Selling Photos

When I was editor of Outdoor Photographer magazine, I got a lot of questions about how to sell images to the magazine. Now as an independent photographer, I continue to get those questions because of my experience both as a photographer and an editor. I have put my best ideas together in an e-book, Selling Photos: Secrets of selling photos to publications in today’s competitive market. This new e-book is now available for Kindle (Amazon.com), Nook (Barnes & Noble), and other e-book platforms. Selling Photos: Secrets of selling photos to publications in today’s competitive market is based on my experience both as an editor (buyer) and photographer (seller) of photos.

I’ll be straight with you — this is not a “feel good” book that says all you need to do is place some pretty photos in front of an editor and you will sell photos. I am not interested in selling this book just to make money with advice that is more rah-rah than real. Nor is it filled with photos to show off my work. This advice is very real. It is sometimes hard for me to follow all of it, too! But it does work and it is very true for today’s markets.

I have gotten so many questions over the years about how to sell photos. In the past year or two, selling photos has gotten increasingly challenging. Selling photos still can be done and I wanted to create a book that truly gave tips on how to do sell photos in any market, good or bad. But I will warn you, selling photos today is not about an editor or other art buyer wanting to buy your photos just because they are “good.”

Editors don’t buy your photos or my photos because they are good, pretty, etc. They buy them because they meet their needs for the publication. My book tells how to discover an art buyer’s needs and how to select and prepare photos for submission. And of course, much more.

I did this book to help my fellow photographers, but also to help my old editor colleagues. They would love to see more focused submissions and not have to simply return inappropriate submissions. My book is about appropriate submissions that are more likely to get accepted. There is no guarantee that this will sell your images (no one can do that), but the book will help you submit images more likely to sell. And you will learn secrets that, truly, a lot of photographers do not know.

Check it out at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Sony eBooks and the Apple iBookstore.

Originally Published April 19, 2011

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