It is wiser to write first to the advertising-manager of the particular company favored, and to inquire if he is buying photographs that show plainly the unparalleled merits of his excellent product, and if so—etc., etc.
Some advertisers will ask you to name a price for your work, and on such an occasion you should judge fairly the value of the print to them. If they require the negative also, raise the rate. Any prints should be worth $10.00 even to a small manufacturer, and if it is acceptable at all, a larger firm should pay from $25.00 to $1,000.00 for suitable propaganda. This branch of press-photography is little used by many workers, yet it is remunerative.
Besides furnishing the manufacturer with advertising for his product, the photographer supplies himself with some advertising to the effect that "he delivered the goods once, and could do it again, so there."
XIII
COPYRIGHTS AND OTHER RIGHTS
If, as often happens, one photograph is useful to more than one publication, is it all right to sell the one photograph to as many magazines as will buy it?
When a publication prints a photograph on its pages, it copyrights it in the name of the publishing company. The photographer then has parted with his entire rights to it, and cannot sell it elsewhere, unless one of two precautions has been taken.
The first precaution is the writing on the back of each print: "First Magazine-Rights Only." Those "mystic" words mean that the print is offered for publication only one time, after which it again becomes the property of the photographer. That is, the magazine, when buying such a print, buys only the right to print it the first time. Immediately after its publication, it becomes again the property of the photographer, although he cannot of course sell "First Rights" again, any more than he can sell the same horse twice at the same time.
After "First Rights" has been sold, the photographer may then sell "Second Rights," provided those words are written on the back of the second print. "'Second Rights' is the right to publish a photograph in some other publication than the one in which it originally appeared." For instance: a photograph of a novel shop-window display may be acceptable to Popular Mechanics, which buys a print marked "First Magazine-Rights Only." But the same photograph may be acceptable too to an advertising-magazine, and so it buys "Second Magazine-Rights." Unless these terms are written on the backs of prints which are sold to more than one magazine, trouble is apt to result.