Back in the mid-90s I was obsessed with using my old Canon 350D to capture images to sell as royalty-free stock photos on sites such as iStock. In those halcyon days, you could earn around $10 per image sale and I often earned around $800 per month, which was a welcome passive income that lasted years.
I had friends who made thousands of dollars per month from selling lifestyle images, so they could hire props and models for a shoot, confident in the knowledge that they’d quickly recoup their expenses.
Fast forward to the 21st Century and after iStock was swallowed up by Getty the prices per picture (for the contributor) plummeted to a few cents per sale. I now earn between $10 and $30 per month from traditional stock photo sales, which has killed my motivation to shoot, keyword, and upload new shots to sell as royalty-free images.
However, my fire for shooting images to sell has recently been re-ignited! I submitted some shots to Arcangel - a company that licenses rights-managed images to publishers who need art for their book covers.
Unlike Royalty Free, a Rights Managed image can’t be used by another client (for the duration of the project), so a publisher knows that the image that they are licensing won’t appear on a rival publisher’s book cover. As a result, the fee I receive when one of my images is licensed through Arcangel is much more rewarding than I’d get if I had sold the same image as a royalty-free stock shot via Shutterstock (though the shots in my Arcangel portfolio are exclusive to that site). I won’t divulge the precise fee I’ve received from selling images via Arcangel, but for work printed on a physical book cover it’s a much greater (and more rewarding) sum than I could ever receive from selling a shot on Shutterstock or Getty.
Now before you get too excited you need to know that it’s much harder to get photos accepted by sites such as Arcangel. On its site, it states that its Rights Managed (RM) images are “Premium quality imagery, including high caliber models, historically accurate costumes, props and locations. High production values for the most professional result.” I had to submit a collection of my best images before being considered as an Arcangel contributor. I was then given the green light to upload potential candidates to my portfolio. Images also have to be high-res at 4800 pixels minimum on the longest side of the image.
However, I have had book cover image sales via Arcangel! My first sale was a photo I took of a mosque in Istanbul reflected in a puddle. As I was trying to create a book cover style shot I cross-processed the RAW file in Lightroom Classic to create a more moody look. Images are often edited and adjusted by a publisher’s designer but in the case of my creatively cross-processed mosque the shot appeared on the book cover just as I’d edited it, so my creative work was rewarded!
The image appeared on the cover of a German Edition book - Requiem für eine verlorene Stadt (Requiem for a Fallen City) by Aslı Erdoğan. I’d always wanted to see my work printed on a book cover so this was a thrill (and the fee was fab!). I had RF photos from Shutterstock appear on book covers long ago, but I’d only have received a few dollars for those. Arcangel made me feel financially and creatively rewarded.
A more recent shot that I have licensed was a picture of a Lancaster Bomber being escorted by two Spitfires. I snapped this at an air show and processed it to create a vintage sepia look, adding some dramatic clouds in the background. My photo of these aircraft where incorporated by a designer to create a World War II themed book cover for the French edition of Le Secret de la Villa Freiberg by Romina Casagrande. Because my image was used as part of a bigger designer my fee was lower, but still financially rewarding.
So, I’ve found somewhere where my photography is rewarded. And I also like the fact that I can experiment by creatively processing my shots to create book-cover-style images that a publisher might go for. However, it’s worth noting that AI-generated imagery is not accepted by Arcangel, even if it has been edited. Thanks to a recent sale I’m all fired up to hire one of my favorite models - I’m going to take some Hobolite LEDs with me to add modeling light (and color gel drama) to my shots and hopefully one day some of the resulting photos might appear on a bookshelf near you!
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