Hi All
some advice would be appreciated - my wife and I run a website on soil invertebrates http://soilbugs.massey.ac.nz that we developed from a grant from a government agency my wife got. It is a freely available website which contains a lot of images of animals. We retain the copyright to these images. Recently we were approached by the Museum of New Zealand who is putting together an online encyclopedia that will take several years to build. They are currently working on a natural history section and want to re-use some of our images for their encyclopedia. At first it was just one or two images which we sent free with just a promise of acknowledgement of source etc. They offered to pay costs but it didn't seem worth it for just one or two images. However, now they want quite a few more as they move on to new parts of the encyclopedia. We are now wondering whether we ought to charge for the use of these images. Part of me thinks we should just keep agreeing to give them away as it is for a good cause, but another part says I should be recouping some costs for future enablement.
What do you think? Should we charge and if so how much? The images will be low-res web-only images and we will still own the copyright to them.
Any suggestions welcome
Alastair
PS the front page to our website is running slow at the moment - there is a small bug in the counter which we keep forgetting to fix. If you want to skip this page and go the image gallery you can try this link http://soilbugs.massey.ac.nz/gallery.php
An online encyclopedia sounds like a large project that should have image use well planned in their budget. I wouldn`t feel bad about getting paid for my own work, especially if they offered to do so in the first place. Getting honest compensation for your work doesn`t make the overall cause any less good, IMHO.
I work for a digital herbarium project that involves photographing some 120 000 dried plant specimens mounted on cardboard sheets - quite boring and mechanical work, really. One day, a local magazine needed an image of a properly dried and mounted plant for an instructional article. I still got credit for the image and I was paid their regular rate. If you own the full rights to the images at question, it doesn`t really matter that the images were made under a government-financed project. They are yours.
You have an excellent collection of images on rarely photographed creatures, BTW.
Posted by Frank Winters on January 25, 2007 at 12:06 PM
I would ask to be compensated for all costs at the very least.
At the very least I would estimate the time involved in filling their request, apply a generous commercial hourly rate, break that down to a per-image cost, and present that charge. After all, your time is worth something, and surely the encyclopedia producers can appreciate that. After all, they are paying for their own and their workers' time aren't they? That's a cost that is very understandable to them.
This doesn't address the question of a use-fee directly, but accomplishes many of the same things in terms of contributions to your business operations. It would be a pure coincidence if the per-image cost happened to coincide with the normal use fee.
Thanks very much for the replies. It seems that some smallish charge might be warranted. I think we try to negotiate over the phone - it's nice to get the exposure in the encyclopedia and don't want to jeopardise this by pricing ourselves too highly. I guess they may be paying other photographers for their images and perhaps can sound them out on this.
Alastair
Discussion
4 repliessome advice would be appreciated - my wife and I run a website on soil invertebrates http://soilbugs.massey.ac.nz that we developed from a grant from a government agency my wife got. It is a freely available website which contains a lot of images of animals. We retain the copyright to these images. Recently we were approached by the Museum of New Zealand who is putting together an online encyclopedia that will take several years to build. They are currently working on a natural history section and want to re-use some of our images for their encyclopedia. At first it was just one or two images which we sent free with just a promise of acknowledgement of source etc. They offered to pay costs but it didn't seem worth it for just one or two images. However, now they want quite a few more as they move on to new parts of the encyclopedia. We are now wondering whether we ought to charge for the use of these images. Part of me thinks we should just keep agreeing to give them away as it is for a good cause, but another part says I should be recouping some costs for future enablement.
What do you think? Should we charge and if so how much? The images will be low-res web-only images and we will still own the copyright to them.
Any suggestions welcome
Alastair
PS the front page to our website is running slow at the moment - there is a small bug in the counter which we keep forgetting to fix. If you want to skip this page and go the image gallery you can try this link http://soilbugs.massey.ac.nz/gallery.php
I work for a digital herbarium project that involves photographing some 120 000 dried plant specimens mounted on cardboard sheets - quite boring and mechanical work, really. One day, a local magazine needed an image of a properly dried and mounted plant for an instructional article. I still got credit for the image and I was paid their regular rate. If you own the full rights to the images at question, it doesn`t really matter that the images were made under a government-financed project. They are yours.
You have an excellent collection of images on rarely photographed creatures, BTW.
This doesn't address the question of a use-fee directly, but accomplishes many of the same things in terms of contributions to your business operations. It would be a pure coincidence if the per-image cost happened to coincide with the normal use fee.
Alastair