking if anyone has any experience of this - or is it a scam?

Thanks for the help in advance.

Cheers,

Freddie.

Fajitas!

Do they want full copyright to the image?

Do you like the image/want it for any other reason?

It might not be a scam, plenty of companies use Flickr to get photos from!

Freddie59

Fajitas! wrote: »

Do they want full copyright to the image?

Do you like the image/want it for any other reason?

It might not be a scam, plenty of companies use Flickr to get photos from!

Thanks Fajitas.

Nothing particularly spectacular about it really. Animal photograph - but they seem to like it. May as well proceed then?

melekalikimaka

yeah i have a friend whos job now is to source images for magazines, she used to spend hours looking on stock sites, i've convinced her flickr is the way forward... i told her my contacts in flickr will have most things, so hopefullt we should see some cash rolling in

Eirebear

It depends what they want it for, if they want full rights to publish and reproduce the picture whenever and wherever they feel like it then $50 aint much money.

Find out what they want to use it for and go from there.

Paulw

€50 for use for publishing? Sounds very very cheap to me.

Ask what they want it for, how many publications of the image will there be, what sort of distribution/promotion will the image be used for?

I'd be a little cautious without knowing exactly what they want the image for, especially for that low price.

Rojo

Yeah lexus contacted me through flickr to use one of my images!

Fajitas!

Freddie59 wrote: »

Thanks Fajitas.

Nothing particularly spectacular about it really. Animal photograph - but they seem to like it. May as well proceed then?

See what they want to use it for, and see what you can get out of it. Even if you get 50 dollars out of a photo you were never going to use anyways, then it's a few scoops in the pub on Friday.

Ricky91t

Was it through flickr?Check out the profile if it was,If you copy in the mail people might be able to help out more

City-Exile

I typically charge a flat fee of €250 for Commercial use.
That's what most customers would expect to pay as well.

Ricky91t

What do you mean by comercial use?

Paulw

Commercial use would generally be publications, posters, advertising, etc ... Anything that generates revenue for the company using the image.

Freddie59

Paulw wrote: »

Commercial use would generally be publications, posters, advertising, etc ... Anything that generates revenue for the company using the image.

Thanks for all the replies folks! Glad I asked. Here's a copy of the body of the mail and the image itself:

Greetings,

I am writing on behalf of Star Bright Books, a small children's book publisher of high quality books printed in 17 languages. Feel free to check us out at www.starbrightbooks.com.

I am currently designing a baby's board book about animal families.

I would like to consider your image, "Mother and Foal" for this publication. Might you be interested in selling us non-exclusive rights to your photo if it fits in our layout? I would need a high resolution image that is approximately 6"x6" and at least 200 dpi.

We use royalty-free images for our books but would offer you a flat fee of $50 for the high resolution image.

Please let me know if this is suitable. You may contact me at the email address below.

Thank you very much.

Warmly,

Fajitas!

Well, if it's royalty free, set the terms so they can use it in that book, and that one only. See if you can get any more $$$ out of them, but if not, and you have nothing to lose, I don't think you've anything to lose from it. They'll just offer the money to someone else who'll say yes

I know you could go down the road of giving a standard rate, yada yada yada, but if you've no other stock intentions, go for it. It could be on a stock or microstock site for a year and you'd get 3 quid off it.

City-Exile

I'd agree with Fajitas. It's important to ensure the image is used only in the baby's board book that he mentions.
$50 is better than a slap in the face with a wet fish & in reality, he could have used the image without you ever knowing.

City-Exile

Paulw wrote: »

Commercial use would generally be publications, posters, advertising, etc ... Anything that generates revenue for the company using the image.

Yes, being careful that where images of football players are concerned, no product or service is perceived to be being endorsed by the players featured.

Freddie59

City-Exile wrote: »

Yes, being careful that where images of football players are concerned, no product or service is perceived to be being endorsed by the players featured.

Many, many thanks for all the help and advice everyone.

Much obliged.:)

Freddie.

Covey

For reference, theres a pricing guide on the alamy website.

T.

Freddie59

Covey wrote: »

For reference, theres a pricing guide on the alamy website.

T.

Thanks Covey. Just an update on this. They want to use the picture, but require 200dpi. The properties show it as 72dpi when converted to TIFF or Jpeg. Is there any way around this? I still have the RAW file.

Covey

Reprocess it at 300dpi and use save/"save as"instead of "save for web".

Freddie59

Covey wrote: »

Reprocess it at 300dpi and use save/"save as"instead of "save for web".

Thanks for that Covey. Job done.:)