According to the World Association of Newspapers and Newspaper Publisher (WAN-IFRA) global paid-for daily newspaper circulation fell 0.8% in 2009 from a year earlier, to 517 million copies sold. Circulation in Europe is down 5.6% and 4.6% in North America. Circulation in Asia was up 1% with India and China seeing good growth. Advertising revenuewas down 25% in North America, 13.7% in Western Europe, 18.7% in Central and Eastern Europe.
 

One of the first things to do if you want to sell your still photographs is to understand who the individuals and organizations are that might want to buy your images. You also need to be aware of the changing trends taking place in each market.

A large percentage of the still-photo segment of the stock photography business is related to advertising—either licensing images for use in print ads, or licensing them for use in editorial products that are supported to a great extent by ads. The health of the stock photography business is directly related to the health of the print business. To understand what is likely to happen in the still photography business, it is important to have some understanding of advertising trends.

Twenty questions to test your knowledge of the photo licensing industry and its future potential.

The opportunity to interact with editors from publishing companies, picture researchers, stock agents and photographers at the American Society of Picture Professionals’ (ASPP) Reinvention weekend in Boston provided a clearer picture of where the business of producing images for publication is headed.  Here are a few of my take-aways from the three day conference.

As newspapers and magazines fold, or at the very least tighten their belts, it is becoming harder and harder for freelance editorial photographers used to traveling the world to produce major enterprise stories or get financial backing for such coverage. Most picture stories now appear on newspaper and magazine web sites rather than in the printed publications. There are two advantages to this shift. First, it is possible to show more images and provide a more comprehensive look at the subject matter. In addition we are learning that a large number of readers are willing to spend time looking at these stories. Nevertheless, the question of how to fund such projects raises some serious issues. Read my comments and a response from Stephen Mayes, Director of VII Photo, a company that faces this problem every day.

With all the free information available on the Internet why would or should anyone want to pay for information? Many consumers believe that writers should give away their work in order to build a following of customers who will then pay them for some other product or service they provide. Most would acknowledge that some effort and expense is required on the part of the creator to produce good, useful information, but often that is not deemed to be of any economic value. Photographers tend to supply information on their blogs as a way of getting customers to hire them for assignment work, for paid speaking engagements or as a way of selling a book. The other way to earn revenue is to generate enough traffic to your site that advertisers will pay to surround your information with ads in hopes that some or your popularity will rub off on them. Is giving away information the only way?

To the degree your photographic business is based on revenue from advertising, there will never be an economic recovery. It is time to begin looking for other revenue options if you intend to maintain your current lifestyle. Certainly, if your pictures are used in magazine, newspaper or television ads that are designed to appeal to the masses, you can expect a slow but steady decline in those uses. If you produce editorial content for magazines or newspapers, there will also be a continued decline in such uses, because these products are supported to a great extent by advertising revenue. If your pictures are used in any way to promote products or services that are potentially used by a broad cross-section of the population, you can expect a decline in such promotions.

In August BIA/Kelsey reported that digital and online’s share of local advertising in actual dollar terms had jumped from 22% in 2008 to 37% in 2009. Earlier in the year the survey organization said that total advertising spend would drop from $155.3 billion in 2008 to $144.4 billion by 2013.

Dirck Halstead’s perceptive two-part analysis of the photojournalism business is a must-read for photojournalists or anyone considering this career. It should also be a wake up call for stock and advertising photographers hoping to sell their images for use in print publications.

If you are among those who think newspapers and magazines will always be with us because customers want them, consider these numbers. In 1990, U.S. newsprint consumption was 12.1 million metric tons. Three quarters of that, or over 9 million tons, was used by daily newspapers and the rest by commercial printers. In 2009, U.S. daily newspaper usage is on track to be about 4 million tons, or perhaps a little less.

In late June, Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer predicted the continued decline of print as an advertising medium and told attendees at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival: “[In the future,] all content consumed will be digital, We can only debate if that may be in one, two, five or 10 years… In 10 years, it will all be online.”

Traditional stock-photo sellers wonder why there does not seem to be any growth in demand for their product. The 2006 U.S. Census Bureau statistics of U.S. businesses could provide some clues.

If you want to continue to take pictures for a living, it's time to start learning to shoot video. Why? because newspapers and magazines are beginning to move away from print and toward online. Once online offerings have been established, video and sound become more appealing and a better way to communicate editorial information and advertising messages than using stills.