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geogphotos

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Many people are commenting about times being hard for stock photographers.

 

One thing that Alamy could do to help, even if it meant some loss of revenue, would be to provide ISBN information to contributors so that they can attempt to maintain their DACS income. 

 

The amount available without specific ISBN matches is dropping every year, and it is almost impossible for us to locate anything more than a fraction of uses.

 

Many photographers around the world are more than happy for Alamy to claim on a 50-50 basis, but there are some of us who can't sign up to that because we would lose too much. This leaves money going unclaimed. 

 

I appreciate that this may cost Alamy a little extra but it would be a positive response to falling fees, ever increasing competition, and the recent 20% commission decrease for non-exclusive images.

 

Even if you only provided ISBN data when it was easy to do so it would be better than nothing. Perhaps you could do so for sales of exclusive images - as a reward and incentive?

 

What do you think?

 

 

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It would be great if they could, but...

 

Do we know that Alamy has many ISBN numbers? Are they captured as part of the licensing process? I suppose that In some cases they will know them when their sale is to a specific magazine, publisher. But other than that, I suspect they don't know them either.

 

A question for those that let Alamy claim for them - When they get their payment via Alamy, do they get any kind of breakdown as to what proportion of their payment is based on their publication history (the bit that needs ISBN / ISSN numbers for every publication)? I suspect  they don't.

 

Mark 

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Unfortunately it's not possible for us to provide this. 

 

Although we do sometimes have visibility of ISBN numbers, this isn't always the case and retrieving this information for claims incurs considerable cost and internal resource, which varies per individual claim within the overall large claim.

 

Alamy

 

 

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1 hour ago, Alamy said:

Unfortunately it's not possible for us to provide this. 

 

Although we do sometimes have visibility of ISBN numbers, this isn't always the case and retrieving this information for claims incurs considerable cost and internal resource, which varies per individual claim within the overall large claim.

 

Alamy

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the response.

 

Would it not be possible to request that major UK publisher routinely make this information available to you so that it would not incur costs?

 

It seems like a reasonable piece of information to ask for. 

 

I understand that other agencies are able to provide their contributors with this increasingly vital information. 

 

Even if all this is not possible could you not let contributors know what they are charged in admin costs so that they are better able to decide about whether or not to let Alamy do the claim for them. There is the 50% split but an unknown additional cost that you charge - why not let us have this information?

 

Are you thinking of any additional way/s to incentivise and reward contributors? Other agencies use a variety of incentives involving, for example, different commission levels.

Edited by geogphotos
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I suppose what I am driving at is this - does Alamy want to maintain goodwill with its contributors or are we now simply in a transactional relationship where one side is asked to give and the other is in the position of power and can decide what to take?

 

Does Alamy care about its contributors at all these days?

Edited by geogphotos
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