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Tracking newspaper sales


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I have now reached the happy situation where several of my photos are regularly used on newspaper websites. That's the good news. The not so good is the need to keep track of the usages, and of course the peanuts paid for some of these licences!

 

I've taken to creating a small Word file for every usage that I find. This includes the HTML address,  a cut and paste of the title and date of use,  sufficient text to identify the article along with the photo. The file names include the user, the subject and the date of use. 

 

I then have to compare my registered sales with what I believe should have been made, followed by an e-mail to member services if I suspect a missing payment after 3 months have elapsed.

 

It's all very time consuming, and I am wondering if it is worth doing?

 

Maybe a spreadsheet would be better, although evidence of use would be more difficult/impossible to maintain.

 

Always very happy to learn from more experienced members, what do you do?

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I have now reached the happy situation where several of my photos are regularly used on newspaper websites. That's the good news. The not so good is the need to keep track of the usages, and of course the peanuts paid for some of these licences!

 

I've taken to creating a small Word file for every usage that I find. This includes the HTML address,  a cut and paste of the title and date of use,  sufficient text to identify the article along with the photo. The file names include the user, the subject and the date of use. 

 

I then have to compare my registered sales with what I believe should have been made, followed by an e-mail to member services if I suspect a missing payment after 3 months have elapsed.

 

It's all very time consuming, and I am wondering if it is worth doing?

 

Maybe a spreadsheet would be better, although evidence of use would be more difficult/impossible to maintain.

 

Always very happy to learn from more experienced members, what do you do?

 

I use a spreadsheet and drop both URL and a screen grab (alt-prt scr to get just the browser page) into it with the other data. Other alternative is OneNote (free) as it a cut and paste brings a lot of the reference data (url etc) with screen grab automatically.

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Thanks Martin. To show the true extent of my ignorance, I was not aware that it was possible to embed images in Excel!

 

I've tried both your alt print screen command and the Windows snipping tool, and both work. 

 

Next question, is it possible to format the image within a cell so that it appears when needed but otherwise is dormant, as at the moment my embedded pictures appear free to float around the spreadsheet.

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However you track all these Newspaper uses, it's massively time consuming and given the fees you'll get for finding and reporting unauthorised uses, you're not going to be making minimum wage.

 

Given the slack reporting, it's not really in the papers interest to do it accurately, given that they'll probably get away with it, and if they do get caught by one of us, they'll only have to buy us a pint, not even the price at the time of use.

 

Just out of interest, does anyone know how much is an advert in a national is nowadays?

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I never bother, I reported an unauthorised use I found to Alamy recently (through Pixsy) and they mailed me back saying it would definitely appear in my sales within the next few months. I did respond and ask that the price was set at a suitable level for when the mis-use was made as it was a few years ago, but waiting to see!

Also found others in Pixsy where an image had sold to a newspaper then other sites took it from the newspaper site and credited the photo back to the newspaper. Pixsy are chasing 3 of these at the moment.

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Thanks Martin. To show the true extent of my ignorance, I was not aware that it was possible to embed images in Excel!

 

I've tried both your alt print screen command and the Windows snipping tool, and both work. 

 

Next question, is it possible to format the image within a cell so that it appears when needed but otherwise is dormant, as at the moment my embedded pictures appear free to float around the spreadsheet.

 

Hi Bryan,

 

If you:

1) Click once on your picture in MS Excel to highlight

2) Then go to the drop-down 'Format' menu at the top of the page

3) Select 'Picture' and choose 'Properties'

4) Under 'Object Positioning' choose 'Move and Size with Cells'

5) Create a cell big enough in Excel to accommodate your image (you can resize the pic in Excel itself, if necessary) and then it should remain within the cell chosen.

 

BW, John

PS. I wanted to add some screen shots but couldn't work out how to add images images to the replies. :-(

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Rather than many individual photographers spending their time and money (if buying print editions or on line subscriptions) recording usage in national newspapers, surely the best solution is to centralise this effort in one place? 

 

Is this something that Alamy are already doing? Maybe they are, and if so could they publish a list each day of Alamy images used in the UK national newspapers? 

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Although I don't sell much to the UK newspapers, I do sell some there, but living abroad means I don't get to see the papers, and even using google search only brings up sales where I am credited, so I really have no way of checking where my images may be getting used and not reported.

 

It would be great if there was some centralised database of newspapers sales as this would then reassure me that they are being logged.

 

Phil

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I use Firefox and the Scrapbook addin to keep a local copy of any page containing one of my photographs.  Recording the URL seems to be fine for eg the Daily Mail but some papers such as The Sun don't seem to retain an archive in the same way and, after 3 months, the URL no longer goes to the story containing your photo.

 

Steve

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I also keep a spreadsheet. I record date found, Alamy ID, country, date of usage, link, date reported by/or to Alamy etc etc. I colour code it - Invoiced by Alamy, Reported to Alamy, Not being reported to Alamy (yet), being chased by Alamy

 

I systematically do google and Tin Eye searches (usually in the evening whilst watching TV) on the previous years worth of zooms, sales etc and am always surprised by what they turn up. I take screen shots and copy the link then email them to myself. I have a series of email folders with the link and screen shot which I copy and paste into the Alamy form when I get round to filing it out and sending it in. I then record it quickly on my spreadsheet.

