30 Things To Look For in an Illustration Rep

I recently had a very interesting exchange with a fellow illustrator about reps, so I thought I’d share some of what we talked about here. 

I don’t think illustrators necessarily need representation. I’ve said before: An illustrator without a rep is STILL an illustrator. But a rep without illustrators is just someone with nice business cards. (I sound like a big jerk there, and I’m sorry. If you’re a rep I’m sure I’ll hear from you and that’s totally cool.) 

Click the “read more” link to see the full list and read all my opinionated blathering:

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Hmm… what might this be about?

Hmm… what might this be about?

Individual [Shutterstock] customers pay an average of about $3 per image. That’s dirt cheap, but they make up for it on volume, bringing in $120 million of revenue in 2011. On the producer side, my read of their SEC filing is that they paid out $39.3 million in royalties to 35,000 contributors. So the mean contributor is making something like $1,100 a year by posting their work on the site.

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How Shutterstock Made $120 Million Last Year Selling Photos on the Internet

There is NO WAY contributors to Shutterstock earned an average of $1,100 this past year. Not when you’re selling clipart for $3 a pop, and not with a system that relies on an all-you-can-eat subscription model. But they are after all filing for an IPO, so they’re trying to look like the super-stock company, now that they’re intending to go up against Getty and Corbis. (My prediction: Corbis will buy them in a year, tops.)

Take photos on your iPhone, upload them to FOAP, sell them as stock Foap is a new stock photography market that curates good images from iPhone users for commercial use. If you’ve taken what you think is a particularly impressive photo, you can upload it via the Foap app. If it’s approved for sale via Foap’s team, it will get added to its own market. If a business or publisher uses the photo, they pay $US40; you get half of that ($US20) via PayPal, and Foap gets the other half. (via Lifehacker Australia) Hm. 

Take photos on your iPhone, upload them to FOAP, sell them as stock

Foap is a new stock photography market that curates good images from iPhone users for commercial use. If you’ve taken what you think is a particularly impressive photo, you can upload it via the Foap app. If it’s approved for sale via Foap’s team, it will get added to its own market. If a business or publisher uses the photo, they pay $US40; you get half of that ($US20) via PayPal, and Foap gets the other half. (via Lifehacker Australia)

Hm. 

The trouble with our new espresso machine (saved >$200 on it, thank you Craigslist!) is the delicious increase in my caffeine consumption. (Taken with instagram)

The trouble with our new espresso machine (saved >$200 on it, thank you Craigslist!) is the delicious increase in my caffeine consumption. (Taken with instagram)

Stock Has Become a Huge Joke I’m loath to link to anything from the Huffington Post (“Awkward Stock Wedding Photos”), but I have a point. (And in this case, it’s all rather fitting: a non-story about how trashy stock imagery is, on a fake “news” site, which is owned by AOL.) This is how much of a joke stock has become. It’s part of our daily vocabulary now, and it’s used derisively. People never used the term “stock photo” 30–40 years ago, it wasn’t a thing. Not even when I was a kid, despite the fact that my Dad ran a newspaper for 10 years, and had stacks and stacks of clipart books at his office. But now rather than decorating articles, stock is making headlines instead and usually in pretty strange ways.

Stock Has Become a Huge Joke

I’m loath to link to anything from the Huffington Post (“Awkward Stock Wedding Photos”), but I have a point. (And in this case, it’s all rather fitting: a non-story about how trashy stock imagery is, on a fake “news” site, which is owned by AOL.)

This is how much of a joke stock has become. It’s part of our daily vocabulary now, and it’s used derisively. People never used the term “stock photo” 30–40 years ago, it wasn’t a thing. Not even when I was a kid, despite the fact that my Dad ran a newspaper for 10 years, and had stacks and stacks of clipart books at his office. But now rather than decorating articles, stock is making headlines instead and usually in pretty strange ways.