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Has anyone else recently had an email from Contributor Relations saying they are reclaiming the entire fee for the sale of an image "incorrectly marked as exclusive" which is exclusive to Alamy and clearly complies with all the criteria required for an "exclusive" image - and hasn't actually sold anyway? Or is it just me?

Just had this email from Alamy, wondering if everyone gets them: Hi Mark, 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 2086 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. Thanks, Alamy I thought it was quite odd in that it says that currently I've got "2086 images marked as Exclusive to Alamy" when actually, as of this morning I've got 2607, i.e. all of them. It's from contributors@alamy-updates.com so presumably you're not meant to reply to it.

As we know there are "Exclusivity inquiry" emails coming in last months. The client wants to buy an exclusive license as below: Image: xxxxxaUsage: Trade/Retail book coverDuration: 10 yearsTerritory: WorldwideExclusivity: Industry/Spot (Trade Books/Cover) ... The client’s fee would be $950 USD and is non-negotiable. ... If you would approve, any similar/sister images should be restricted from sale in the same manner, including images: xxxxxb Here are two of my images under inquiry: - DEYJKX (and similar DEYJ7C) - DNBY4R (and similar F8C53D) Curious, what are yours? Ok, the real idea is to see how many of us got that emails and what is going on...

I've looked at the other topics discussing this issue, and none seemed to be exactly on point. I just got a bunch of photos passed of a tourist attraction here in the US. Not a vastly popular one, but in an area where surprisingly I've licensed a fair number on Alamy and some via my site on Photoshelter too - I think that these are two places where editors go for those hard to find images. I'm tempted to tick "exclusive to Alamy" because they are not the types of images I expect to sell often, hence I've uploaded them here, and I don't expect they'd be a big draw on either of the other two macro sites where I could also upload them, but obviously just having them here lowers my chance of licensing elsewhere. Have you found that ticking "exclusive to Alamy" has boosted sales? I know the extra 10% is nice and am kicking myself that I've had a few sales of images that are only here but which I did not tick as "exclusive." Most of my Alamy images are not on sale elsewhere, but I'm reluctant to restrict them. I'd love know what people's experience has been so far with this new development. I'm also not sure how much this locks me in. Am I correct that I can still license an image myself? How long is the exclusive period for? Can I change them back by giving Alamy a certain amount of notice? Has "exclusive" been defined? At other sites it usually locks you in for 6 months, or 2 years, or 5 years. Does anyone know what the time is here? Thanks for input.

Dear Alamy community and contributors! Please help me, what do you think about this? Which are the best choice : Rf or Rm, if the photography works, only available on Alamy? Waiting for your answers, Many thanks, King Regard, Akos Horvath Hobby Photographer

Having recently become an Alamy contributor I was pleased to learn that I can retain my own website. However, I asked Alamy whether they could give me some wording for the Permissions Page to alert potential image stealers that they were "registered" with Alamy and to direct them to Alamy should they wish to make a purchase. Alamy could not help and suggested I ask other contributors via the forum to find out what they do. My website host flatly refuses to disable right click actions and I can;t understand why. The only actions associated with right click on an image is to allow people to copy, download and use it for unauthorised/unpaid purposes. I am wondering what I need to do. All of my images on my website are showing a copyright symbol and name and I can add the website host name as a watermark but not only does that look awful, but I would have to reload all of my images, numbering some 500. Not a task I am really wanting to take on. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Sheila

So in future if I photograph a scene twice - with some slight differences - I will be able to make one exclusive to Alamy and one to be submitted to other libraries. Correct? Farcical.

With Jame's announcement about 50% commission for Alamy exclusive images, we all need to get our heads round how to manage this. I'm creating this thread to deal with those technical questions. I really don't want it to be a thread about the rights and wrongs of what has been announced. So here's some of my questions: Is there a way to bulk change images to being exclusive? Is setting an image as exclusive a 'once for all time' decision on the Alamy website (such as setting RM vs RF) - I'm more than happy to make my images exclusive (at least for a while) but at a later date I may decide that I'm better off switching to non-exclusive - can I switch images back? I know I have some images currently set to exclusive - how do I search Alamy to find out which of my images are exclusive and which are not? What really counts as 'Exculsive to Alamy'? James mentioned we can still sell these images directly - what counts as a direct sale? The grey area for me is "Photographers Direct" it's a site that puts people looking for images in contact with photographers who can supply images. All sales are handled directly by the photographer and not by PD - do that still count as a direct sale? (It may be academic for me as I haven't had a sale via a PD referral for years so I might just pull all the images off there anyhow to avoid any conflict) If you have your own questions about exclusivity why not add them to this thread so we have one place as a point of reference? And if you have answers to any of my questions I'd be grateful. Ian.