I'm a freelance photographer and recently I have done some work for a company that prints and sells work to retailers like John Lewis, Amazon, TK Max etc. Not the public.
They asked to see some personal work and from that they now want to sell some images. They have offered 5% royalty. I have no experiance of this so would like to know if anyone here has done something similar. Is 5% low? It seems it to me. I get the impression I can negotiate.
I have sold images in the past and granted the users permission for a specific usage. Is this something I should do again? I will be checking that the image rights remain mine. Anything else I should know?! Bit out of my comfort zone here.
Thanks for reading.
I asked a related question a while back. Whils it was a completely different reason for asking about charges, I got some links to some really good stuff regarding licencing and copyrights. [url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/any-professional-photographers-here ]This may be some use.[/url]
It would very much depend on the terms of the agreement.
You need to think about how much you are potentially giving over to them and how much, if any, say you get in how/where images are used.
Also with regard to royalties - 5% of what exactly?
My website, if that is of any interest -
[url= http://www.darrenbirkin.com ][/url]
I'm not a professional but I have sold images in the past and have been represented by an agency / distributor.
Thank you 40mpg, I will check that out.
dbukdbuk, Thanks for the reply. 5% of the selling price in store I thought but I had better check, they were not spcific.
You are right, I do need to check how the images will be used and it might be I grant them a licence for a run of so many prints and specific usage. I think an agreement will have to drawn up.
Do you grant a licence when you sell? How do you work it?
I shall have a look at your website. Cheers.
Edit...Looking now. Some very nice images!!
I haven't sold anything for the kind of usage you are describing. Mostly its been for usage in magazines or books.
If you use an agency you normally have standard terms with them. They market and sell the images for use and you get a fee/percentage/royalty or whatever (depends on the terms of the agreement).
If you are dealing direct with a company that wants to use the images then you have more control. For something in print like a book you'd normally agree a fee based on the type of publication and the print run.
It can be a bit of a mine field to be honest. The NUJ website used to have some good guidance on rates but that was mostly for publications. Might be more difficult if it was say an image to be used on a t shirt or something but you could apply the same basic logic (what's the usage? what volume? how long for?).