Licensing

[Kilted Madman]

Hey All,

My wife was contacted recently by a company that wants to possibly license a photo she took of our dog. It's a funny photo and the company wants to use it for a greeting card.

I've never had this happen before and I'm not sure how to go about dealing with the company. Can anyone offer some advice?

Thanks!

Danny

[Mark_Cohran]

What are they offering? Are they requesting an exclusive license (if so, that means you can't use the photograph for anything else or sell it to anyone else)? If so, then you ask for more money than if they ask for a non-exclusive.....I think you need to provide more details about what they are offering and what they want in return.

Mark

[Kilted Madman]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the reply.

They didn't specify. They only said that they wanted to know about licensing and the full resolution of the image. So I'm assuming the ball is in my court. I justed wanted to get some advice on how to proceed.

[Kilted Madman]

Anybody? Surely there has to be someone out there who's been down this road before.

[sspellman]

Danny-

There are hundreds of varriations for licensing photos - exclusivity, time period, type of use, quantity, and territory being the most important elements. Since they are in the business, have them make you an offer so we can talk specifics.

You can see how these variables affect pricing by using the online license calculator for Getty images, Almay, or similar.

-Scott

[vwpilot]

You need to find out how many cards they expect to print over how long and if this will be the main image on the card or just a small spot image.

For instance, if its the main photo (sounds like it) pricing could range from $360 on the low end for a run of 1000 cards all the way up to $3600 on the high side for a run of up to 5 million cards (according to FotoQuote).

Find out some basic details and then you can narrow down a fair price.

[Kilted Madman]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I had my wife send the company a reply, asking some specific questions as stated above. As soon as I hear something back I'll post here.

Thanks again!

[Kilted Madman]

Hey Guys, Got some new info.

Company says the want to license the image "world wide". The plan on an initial run of 5-10,000 cards, with more possible in the future. They say that the image will be one of 2 main images used on the card, they might use the image on other projects they produce in the future and possibly as an e-card. She (my wife) retains copyright and gets photo credit on the back of the card (fine print).

What do ya think?

[sspellman]

KM-

The Almay calculator gives a $430 price for 10,000 run postcard use for 1 year.

-S