Dealing with magazines (re:pricing)...

[Chris Clark]

This may seem like a dumb question, but....

Who sets the pricing for images? Do you, or does the magazine?

I've spoken to several different photographers, all at different levels of "professional", and some have told me that you negotiate pricing before handing over files, while others have told me that magazines pay what they pay, take it or leave it.

One person I know sends a DVD of everything he shoots to various publications and they treat it as sort of an archive, and send him check whenever they use something. Is that a good practice?

It seems to me that it's a good way to lose control of your images. Is this really how things are done?
:confused:

[Mike Ditz]

Most magazines that I deal with have a pricing structure for assignements, after all they've been doing this a while and have a budget to keep the costs in line. If it is a stock photo you have more power to set a price.

I wouldn't send a DVD of my work to somplace unless I really really trusted them.

[Jacob Leveton]

always negotiate pricing before sending images. Some will give you a price and say 'take it or leave it', others will negotiate, but all of this should happen before you hand over full resolution files (although they may ask for proofs or thumbnails).

I really don't like the 'send and pray' mentality. I work with several different magazines, and if one magazine doesn't run a feature in a timely maner, i may approach another. Now, i could get very screwed if one magazine waits 6 months to run a feature, I approach another magazine and sell them the feature, and the first magazine decides to run the feature. That's why I submit each feature individually, and send them only the photos I feel they might use (i send 1.5 times more than I expect them to use to give them some choice, but I'm not going to be giving them 100 photos for a 4 page feature.)

hope this helps.

[Todd Corzett]

Different magazines have different budgets... and like Mike said, they know what they need to do to keep the costs in line. Now, that being said... there is ALWAYS room for negotiation... and not everything is about money when it comes to negotiations.

Personally, I never send a high-resolution image until the price has been negotiated... and even better yet invoiced. There are even times I will not send a non-watermarked low-resolution image (some magazines when running a multi-image series, like a crash, will just use the samples rather than the high-res images). There have been a few times in the past that I have deviated from this, and it has come back to bite me (specifically the time when they used the sample images without even telling me, then paid like crap after they were already published).

Basically, you have to know what your bottom line is... if the money isn’t what you want, and there is a ‘take it or leave it’ mentality... don't be afraid to leave it.

-Todd...

[John Thawley]

It's going to be pretty hard to make a living off magazines anyway... especially race coverage. Feature articles ... a little better, but unless your are one thier "in-house shooters" I wouldn't start making reservations at Morton's Steak House.

Race coverage is very low. I'm sure your joy over being published by GrassRoots quickly faded once you got thier check. ;)

So for race coverage... just take what they pay.. cause that's all they're paying. Unless you've got a "must have" shot of Dale Jr. punting Tony Stewart into the wall on the last lap at Richmond... LOL.

Feature articles, as everyone has pointed out, negotiate. But, try not to negotiate yourself out of the work. Outside of the major pubs, you're dealing with some pretty small budgets.

Meanwhile, the real money is in advertising. :)

JT

[John Jovic]

Esentially car magazines set the price rather than you however it's up to you to get the maximum that they are willing to pay. The range that they are willing to pay is also quite large, depending on the magazine and the nature of the feature itself. For example, if the car is a cover car then the budget for that feature might be 5 times any other feature in the magazine, because they might normally shoot the cover car in a studio hence the much higher costs involved.

Always start the negotiations higher than you think they will pay, when the baulk, work out a rate they are happy with.

Also find out before hand when they pay! Many magazines pay upon publication so forget about your 14 day terms or whatever. There's no point stressing over not being paid for 6 months or so if you are a regular contributor to a magazine that pays on publication because you will get paid, when the images are published. Many magazines also pay immediately, even if the images are never published but my point is that you should ask the question so you know what to expect.

Be willing to walk away if they offer crap money, which many magazines do.

Do not give your images away for a photo credit, not if you ever expect to get paid by that editor in the future. There is no better way to prove to an editor that you are not worth paying the next time.

I often send a Photoshop contact sheet jpeg of a feature to a magazine to see if they are interested in a feature, rather than low res or small jpegs. This way they see every image in a job yet the images are quite small and almost impossible to use other than maybe on the web.

Good luck.

JJ

[Chris Clark]

Race coverage is very low. I'm sure your joy over being published by GrassRoots quickly faded once you got thier check. ;)

JT

:D ;)



Thanks for all of the replies gentleman.

One more question: How accurate is FotoQuote for this sort of thing? Does it cover magazine usages, etc.. Worth the purchase price?

edit: I should also add that I wasn't planning on getting rich off of getting some stuff published. I think I am still at the point where getting exposure is just as important as getting paid. I just want to be sure I'm not undervaluing myself, my images, and the industry in general. I know under pricing is a pretty serious problem, and I don't want to be the APN equivalent of the $0.02 microstock image guy.

-chris

[Todd Corzett]

:One more question: How accurate is FotoQuote for this sort of thing? Does it cover magazine usages, etc.. Worth the purchase price?
I find that FotoQuote (even on the low side of the stock calculator) is on the high side of most magazines... they are just so cheap! One nice thing though, there is a listing of magazines and subscription side/ad costs/etc... so you can taylor your quotes to the size of the mag. As for everything else, like the advertising, it is worth it's weight in gold (thankfully, several MB doesn't weigh that much). My copy of fotoquote paid for itself MANY times over with just the first sale.

-Todd...

[Morgan J Segal]

It's going to be pretty hard to make a living off magazines anyway... especially race coverage. Feature articles ... a little better, but unless your are one thier "in-house shooters" I wouldn't start making reservations at Morton's Steak House.



How about Red Lobster? Can I afford to eat there, because I am tired of Denny's, can I, can I?

[John Thawley]

How about Red Lobster? Can I afford to eat there, because I am tired of Denny's, can I, can I?

Considering how often those rally race have you diving face first into the woods, I'd think the sawdust in those White Castle sliders would be a welcome feast for you. LOL

JT

[Morgan J Segal]

No way,...I've been a movin' on up, To the east side. To a de-luxe apartment,
In the sky-. Mo-vin' on up, To the east side, I've finally got a piece of the pie!!!

[Chris Clark]

I find that FotoQuote (even on the low side of the stock calculator) is on the high side of most magazines... they are just so cheap! One nice thing though, there is a listing of magazines and subscription side/ad costs/etc... so you can taylor your quotes to the size of the mag. As for everything else, like the advertising, it is worth it's weight in gold (thankfully, several MB doesn't weigh that much). My copy of fotoquote paid for itself MANY times over with just the first sale.

-Todd...


I just picked this up today. Pretty cool. It's going to take me awhile to sort through all of it, but so far the amount of info available is impressive. Looks like they can find a price for just about every scenario.:)

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

-chris clark