Question about an offer.

I got an email today from one of my craiges list ads. Here is what it said.

 

I work for McGraw-Hill in New York and we are looking

for a professional portrait photographer to shoot a

portrait (adult) in a natural setting (e.g. classroom,

nature, studying, etc) for one of our textbook

editions. You would need to travel to the client (in

your area - Mid-City Center) for a digital shot during

the first or second week of April We will need 10

shots (5-vertical, 5-horizontal) to choose from, sent

low/med size, and once our selections have been made,

properly configured and posted to an FTP for pick up.

The fee for this project is $200.

 

Do you think this is legit? Would you do this knowing the payment comes at the end?

 

Thanks for your advice.

 

Jacqui

McGraw-Hill is a substantial publisher. I can't believe that they don't have a list of experienced photographers that they use to select people for this kind of excitement.

 

What this is really all about I don't know. Perhaps they will ask you for up-front money under who knows what pretext.

 

I'd call McGraw-Hill, ask for somebody in the art department, and check the legitimacy of the ad.

McGraw-Hill is a substantial publisher. I can't believe that they don't have a list of experienced photographers that they use to select people for this kind of assignment.

 

What this is really all about I don't know. Perhaps they will ask you for up-front money under who knows what pretext.

 

I'd call McGraw-Hill, ask for somebody in the art department, and check the legitimacy of the ad.

This has scam written all over it.

"In your area - Mid-City Center". A real email would say the city, not the neighborhood that your listed the ad under.

Even the stated $200 fee is way too low.

I thought shhots for books and magazines were pretty much equivalent in that they were often based on how wide the circulation was going to be. This seems kind of low to me.

Is the reply to in the e-mail an @mcgraw-hill.com ?

 

McGraw-Hill is one of a handful of national book publisher that actually pays decent fees and

this sounds very low, suspiciously low even. I regularly license images to McGraw-Hill and

would be happy to forward the e-mail you got to the image acquisition folks there to ask

them if it is legit or not.

This doesn't sound right at all. I have a mess of photo's for stock agencies. I may be wrong here, but usually companies like this buy directly through stock houses.

 

Let us know what the outcome is.