Real World Estimates: Day Rate vs. Space Explained

APE: When I worked at Outside Magazine we had a flat day rate for assignments but then had to create all these other rates to accommodate certain photographers or certain situations where the use was more extensive. It turned into a huge mess where we didn’t know what an assignment would cost and we would need to pull old invoices to see what we paid someone last time. When I went to Men’s Journal I redid the system and changed to a day rate against space structure which was much more elegant and logical. A fashion shoot that took one day but had 8 pages of images resulted in $3200 for the creative fees, which was more reflective of the level of talent we were pulling from and the overall amount of work that went into that one day of shooting. It’s good to see Wonderful Machine shedding some light on this concept in our monthly column, because it works well for both the magazine and the photographer. When shoots are “killed” some money can be saved and photographers have a guaranteed minimum but are paid based on the total usage.

By Ben Weldon, Wonderful Machine Producer

Many magazines have contracts with rates and terms that they offer to photographers (which are generally negotiable). Others don’t have their own contracts and instead work on a case-by-case basis with individual photographers. For those situations, it’s good for photographers to have a contract template on hand. We tend to structure our editorial fees based on a day rate against space. It’s an elegant solution to the problem of how to scale editorial fees, and it’s widely used by many national magazines, but some people find it hard to get their head around at first.

Pricing for editorial photography tends to be different from commercial photography for a couple of reasons. When a company decides to produce an ad or brochure, they already know what they need (in terms of photo display and usage) before the photographer is brought in. So it’s mostly a matter of the photographer coming up with a price and terms to fit those unique specifications. Magazines, on the other hand, need to work much more spontaneously. Editorial opportunities often come up on very short notice, and they also tend to morph from the time of the assignment to the time of publication. When an editor and art director send a writer and photographer out on a project, they never know what they’re going to come back with. And the play in the magazine is going to depend largely on how interesting and relevant that result turns out to be, compared to other stories that they’ve got cooking.

So photographers and magazines are best served by a contract that can be put in place for a couple years at a time (which allows for last-minute projects) and is scaleable (to account for variations in the amount of time required, expenses and the number and size of the pictures used). After all, it’s reasonable to charge less for a project that takes a day to complete vs. one that takes a month. It’s reasonable to charge less for a project that you can do alone in your back yard with a fill card than one that you have to take a crew of 7 and a dozen cases of rental equipment to Tunisia for. And it’s reasonable to charge less for a 1/4-page photo inside the magazine than a cover and 10 pages in the well.

The day rate vs. space structure takes all of these variables into account. The day rate is a minimum guarantee that compensates the photographer for his time on the project. It tends to be fairly modest, to accommodate small projects that won’t have a big presence in the magazine. The space rate comes into effect only when the magazine ends up using multiple or large pictures. The expenses are what they are. The structure nicely scales from small assignments that the publication can have done inexpensively, while incentivizing the photographer to produce a lot of great pictures. And it minimizes the need to renegotiate after the fact, when the final piece in the magazine is different than imagined.

Here is our standard day vs. space agreement (in Adobe PDF ):

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And here’s an explanation of each paragraph:

Continue reading

E-Readers Can Save Money, Revitalize Titles

Consumer uptake will be slow, he acknowledged, but he laid out a scenario in which [E-Reader] adoption could save Meredith, which publishes Ladies’ Home Journal and Family Circle, about $60 million a year. Lacy told analysts the publisher spends about $150 million annually on paper, $80 million in printing costs and $80 million for mailing. If audience migration to an e-reader allows 20% of that $310 million to be trimmed, “that could really be meaningful to us from a financial point of view.”

via MediaPost.

If “successful professional” means I can live a good, somewhat luxurious, life by the profession, then I am certainly not.

My expenses are almost as high as my photography income and I have so little left at the end even when I am lucky. So, maybe I am not qualified to answer this question. Then why am I doing photography? I think it is a combination of passion and stupidity. For me, photography is intellectual, artistic, and curiosity fulfilling. I love making photographs.

–Hiroshi Watanabe

via Two Way Lens

View Of Your Desktop

I found this photo of Improper Bostonian Photo Editor, Katie Noble’s desktop on Nick Onken’s shoptalk blog:
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I would love to see more, so all you Photo Editor’s and Art Buyer’s out there send me the view of your desktop.

