I’ve receive nearly a thousand lovely new readers per month and the question of whether or not to release your images on disk is probably a good one to address every so often. I’ve been getting the question in my inbox this week, so it looks like it’s time to talk about it again.
This topic draws hot debate from both sides. There are benefits and drawbacks for both options. First, I’ll define what I mean by ‘disk’:
To me, ‘selling a disk’ means selling (or including in your session) digital versions of the final images from a session. These are fully edited and can either be in their full size format or sized to only be printed at, say, a maximum of 11×14. Or they can simply be web sharing sizes.
Do I sell a disk? You bet! Is it cheap? Heck no. It’s only included in my highest price session {the Ooh La La}
In my estimation, these are the benefits to selling digitals:
- Less work - There’s little effort involved in providing this option as opposed to procuring, packaging and delivering prints or other photographic products.
- Turnaround – Following on from above, the disk option means that a busy photographer doesn’t have orders looming over their head. I sometimes get a shock in the middle of the night when I sit straight up in bed and realize that I forgot to put an order through or deliver something I promised. This takes the worry out of the equation.
- Maximum profitability – Low cost makes this a super profitable option.
- Your way – Providing images for web means that YOU get to control what their friends see online. I maximize it for Facebook display with MCP’s free Facebook Fixer action and add my branding. This means it looks as good as it can possibly look online and I get the props (and follow-on business) from the branding.
And the drawbacks:
- Control – you lose control of the way the images are displayed. They can print them at the chemist {or even worse – on their printer} for all you know and then show their friends a poor representation of your work. That said, the general consumer really won’t notice a difference and whether you meant for the grass to be that particular shade of green really doesn’t matter much to them. And the ones who know the difference will use a ‘proper’ printer.
- Further sales – Once you sell the disk, that’s it. There are no further sales opportunities from that session.
- Copyright – Even though you’ll only be providing printing rights, clients may do something with your images which isn’t allowed. Such as agree for a friend to use it to advertise their business or use by a modeling agency or whatever. If you find that they’re doing this, you can invoke your rights but overall, you lose control once you hand them over.
I don’t sell a disk, I sell my images on flash drive.
On the drive, I include:
- A folder called ‘to print’ with high res files
- A folder called ‘for web’ with web sharing copies
- A PDF with a link to and instructions for downloading their own personal device app.
- A PDF print & online sharing release
- A PDF printing guide showing the difference between an image printed through a professional company and a cheapie one. On the PDF, there’s also a link to a pre-uploaded online gallery through SmugMug where they can get their images printed through my own professional printer {Loxley Colour} at cost. This is my last ditch attempt at controlling the quality of my work in print. This is a printing release, not a release of copyright {big difference!}.
I hope this has been helpful. Please ask questions or leave comments below!
