Message-Id: <mailto:199506112139.OAA29415@listserv.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 1995 10:31:00 NZST From: Nigel Young <mailto:photoworks@GLADYS.LYNX.CO.NZ> Subject: Brave New World To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB
I have been doing some thinking about the situation we all find ourselves re the competition from royality free CD's etc. We are all aware of them and need to either combat or adapt to them. I was looking at the Stockphoto page of Joel Day (congratulations Joel on a job well done and I look forward to its development,) and looking at the Photopia Homepage under Black Star. The owner was supplying all images at a set price of US$129.00 and supplying them on a new Syquest drive for the purchaser to keep for an extra US$79.00. Shipping costs were extra again. This caused the cogs in my brain to start to turn and I began to wonder if herein lies the seed to a new pricing approach. While the traditional approach has been to charge different prices for different uses and levels of exposure, I wonder if this may have to change. We all know that once a digital image is out there in the netherworld somewhere it has gone from our control and we cannot rely/expect? clients to have an attack of conscience every time they reuse an image and forward us cheques. (Is this unreasonable?) Perhaps an answer lies in accepting this, and instead of charging for use, charge for the image according to its file size. It is at this point that we can begin to compete with the royality free stuff. I know that once it has gone its gone, yet if we let go of the need to control use and be paid each time, might we not gain through the new increased market that we have access to? I am thinking out loud here so please forgive the slaughter of any sacred cows. Its just that we are in a whole new world now, one that seems to be dictating to us more than we might like. With all this in mind, I have put together a possible pricing structure and have listed it below. There is no limitation on the use of the image, but remember that neither can a client have any right of exclusivity to it. This also means discarding our terms and conditions contracts and treating each image as an item that has been purchased by the user and not just leased under specified conditions as is currently the case. The Photopia photogs. have kept the lease approach, and I believe that this is preferable, but is it always possible? The down side might be less cheques from a particular client, but the up side seems to me to be a vastly increased market. Is this reasonable or have I missed the point somewhere? Prices are in NZ$ and are for the image file only, supplied as a TIFF file. They are subject to change without notice. Prices exclude tax, transmission, and/or postage/courier/shipping costs, disc, insurance and any other incurred costs. They will be supplied on a new disc of the purchasers choice, which will be charged for separately. Photo CD Size File Size Size Prices Resolution in Pixels Size in cms in inches in NZ$ 64 Base 6144 x 4096 72 Mb 52 x 34.68 20.47 x 13.6 600.00 16 Base 3072 x 2048 18 Mb 26 x 17.34 10.23 x 6.8 400.00 4 Base 1536 x1024 4.5 Mb 13 x 8.67 5.1 x 3.4 300.00 Base 768 x 512 1.1 Mb 6.5 x 4.33 2.5 x 1.7 200.00 Base/4 384 x 256 288 kb 3.25 x 2.17 1.28 x 0.85 100.00 Base/16 192 x 128 72 kb 1.63 x 1.08 0.64 x 0.42 demo