Ask Anything – Social Media – What Is Your Definition And What Should Someone Charge?

Former Art Buyers and current photography consultants Amanda Sosa Stone and Suzanne Sease have agreed to take anonymous questions from photographers and not only give their expert advice but put it out to a wide range of photographers, reps and art buyers to gather a variety of opinions. The goal with this column is to solicit honest questions and answers through anonymity.

QUESTION:

The past week I did 2 separate estimates for different agencies. In my estimates I broke down the usage for print and web, both agencies came back to me and asked if it covered social media. This is the first time I’ve been asked about social media rights and usage. I talked to an AD friend and he suggested I treat it as broadcast. Should there be an extra charge for social media rights/usage ?

Amanda and Suzanne: This is a NEW usage being requested…and we are SO LUCKY to have APE and our AMAZING resources and friends to ask this HOT TOPIC and be able to share this question quickly to our community.

ANSWERS:

ART PRODUCER #1
I’m considering social media as web use (unless that social media outlet lives someplace other than the internet) and I wouldn’t expect and probably would not pay an additional fee to use content within social media parameters, if I’m buying a general web use. If I’ve got a smaller budget than I may get very specific with the use in order to still use a preferred photographer, while still working within my budget parameters. However, in my head if it’s specified as (general) web use that includes social media use (as long as it lives on the web).

ART PRODUCER #2
I think that charging for Broadcast use is way too high. Social Media is typically encompassed within Internet usage. As always, pricing is determined by exposure, uniqueness and the degree of association with a product. One thing to note about Social Media is that there is usually not a blatant advertising message, so there’s often less of a direct association with product. If separated from Internet, the photographer should gauge the degree of association, the uniqueness of the image, and the degree that the imagery itself is delivering the message.

ART PRODUCER #3
From Wikipedia: “Social media is a term used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online. Where media means digital words, sounds & pictures which are typically shared via the internet and the value can be cultural, societal or even financial.”
Social Media is web. When I negotiate with an artist, I ask for unlimited web. More people watch TV then scan the social networks so I don’t see this as the same as broadcast.

To Summarize: Social Media should be covered under web usage. You can say Unlimited Web and some might assume that social media will be covered under this. But our advice is to be clear with your wording since this media is a fairly new usage request. Web Usage, including or not including Social Media.

Call To Action: Decide how you feel about the above topic and how you feel comfortable charging for the above. When asked you will be ready to give an appropriate and fair estimate based on your own education from the REAL buyers above.

If you want more insight from Amanda and Suzanne you can contact them directly (here and here) or tune in once a week or so for more of “Ask Anything.”

Simon Burch

Photography is incredibly difficult as I’m sure you know. The complexities within a single picture can be enormous at times. The composition, the content, the lighting, there’s so many elements that have to be brought in to one picture. From that point of view, I’m still learning a lot about photography. It’s a very narrow discipline in that way and even to think about doing something else would be a distraction.

via Milky Blacks.

Time’s Survival Strategy: Will It Work?

“I think they’ve done the best job in making themselves a multimedia property,” said Peter Gardiner, partner, chief media officer, Deutsch. “They’ve worked smartly at making themselves more than a print magazine. It happens to be the last man standing that’s been the most progressive and aggressive.”

via Mediaweek.

Global ad business improved in April

The global advertising business is showing signs of recovery after months of decline, WPP Plc (WPP.L), the world’s top ad firm by sales, said on Wednesday adding its own business saw worldwide growth in April.

via  Reuters.

Electronic Magazines

If you’re interested in how magazines are approaching the e-reader market (iPad for now) this exchange between Josh Quittner, editor at large for digital development at Time Inc and Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine is pretty interesting. Jarvis was critical of the Time app (“I think the TIME Magazine app is the most sinful piece of shit ever“) for how walled in it was. Quittner responds on The Third Screen:

Google is a great business—for Google. We all know that it has made Google an enormous amount of money for itself and its shareholders. And I have no doubt that Google ads and the attendant freeconomy keep bloggers like you in cigs and the occasional bottle of Midnight Train. The notion, however, that ALL media must be free, and linkable, and remixable and open not only doesn’t work for large, news-gathering organizations, it’s turning out that it’s not even what all readers/consumers want. There is no single recipe for success in the media business, professor.

