Legal Agreement for Massproduction Prints - toursim gifts - mural decoration

[amien_burteau]

<p>Hi,<br>

I am a fine art photographer & sell mostly limited editions prints on canvas through people & galleries.I was recently contacted by a new store who wants to sell different tourist prints trough different stores, they also look for clients as restaurants or companies wanting to decorate their walls.<br>

Beeing used to do my own prints & having an eye on every sale, I don't know whitch kind of agreements to write & which conditions - terms to use.<br>

-Should I use a 1 time right for each picture sold with print quantity ?<br>

-Determine the size & the finishing (canvas-books) ?<br>

-Adding to that, how can I follow how many prints they will make & sell ?<br>

Knowing that the client needs my full sized Jpeg files, how can I know that they will not keep them, make more prints than agreed, or use them for any other external contract without my permission ?<br>

Finally, which pricing should I Quote :<br>

-a % of future sales ? (how many % ?) : that's what they proposed me.<br>

-a pre-paid cheque for each image + % on sales ?<br>

-only a prepaid cheque for 1 time right printing ?<br>

Even if the client looks sincere, I dont feel totally confortable with this situation.He talked a lot about great things that could happen, & mixed too many things together. (massproduction prints - made to mesure prints - wall decoration prints).<br>

Thanks a lot for your help. <br>

Amien from Quebec-city ! </p>

[mikael_karlsson]

<p>Amien:<br>

For me personally, if I don't trust a client I don't do business with them. Licensing stock images for various usages you really have to trust the client because there is no good way of keeping tabs. Say I license an image for use in a textbook with a print run of 100,000 copies. I'm sure I could go to the publisher and demand to see the invoices from the printer to make sure they haven't printed more than the 100,000 copies but how feasible that really would be is a different matter.<br /> <br /> I suggest you check out the pricing calculators at a few agencies like Alamy, Corbis, Getty etc and plug in the usage details your client gave you. This would give you a good idea of what the pricing might look like.<br /> <br /> I've only licensed images for this type of usage a few times but I always prefer one bigger payment up front. If given a % of the sales, how would you check to make sure sales reported to you aren't less than actual sales?<br /> <br /> 99% of the time I license one-time usage rights on a per project basis. Meaning usage is defined per number of copies, time period, or both. Then again, I license images for usage in books, text-books, magazines, newspapers etc.</p>

[amien_burteau]

<p>Thanks a lot for your answer,<br>

I will check all the links you gave me & contacted my lawyer as well.<br>

I red the contract the client gave to me, they want an exclusive right contract. I understand on 1 side that they dont want another seller to sell the same products as theirs & compete,<br>

but the contract is too obvious & doesnt stipulate many details about artist's rights, more about their total exclusivity on the artist's photos. The purcentage (benefit) to the autor is not expressed in clear numbers.<br>

I guess I will need my lawyer to create an (semi?)exclusive rights contract for them & bring them to accept my conditions.<br>

I understood that the best way was also to make a 1 time right contract with direct money on the table witch sounds a much better deal to me than wait & see what happens.<br>

The only problem with this is that the client doesnt seem to agree with those terms when reading the very selfish conditions of the contract they gave me.</p>