In response to this Katie Hafner piece in the NY Times announcing Corbis’s new website, which lets anyone sell photos (It’ll Be Photographer’s Choice on a Web Site From Corbis), my friend Thomas Hawk, CEO of Zooomr.com with three o’s — Thomas is a not-too-shabby photographer — has this important post: Why Corbis’ New SnapVillage Stock Photography Agency is a Bad Deal for Photographers. Excerpt:
You won’t see Corbis and Getty allowing images by you and I to be priced
greater than $50 for one simple reason. They understand that our images
are just as good as their Pro images and they do not want to
cannibalize this far more lucrative business. They want to keep the
myth alive that their images are so much better than our images and to
create a wide valley between the two to continue reaping in the
millions that they do each year.Restricting photographers to
$50 is a bad deal for the photographer. Corbis and Getty will come back
with a "we make it up in volume" argument. But this is simply not the
case.Now on to the next point. Getty pays photographers on
their iStockphoto site 20% and Corbis is going to pay their
photographers on SnapVillage 30%.This is pathetic.
*You*
are the creator of these images. Not Corbis. Not Getty. It is simply
absurd that you would give 70-80% of the proceeds from your work away
to big corporate interests.What’s fair?
Well at
Zooomr we are in the process of building what will soon be the world’s
largest stock photography agency. We think we can pay photographers out
90% and still operate our business. We also are going to let
photographers set their price on their images between $5 and $1,000 for
royalty free images. …
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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