I know the amounts can be small but if Alamy don't chase, then I will and have successfully recouped much higher fees than we'd ever get from Alamy doing the chasing!!

 

For me it's the principle - I feel very strongly that this is theft and if we don't report or chase then we are giving out the message that it's okay to steal our work. 

 

I have hundreds but I just record them on an ongoing basis and am working my way through sending a few a month to Alamy, that's about all I can deal with at a time without it becoming an administrative nightmare! Once the handful that I report are dealt with, I select the next couple and send them up. That way I can easily keep track of the ones in the system.

 

Not ideal but it works for me.

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Oh I wish I had this problem - no newspaper sales through Alamy at the moment. :(

 

I'll give you a hint. Look at what's coming up in the news. I'll give an example that's current. Southern trains are having major problems, and that's the company that serves where I live. It was well-known that it was happening and getting worse. So I took a load of shots of Southern trains. I already had a few anyway and I re-keyworded those so they'd appear higher up the list with searches such as "southern trains" and "train cancellations". In about a month I've sold about 5 of trains (maybe more but I've logged 5), most within a few days, in UK national papers. I made many sales of another big news story lately too, and have other images ready for up-coming stuff. Think of concepts to suggest things, clear illustrations to make a point, and not just obvious shots.

 

Geoff.

 

Fab, thanks Geoff.

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This situation is bloody ridiculous IMO! I have had to chase a good many newspaper usages with Alamy - many licensed from Live News feed. I have also reminded Alamy that it is their responsibility to ensure that usages are paid for. This is part of the reason that they have the contract to license my work in the first place.

 

If Alamy cannot fulfil this part of our contract then any unreported usages WE FIND OURSELVES should be paid at 90% to the photographer.

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I use Firefox and the Scrapbook addin to keep a local copy of any page containing one of my photographs.  Recording the URL seems to be fine for eg the Daily Mail but some papers such as The Sun don't seem to retain an archive in the same way and, after 3 months, the URL no longer goes to the story containing your photo.

 

Steve

 

I've noticed that old stories with my pictures, recently disappeared, if I was cynical, I'd think it was an effort to hide the evidence, if I was cynical! 

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  • 2 months later...

Revisiting this one as I have recently spent ages trying to track down usages. I used two approaches, with very different results:-

 

1) I searched for usages of those images and types of images that I know from experience that the papers regularly employ. Not so many of those so it didn't take long, and I found a number of unreported sales after a period of 3 months or more. Reported these and have been assured that the clients will be billed. Verdict, a good idea, I will do this periodically. Many Newspaper sales are not zoomed.

 

2)  I obtained a list of all of my zooms from the first 6 months of the year, and tried to find any evidence of their usage, which I compared with my sales record. This took forever, and I uncovered only one unreported photo, not identified by 1 above. Have as yet to contact Alamy about it.  Verdict, probably not worth the substantial effort.....

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2)  I obtained a list of all of my zooms from the first 6 months of the year, and tried to find any evidence of their usage, which I compared with my sales record. This took forever, and I uncovered only one unreported photo, not identified by 1 above. Have as yet to contact Alamy about it.  Verdict, probably not worth the substantial effort.....

 

Hi Bryan,

 

I did this exercise slightly differently yesterday. I went to measures and selected a given period.

Then I clicked on the zooms number so they all appear together on the screen.

I created a Zoom lightbox and added them all to that box. Just one click on the "Add to lightbox" icon and that's done. Pretty quick.

 

Then I went to the Zoom lightbox and I right click "Find this image on Google" on each of them. It didn't take too long.

Did I find any infringements? Yes, China. Not bothered.

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Hi Bryan,

 

I did this exercise slightly differently yesterday. I went to measures and selected a given period.

Then I clicked on the zooms number so they all appear together on the screen.

I created a Zoom lightbox and added them all to that box. Just one click on the "Add to lightbox" icon and that's done. Pretty quick.

 

Then I went to the Zoom lightbox and I right click "Find this image on Google" on each of them. It didn't take too long.

Did I find any infringements? Yes, China. Not bothered.

Thanks for that. The light box idea would speed the process, rather than copying and pasting reference numbers. If I do this again, that would be the way.

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I use Firefox and the Scrapbook addin to keep a local copy of any page containing one of my photographs.  Recording the URL seems to be fine for eg the Daily Mail but some papers such as The Sun don't seem to retain an archive in the same way and, after 3 months, the URL no longer goes to the story containing your photo.

 

Steve

 

I've noticed that old stories with my pictures, recently disappeared, if I was cynical, I'd think it was an effort to hide the evidence, if I was cynical! 

 

 

 

I too have noticed how quickly articles are now disappearing from the searches. For example I had at least 5 uses of an image in the sun over a 10 day period in June 2016 and all but 1 of them cannot be found using google image search or Tin-eye. I did however print them off at the time and also took screen shots. However, had I not done regular searches, I wouldn't know about them. None have appeared, so far as sales - but there is always today!

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