In the comments someone asks Quittner about the price which in my mind is something that needs to be ironed out quickly in the early stages of e-readers.

I understand the point of charging what the market will bear but I do have other entertainment options and the magazines that get pricing right will get my long term loyalty.

To which he responds:

Like you, however, I made an erroneous assumption: That the incremental cost of making a digital copy was zero. In fact, it’s not. A typical issue of Time is about 80 megabytes, which costs a lot more to deliver than you’d think. (I’m told, in fact, that it’s weirdly close to how much it costs us to deliver an issue of a magazine.)

On the pricing front I was surprised to see National Geographic going for fifteen bucks because I know they’ve got a lot of interactive stuff baked into their Zinio offering. It turns out all the Zinio magazines are priced the same as the print subscriptions (Esquire is eight bucks for a year) and that the newest release of their app has solved a ton of issues and is running quite well now. Most of the magazines seem to be about a buck and issue which is not bad even if they are only scanning the pages.

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Based on the number of titles at Zinio it will be difficult for other magazines to charge more for their electronic version. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

New York Photo Festival

If you’re wanting to check out the NYPH (May 12-16) via the internets like myself, James Pomerantz AKA A Photo Student looks to be our man on the ground this year:
http://www.aphotostudent.com
http://twitter.com/aphotostudent

Let us know in the comments if anyone else is covering it online.

UPDATE:

I’ve always wondered why the festival seems so out of touch with the photo community that I exist in. […]I always come looking for surprises and leave feeling strangely unmoved. How great would it be if everywhere you looked as you walked around photography hit you right between the eyes?

via Stellazine:

American Photography 26

American Photography has released a slideshow of this year’s winners via their facebook page. Many photo editors will be browsing through the images and googling the names they don’t recognize (why no links AP?) to find someone new to add to their list. Also, for the names they recognize it serves as a subtle reminder to give them a job soon.

If you want to test your photo editor skills see how many photographers you can name based on looking at the thumbs only. The Schoeller’s and Greenberg’s are easy to spot and also anything memorable from last year’s editorial calendar like the Kander’s, Platon’s, Pellegrin’s, Rubin’s and Ommanney’s.

Congratulations to all the photographers selected for the book and the website.

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I’m An Artist, Not A Marketer

I understand the whole “I’m an artist, not a marketer” thing, actually, but in this day and age, to not think about your audience in advance is not just poor business, it ignores the fundamental changes that have hit every business and every art form – that audiences are more participatory, so you can’t just try to engage them with a product and no conversation.

via SpringBoardMedia, thx j-carrier.

First, Get a Million Dollars…

As you look through the various award winners, people who’s work is selected for the American Photography annual or whatever contest PDN is currently pitching, I guarantee you there’s a good percentage that are nowhere near earning a living with a camera, and more than a few are working at Starbucks to make ends meet.

That’s where we’re at.

via Mostly True.

Best. Promo. Ever.

Ok, these scratch and sniff promo cards that Melissa Hennessy does for her photographers at Hennessy Represents are a great idea for standing out in a crowded marketplace:

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But, this video telling creatives to be on the lookout for cards is straight up hilarious. The combo makes this one of the best promos I’ve ever seen.

I asked Melissa for a little background on it and here’s what she had to say:

In the 6 years I’ve been an agent we’ve sent out everything from postcards to water bottles, to expensive multi-page books, etc., hoping to make the “keep” pile of creatives. What seemed to be a hit were our scratch n sniff postcards- a single image card, with no plastic sleeve, & a one inch circle that invited you to “scratch here.” So with our second print run, we thought why not put out a teaser video? It could announce the mailing date so creatives could be on the lookout, and we’ll play off of the interactive nature of the sniff/scent circle & the types of things creative receive in the mail. We’re really poking fun at ourselves, but saying we understand how much stuff is sent out. The feedback so far has been very positive & we’re glad that it’s being viewed as something purely meant in jest, with no suggestion that plants of any nature inspire creativity :-)