After Gary Morgan took the lead yesterday announcing that 50/50 share of royalties for photographers is still very much alive PhotoArchiveNews.com had a flood of emails, text and phone calls from photo agency owners supporting the story we ran
Some simply wrote: “More power to photographers! – Good piece Will” and “Love it!!!”
Others were more vocal:
Paul Harris at Pacific Coast News sent us this: ***PAN Exclusive – BREAKING NEWS*** Pacific Coast News to all photographers, especially Splash “50 percenters” ‘It’s still 60% With Pacific Coast News!’
“The owners of Pacific Coast News, trying to make sense of the recent consolidations of photo agencies, aggressive contracts, falling revenues for photographers due to the terrible economy, publishers trying to maintain profit and the proliferation of digital web devices , web sites, blogs, RSS feeds, all leading to increased usage of pictures at reduced prices are holding their 60/40 photographer/agency split. Interested photographers can contact the PCN team here – introduce yourselves and we will respond within 24 hours”.
Alex Hewitt at Writer Pictures wrote: “Hi Will, we may have a niche area for photographers but we also can assure any prospective contributors that our percentage share will never fall below 50% !”
Russell Sneddon at StockPix wrote: “Hi Will – Just thought I’d respond to you personally on this one. It may be of interest to know that StockPix.eu has an 84% commission on direct sales (via ftp to all UK nationals) and 70% on web sales (purchased from the StockPix site). It is my firm belief that the days of the agency fleecing the hard-working photographer are drawing to a close. Although StockPix has a very strict quality control process, I think that those who are committed and work hard to get the picture should be properly rewarded for their efforts.
We also syndicate celeb and event photography thru a global agency, with whom we have a very good deal for photographers, providing nearly 59% of overall sales to the photographer – ensuring StockPix still gathers the standard 16% commission. After sales processing fees etc, the 70% on web sales is still a meagre 16% cut to the agency.
When Getty announced their 35%, StockPix had no less than 7 emails from photojournalists around the world on the first day asking for more info on what we can offer and as a result we have accepted 2 of those photographers, one on assignment in Egypt, the other based in Greece.
StockPix works closely with all national UK newspapers and submits only by ftp for consideration, devoting our time to ensure every picture sent through us reaches the correct picture desks.
We are not here to be a global money-maker, simply to provide a decent rate of return to freelance, self-employed photographers and our business plan is secure with the rate to remain the same for at least 5 years to come.
Best regards, Russell
Max Cisotti- CEO at Xclusivepix: “After a very successful first year we are looking to expand in certain areas. We still believe that no agency should charge more that 40% to it’s contributors. We find it astounding that Getty, Rex and Corbis can charge as much, especially as they have such a high degree of automation in their distribution systems. It is time larger organisations remembered that they worked for photographers and not vice versa. To any photographers that feel undervalued and unappreciated please contact us on [email protected]”
more comments as they arrive…