Licensing Art & Photography 101 (eBook)

Introduction

Becoming a Licensing Professional

By purchasing this handbook you have made the first step towards increasing your income from the art and photography you produce. I will endeavor to equip you with all the necessary information and knowledge, to allow you to earn a better living from your illustrations, paintings or photographs.

One thing must be said right at the outset - while I have personally licensed over $600 million worth of retail product, there is no guarantee of success, unless you are producing work to a good commercial standard. This is one aspect I have no control over, although I will attempt to guide you on how to assess what to produce and what not to produce.

There is one fact we cannot escape from and that is “I have no control over your actual talent.” Suffice it to say that you need to ensure you continually strive to improve your techniques and develop your styles. Being versatile in this day and age is essential, as styles change and it is an ever changing market. Trends come in and then they fade away. What’s “trending” has become the new norm whether you like it or not, so be aware of the current, and more importantly, the future trends.

The fact that you have taken the trouble to purchase this book is a certain indication that you are determined to learn about the licensing industry, and I will do my best to leave you with enough expertise to present your work with confidence to publishers and manufacturers around the world.

To succeed you need 100% determination and perseverance, and the ability to never give up in order to succeed. This goes for most other things in life as well. I have represented artists who have earned $3,000 one year and $50,000 the next, so there are no hard and fast rules to achieve success. You must learn to produce work that has a market. I am therefore addressing the businessman or woman in each of you so that you can make a business out of your ‘art’.

If you are a ‘purist’ and only want to produce what you want, despite the fact that you’ve only sold a couple of paintings in the last year, then this industry is not for you. Some of the greatest artists who have lived were purists, such as Van Gogh. But please remember that most of them starved for most of their lives and Van Gogh actually only sold one painting in his lifetime.

This is not to say it is wrong to produce what you feel right about – far from it. If an artist is willing to put 100% into his art, and his belief in what he is doing is absolute, then he should follow his heart. These are the true artists and they should be admired for what they do. This book however is aimed at those who are endeavoring to earn $10,000 plus per year.

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.

Winston Churchill

Licensing has gone through many changes over the last 40 years or so, as the world has changed in so many ways. Technology has changed our lives forever and I am sure we will see some remarkable new inventions in the years to come, like free energy, healing machines, cars that run without gasoline, over self driving Uber cars, 3-D printing, Hyperloop 600mph trains and much more. The internet, more than anything, has changed the world of licensing and made it more accessible to artists and photographers across the world. It has leveled the playing field but it also presents challenges that need to be considered.

Firstly I would like to explain a little about the history of licensing art and photography which, if you bear with me, will help you understand why you need to get up to speed and educate yourself thoroughly in order to have any real success at this current time.

In the 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s most licensing activities were done through photo libraries, or as they are now more commonly called, “stock agencies”. In those days if you wanted to find a photograph of an oil rig at sea for a corporate brochure, or a picture of an aeroplane flying against a sunset for a travel brochure cover, or say a picture of the Eiffel tower at night - ie pictures which cannot be commissioned, except at huge expense or due to logistics such as weather, far off location or being out of season - you called a Stock Agency. Historical pictures of an event like a coronation, an assassination, a film star, a snow storm, a cheetah running or a roaring lion are the kind of requests Photo libraries received. Art Directors are always working to a deadline, so time is of the essence and there will be a maximum budget allowable for these images.

Many of the first picture libraries were created from collections of press pictures, ie pictures taken by city desk photographers for a story, or they came from commissions for magazine articles or fashion, travel or human interest pictures which were sold to magazines or newspapers. Pictures accumulated over many years, until someone had the bright idea of creating a business/Agency by “renting” out the pictures for other uses, for advertising, greetings cards, calendars and a myriad of other uses. Hence the beginning of the Picture Agency or Photo Library. Once the business model was created it gave other innovative professionals the idea of setting up their own agencies. New agencies with collections of engravings, flowers, wildlife, astronomy, glamour, travel etc sprang up mainly in London, New York and big cities where there were plenty of buyers. Some were one-man photographer enterprises and others much larger businesses representing dozens of photographers. New photographs were commissioned by the Agencies after compiling information from the requests they had received for particular images.

The concept was simple. A client requested a selection of pictures and if they wanted to use one the Agency requested what the usage was. The price was determined by the level of exposure. In simple terms the bigger the use the larger the fee. In those early years it was a very lucrative business.

I set up a Photo library in 1974 in the UK with a partner. It was the first major agency outside of London and we became very successful. Being small initially we had many requests that we couldn’t service, as our stock was just building. So I went to London and visited many of the major Libraries and did deals where we split commissions so we didn’t have to turn the work away. This allowed me to go after jobs that we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to handle. I actually found when visiting some of these large libraries that they had huge archives of material, of which only a small percentage was ever used. The reason was simply that they only responded to requests and they had no time whatsoever to exploit the bulk of their assets. From a shoe box in 1974 we built a studio, a small duplicate processing lab and within 4 years we were doing almost $200,000 a year with just a part-time lab guy and my business partner, who was the backroom tech genius, while I handled the sales.

In 1979 I saw a huge gap in the market. Everything up to this point was the licensing of photography and the only “art archives” were basically old engravings, lithographs and historical illustrations. Products that needed illustrations and art were basically commissioned or bought outright by the large product manufacturers like Hallmark, American Greetings as well as the poster, print publishers, jigsaw puzzle manufacturers etc. All art was purchased outright for a flat fee. This often included the copyright so that the manufacturer “owned” not only the art but the copyright as well for a very low fee. Whereas in the photo library business, photography was being “rented/licensed” for a one off usage or a flat fee. Art or illustration, in comparison, was being purchased outright, which to me, seemed very unfair as the publisher could use the art over and over again or even use the art for additional products, make huge profits but the artist simply was left with his meager $100. The big greetings card companies operated this way for many years and accumulated vast archives of original art.

Even so I saw this as a great opportunity and unexplored territory, so in 1979 my business partner bought my share of the partnership and Michael Woodward Associates was launched. I started recruiting artists and illustrators, but as this process would take a few years I set off to London every month and with the contacts I had made I scoured the archives of the large picture libraries, often spending two to three days wading through thousands and thousands of images. I looked for images I could sell i.e. license, to the customer base I was nurturing. Basically many of the products I was licensing were outside the general scope of these agencies i.e. products such as greetings cards, calendars, posters, chocolate box tops, jigsaws etc. I took this new art along with the art of a few artists I had taken under my wing and started “licensing” the rights on a “one off use” basis, which had never been attempted before.

This was the birth of ART LICENSING. And, I don’t think many people...