Dear List Listmom has kindly let me post this letter from our agent to Computer Arts mag for your info. Its not really a prodig discussion item but you may wish to read it & respond to Computer Arts directly.
Kind Regards Steve --------- I have written the letter below to the editor of Computer Arts after reading an article showing off a new Digital Vision illustration collection, and largely condoning it. They are wrong and do not realize the consequence of their support. I hope this puts them straight and it is covered next issue. Can I urge everyone to support this fight, possibly writing to the editor, ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) but more importantly to spread the word and advise anyone against this lethal practice. The fight is getting harder and we must must cut of the supply to these Libraries if we want to stay in business. H Dear Sirs Computer Arts is a bedrock in our community. It's support and leadership in the creative community is inspired and very much at the head of the curve. This said, I am alarmed by this months one sided and seeming support of the most dangerous practice that has hit our industry in recent years, Royalty Free Stock. It is a practice, along with the sale of cheap individual images, that has seen a conservative 40% decline in the number of practicing Photographers in America, and increasingly compromises the livelihoods of many thousands of photographers and illustrators in the UK and Europe. The Association of Illustrators and the Society of Artists Agents in the UK along with Graphic Artists Guild and the Illustrators Partnership in the US, strongly advises all image makers to avoid Royalty Free like the plague and with very good reason. It is a simple fact that images in these collections have a value of about �10 or less to the buyer, sold in thousands they represent a hopelessly valueless commodity. The market is not suddenly using a vast amount of extra images, it has increased with business as a whole, but not by anything like the scale of stock images now available (over 1 billion for sale on the web, a recent estimate made). Every time a stock image is used the chances are a photographer or illustrator has not been commissioned. The industry has been swamped by the offer of cheap images....it has created a culture in buyers and commissioners to look at the stock option first, which is in itself a creative compromise, rather than looking to commissioning bespoke and exclusive images. Commission fees have either been static or have declined over the last 10 years. Now with less work being commissioned more and more illustrators and photographers are leaving the industry as they can no longer make a living. Paradoxically the Royalty Free Libraries are in fact destroying the very source they relied on in the first place. It is such a great shame as this should have be a golden era for both photographers and illustrators. There have been lots of new magazines launched and the advent of the web has created a whole new medium that has a huge visual content requirement. I represent one artist who has had a Royalty Free collection before joining us. He thinks of it as one of the worse decisions he has ever made. He does get a few thousand a year from sales of the CD, but the cost has been far greater. On one hand the ads and literature that he has seen using the images could have been commissions, had he not done the CD. On the other hand the style is now associated with products and campaigns that any self respecting art director would not wish his clients linked with. The exclusive relationship between product or service and image, that is so often vital to a successful campaign, cannot happen if the style is associated with too many low budget and randomly used exposures. Wounds are being licked by many innocents who have been tempted by the Jam today offer. Our agency does have a stock resource and images that we sell are priced at at least 75% of a like-for-like use. It can be a useful extra bit of income, but we would never agree a fee or a use that is not complementary to the artist. It has been a big debate on both sides of the Atlantic and the facts are beyond question. Anyone considering a royalty free collection should read the health warning first and then not do it. Computer Arts, like all with an audience, have a responsibility to their readership. The wholesale support and promotion of Royalty Free Stock will kill the businesses of many of your readers and will dumb down the creativity that this country excels in. Yours sincerely Harry Lyon-Smith The Society of Artists' Agents, Chair Illustration Ltd -------------- =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
