The rights to your images?

I'm a hobbyist. I'd like to one day be more profitable than I currently am. In this digital and very social network-y age, what is the trend for the rights to your images?

Do most professionals still hold the rights to their images and sell prints or are they putting them on disks (or other media) and selling the rights to the images to the customer so that they may use them/print them as they wish?

Allowing people to print images does not convey any other rights unless you transfer those rights in print.

Ok, thank you. I would like to start trying to set up my business model, goals, ideas, etc. and was trying to figure out what most clients want nowadays....either to buy prints from me or have that available to do themselves.

I have, on rare occasions, granted printing rights to an individual for images on a disc. I still own the rights but she can print them as she wishes assuming the lab believes what I printing on the disc's label.

daystar wrote in post #15877240
Ok, thank you. I would like to start trying to set up my business model, goals, ideas, etc. and was trying to figure out what most clients want nowadays....either to buy prints from me or have that available to do themselves.

If you intend that they will only print for their own personal use, and not for any commercial use, then you need to educate them in writing.

If you sell a Cd of images to a non-pro who will make green, underexposed, crappy prints at the corner drugstore, not only will you have lost the sales of those prints, but those will be your green crappy prints that will be shown to their friends & your potential future clients?

If/when I rarely give printable files to someone, I make sure that they are told where to take them for printing & told where not to take them, like Walgreens.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #15877447
If you intend that they will only print for their own personal use, and not for any commercial use, then you need to educate them in writing.

If you sell a Cd of images to a non-pro who will make green, underexposed, crappy prints at the corner drugstore, not only will you have lost the sales of those prints, but those will be your green crappy prints that will be shown to their friends & your potential future clients?

If/when I rarely give printable files to someone, I make sure that they are told where to take them for printing & told where not to take them, like Walgreens.

So you have now voiced one of my main concerns - how my images might be rendered out in the "real world" by the hand of another. My dh is strongly opinionated in that the client should have full print rights but I know from personal experience (and error) that taking my images to the local drug store in the past has given me less than stellar pictures. Definitely not something I want my name attached to. But he thinks no one wants to or is willing to pay the photographer for over-priced prints anymore. In fact, he tells me it's egotisical not to let the client have the images to print as they want.

I don't personally like the idea of my images out there on a disk that anyone can get a hold of but I just didn't know what the "standard procedure" was now and what most client expect to get for their money.