Typical Remuneration for Photo in a Textbook?

[Zansho]

Thank you, Astrostu! I try my best at making nice wedding images for my clients .

To address littlejon, the mentality that something is better than nothing, is terrible. If you continue to do that sort of business practice, you'll end up developing the reputation that you're willing to work for next to nothing, or free. Nobody wants that, especially with your equipment, overhead, insurance, taxes, and the like being part of your costs of running your business.

It's all fine and good if you're just looking to get published. But if you want to make a living at it (and admittedly, it's getting harder to do so), you have to be firm on prices for your professional level images. Also, one more thing - when was the last time you remembered who took the photo of a particularly amazing image you saw in a magazine and called that photographer for work? I doubt it happens in textbooks.

[Littlejon Dsgn]

My point was not that you will get work from your picture being in the textbook, but that you can say on your website and/or portfolio that you were published in xyz textbook.

I understand that if photography is your main income you have to keep your pricing at a designated level to make it worth while. However if you have an image just sitting on your hard drive from 6 years ago, its not making you any money either, and if your not a full time photographer whats wrong with making something rather then nothing off of it.

[john-in-japan]

If it were me, I'd give it to them for $1, and have the check and the page framed together to make my mom proud. Agree with Littlejon. If this is a hobby, why not?
Cheers,
John

[Littlejon Dsgn]

Originally Posted by john-in-japan

If it were me, I'd give it to them for $1, and have the check and the page framed together to make my mom proud. Agree with Littlejon. If this is a hobby, why not?
Cheers,
John

I like your thinking

[mmb]

Originally Posted by Littlejon Dsgn

If it was me (and I am in no way a pro, just a guy with a camera) and it was just sitting on my HD not doing anything, take what ever you can get for it and use the fact that it was published as a selling point (or bragging rights )

Heck $50 is better then $0 right (I am sure I will get flamed by the Pro's for that comment right there )

Only because you're posting in the "Business of Photography" thread.

Originally Posted by john-in-japan

If it were me, I'd give it to them for $1, and have the check and the page framed together to make my mom proud. Agree with Littlejon. If this is a hobby, why not?
Cheers,
John

If this is a business, then what?

[Littlejon Dsgn]

Originally Posted by mmb

If this is a business, then what?

If this is a business then I would have to asses my cost involved. I have my own business that I run in the evenings/weekends doing CAD Drafting, I have sold scripts (like ps actions) that I wrote years ago, for a few bucks because it only took me a few min to write an invoice and email it with the script to the client.

Now if said client hired me to write him a script, I would charge much more since I would have to put in the time to write it, but if it’s already done, why not make something off of it. (I also have a couple people that purchased the first script for fairly cheap, only to like it so much they pay me top dollar to write a custom one for other needs they have).

I also paint radio control car race bodies, a custom paint job sells for about double what a body that I paint and then sell goes for. If the client hires me and tells me exactly how he wants it, it cost more then if I had an extra body laying around that I paint and then try and sell.

I get its on a person by person basis but I NEVER leave money on the table even if its only $50, I am not sure how much work is involved in selling an image to a text book company, but if your business is selling images then you should have a boiler plate contract already done so changing a few lines to cover this photo should not take to long I would not think.

[Zansho]

John, I imagine while it takes a bit more time to do "custom" work than it does to do a generic paint job, TIME is still an equation in those two.

You obviously value your time when it comes to custom paint work, as it is obviously more extensive, and as such, would cost more since it takes up MORE time. Say it takes you (I'm just guessing) a business week to get a custom paint job out (including shipping, handling, and the like), and you charge (again, guessing) $1,000 bucks for said paint job, working about 4 hours a day on the paint job, for a total of 20 hours to complete that job. That's $50 bucks an hour. That's what you VALUE your time at.

Then you have a job that you did a generic thing on, blah blah, just a normal vanilla paint job, that doesn't take you as long, say 2 days, at 4 hours per day - that's 8 hours total. You decide to sell it for $100 bucks, because that's money you wouldn't have gotten anyway, rather than let it sit on the shelf. You just reduced the value of your time at $12.50/hour, barely McDonald's worthy. What you SHOULD have done, is charged $400.00, bringing back what you VALUE your time to be, $50 bucks an hour.

Note, this doesn't cover any incidentals, like shipping costs, taxes, supplies, and the like. Those are extra, and obviously, eat into your profit.

The same analogy applies here - the OP took the time, effort, and used his know how to get the image that the textbook company wants. To me, $50 bucks for all that time and effort and know how is a slap in the face.

Value your work, your time, your expertise and know how to get the job done. If you don't, WHO will?