Alamy

Well said! We've got limited time to moderate the forum during the current world situation so the benefits of the forum rely on the content being fed into it by you all. Thanks to all of you who continue to use the forum for it's intended purpose. It can only take a small % of unsuitable posts to bring the level down significantly so please just report anything that needs reporting and please don't engage with any controversial comments. Cheers all James A

For clarity, we are working with a greatly reduced team and are seeing record levels of registrations and test submissions. Your initial upload was 17th of April which is just under 3 weeks ago. You've emailed us to enquire twice, and the autoreply to this email specifically mentions about long wait times for QC submissions on the top line. Your test reached the front of the queue today and 2 of your test images failed quality control. You are of course welcome to resubmit however the wait time for test submissions currently remains at 2-3 weeks and will likely be the case for the next month or so. If you are having issues understanding the QC feedback we'd recommend posting here and asking your fellow photographers as many are very experienced in working with us and can offer you useful advice. We're sorry we're unable to offer the usual level of speed and support at this time. Alamy

Due to currently working with a reduced team, QC times will be longer than usual for some users. For users who are new and sending their first test submission, the turnaround time is currently 3-4 weeks however we hope this will be much shorter within a month or so. Thanks for your patience. Alamy

Due to currently working with a reduced team, QC times will be longer than usual for some users. For users who are new and sending their first test submission, the turnaround time is currently 3-4 weeks however we hope this will be much shorter within a month or so. Thanks for your patience. Alamy

Hi All, Sorry for the confusion on this latest batch of cleared then uncleared sales - it looks like a distributor miss-allocated some payments which has caused this. Those sales will clear again but we can't give a date at the moment for when exactly. Best Alamy

To add some clarity to the artwork element to this: The spirit of the clause in the contract is around flat artwork. Mostly around those artworks that have images in the public domain. We're not talking about walking route signs nailed to trees, a blanket your grandparent knitted or just about anything in a 3d space. It's not possible for us to exhaustively define what is and isn't artwork - but this is the spirit of it. If you have images of artwork that are in the public domain that do not show a wider context then these cannot be marked as exclusive on Alamy. If you have any image that is on another reselling site, outside of your own personal one, this cannot be marked as exclusive to Alamy. For further clarity, you can mark images of stained glass windows as exclusive to Alamy provided you do not licence them on any other stock sites. Thanks, Alamy

Hi everyone, The stained glass window subject accounts for only 2% of problematic images we've found concerning the exclusive declaration. We've read your feedback and have taken it on board, and can agree that it's a big enough grey area for us to now not to take action on. For those of you who did get the email from us regarding stained glass windows being marked as exclusive being problematic, you can disregard it. The spirit of the clause in the contract is around flat artwork. Mostly around those artworks that have images in the public domain. We're not talking about walking route signs nailed to trees, a blanket your grandparent knitted or just about anything in a 3d space. It's not possible for us to exhaustively define what is and isn't artwork - but this is the spirit of it. If you have images of artwork that are in the public domain that do not show a wider context then these cannot be marked as exclusive on Alamy. If you have any image that is on another reselling site, outside of your own personal one, this cannot be marked as exclusive to Alamy. We don't currently allow customers to openly search within exclusive or non-exclusive. We do have a way of sharing the exclusive / non exclusive declaration though with clients who are interested in that and it can affect the deals we make, so it is important. We're sorry that this situation has caused confusion at this time. The vast % majority of images concerned with this issue are completely clear cut with no grey areas, but we appreciate that the edge cases can make things unclear. To summarise, then: - We won't be taking any action against images of stained glass windows that are marked as exclusive - The spirit of the clause here is to prevent images of artworks without context that are in the public domain being marked as exclusive to Alamy - We'll work harder and do better at making this clearer across our published guidance and terms in the future Best regards Alamy

To give more context to the marking of images exclusive on Alamy. Images can never be marked exclusive that are available via third party licensing, such as any another stock agency or image site but excluding the Contributor’s personal website and print sales. In addition images that are solely of artworks and copyright free artworks that would fall within the public domain cannot be marked as exclusive. This can include images taken of murals, stained glass windows, album artwork and postage stamps that feature solely the artwork. We’ve received legal advice on these matters and in most cases the key element comes down to the amount of context in the image. Any direct slavish copy of a 2-dimensional artwork that has fallen into the public domain, are not afforded their own copyright protection due to the lack of originality. So if there is no surrounding context to the artwork at all then the image would not be eligible to be classed as Exclusive. We have not included statues or sculptures in our definition of artwork for exclusivity as they are 3-dimensional. If featured in the wider context then images of artworks may be eligible but should be taken with as much context as possible e.g. in the wider context of a church in the case of a stained glass window. We have been as lenient as possible, but the exclusivity elements introduced in February 2019 are contractual terms and need to be followed by contributors, and to be fair to all Contributors Alamy has to enforce these terms. If you've received an email from us on this we can give you a detailed list of the images that have been flagged.

Hello everyone, During these uncertain and challenging times that we're all facing in our personal and professional lives, you may notice some changes over the coming months that have an impact on how you normally work with Alamy as contributors. I thought it would be best to broadly outline some of the key areas below whilst a number of staff are on extended leave: You may well notice considerably longer QC approval wait times We're unable to provide our usual level of support via the Contributor Relations team. Responses will either be severely delayed or you may be pointed back to the support forum here until further notice Updates to the "What Should I Shoot" tool will be paused Social media updates and trends tips will be reduced / paused Contributor marketing / guides / tips communications via email will be paused Response to new unauthorised use claims will be delayed For any urgent legal or copyright inquiries you have, you can email the team via copyright@alamy.com Elsewhere in the business we're committed to operating as usual but our customers are also not immune to the business challenges we all face globally. Thanks for your continued hard work, support and patience with us during this time. We'll be doing our absolute best to keep things as normal as possible for you. Stay safe and take care. James Allsworth Head of Content

To be clear, as written in the email to inform you of this in advance - the distributor duplicated their reporting of sales to us which means some images were billed twice. You will still be paid for the first usage. The second sale, which has not been paid to you, is now being cancelled which will show as a refund. To all: More widely regarding payment times - we are of course not immune to the difficulties facing the business world at the moment in securing payments. We're doing everything we can, as best we can - that, I can assure you. I'll post up another thread now about how the current situation may be affecting your experience with us as contributors. Edit - here's the thread: https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/12807-the-contributor-experience-whilst-were-all-tackling-the-covid-19-pandemic/ James Allsworth Head of Content

Hi all, We're currently undertaking more work in order to ensure that images that are marked as exclusive to Alamy, are in fact exclusive. We're aware a few users within the forum have questioned the need to be accurate in this info, so we just wanted to say that it is very important you are accurate when marking images as exclusive to Alamy or not. We're currently working through a number of processes designed to help protect the integrity of the exclusivity declaration. We've previously sent an email out to all users who had content marked as exclusive which stated the following: "We’re in the process of looking over the Alamy collection to help ensure accuracy of the “Exclusive to Alamy” declaration currently applied to certain images. Your account currently has images marked as Exclusive to Alamy. As a general reminder, “Exclusive” images cannot be available through any other third-party licensing, sales or distribution channels (where not supplied through Alamy). You can sell your images on a personal print site (without a stock licencing option) and still mark these as exclusive to Alamy. Selling prints and stock licences on your own website is also fine. If your collection contains images of artworks these can never be marked as Exclusive to Alamy, unless you're the artist. If you’re already sure that everything is in order then there is no need for further action. If you’re unsure though, please review your collection and update the “Exclusive to Alamy” annotation of your images where necessary to prevent any future issues." Images marked as exclusive to Alamy earn 50% commission per direct licence sold as apposed to the 40% for non-exclusive. We'll soon be taking further action against users that continue to be mark images as exclusive incorrectly as a breach of contract. Please make sure your information around exclusivity is accurate - this keeps you in agreement with the contract and free of any risk of action in the future. Best wishes Alamy

There has been no sales downturn. We're seeing strong growth in volume and revenue across the board. All of this information is viewable in the "Balance of Account" section of your dashboard against each sale. Thanks Alamy

Without going round in circles here, the original quote was: "As a general point of feedback, it would be handy if the sales details detailed the fees applied (e.g. novel use sale, distributor sale, customer used a special voucher, etc so that we're not left scratching out heads as to why our portion of the sale is not 40/50% of the sale price." None of these scenarios should cause confusion on the commission split. For any sales type that affects commission rate, the sales type is listed in balance of account.

Affiliate commission is written and listed out next to the sale entry within balance of account. Best Alamy

Don't quite follow? Other than distributor sales, none of those other scenarios translate to anything other than 40% (non exclusive), 50% (exclusive). The % rate is always listed in your balance of account. Alamy