Submitting shots to magazines- debate

Hi all, one question I'd love to hear your thoughts on. We all love to see those great shots printed in the likes of sky at night magazine , sky & telescope, astronomy magazine etc. to name but a few, but here is my problem

I took a lovely shot of Venus passing the Pleiades the other night and I submitted it to the hotshots gallery in sky at night magazine for possible publication. They replied back by stating that you grant them perpetual, royalty free rights to your shot for ever more - ok, some people don't mind that - but - they will not consider publication of your shot if you send or post it anywhere else. We all work hard for our shots, does this mean you cannot show it anywhere else ever again?

I'm sure some of us here have done submitted our shots in the past, and it seems now that many magazines have adopted this policy, which I think is now very restrictive. Does this mean I cannot even share this here? Do you agree with it? or is it just plain greedy?

Keith.

Hi Keith

Personally, I don't agree with this policy, you should retain all the copyrights to the image.

I believe that by handing over all the rights the magazine then has the right to do whatever it likes with your image, even sell it on to another company, how would you feel if your beautiful image appears on the advertisement for a large multi-national such as Microsoft or Coca-Cola? The magazine gets the money and you get nothing.

This seems to be a trend that is common place, there is a free site in Ireland that allows you to sell goods, they recently ran a photography competition with the same conditions, you give up all rights, this did not apply to just the winner, but to all entries. I posted comments on the site pointing out what I said in the above paragraph and they refused to print it. :rant:

Keep your images and post them in all the free astronomy websites around the world and get the appreciation for your work.

Paul

from my experience,
S@N are the most restrictive and give you nothing for submission.
Not even a copy of the mag.
IMO - thats poor.

S&T make you sign a 2 page contract but at least give you
cash and a copy of the mag.

Astronomy mag are very difficult to submit to I found.
Having to send huge files via a buggy submission app on the site.

Astronomy Now are by far the best to deal with.
They promptly send you a cheque and a few copys of the mag.
Plus they retain your shots and if they use them again they
pay you again and send a copy also.
They also let you know they are going to use the image, something the others
dont do and unless you go check you could miss it.

As for each publishers policy on copyright.
Weather you agree with it or not is irrelevant.
If you submit the image then you are agreeing with it.
If you dont agree, dont submit!

Most mags will expect you to only submit your image to one publisher.
You cant blame them really to be fair.
It might be nice for you to have the same shot printed in 4 mags in the one month
but it looks bad for each of them and is boering for the readers to see the same shots
again and again.
one thing to also bear in mind is competitions like astro photographer of the year.
The rules state your image can not have been published before anywhere
so if you think you have a winner dont submit it to the monthly mags,!
Also, if your freaked about copyright. You better check Facebook,
they own your image when you post it! Read the fine print!

personally, When i started out it was a nice buzz to see your shot in print.
These days - not that ive much free time anymore for astrophotography -
its a handy way to get a free mag and some dosh to boot.

I see your opinions guys, I'm actually surprised that this has not been discussed before. Put it this way, I am wondering if I could post my shot on my own flickr page, after all, it is not a magazine, it is free to all for viewing and should'nt compete with a published shot as it's not advertised.

Although at the risk of sounding silly, I'm sure their submission agreement covers this as they would probably have every avenue tied up. I'll go and have alook for it on their site to see about this, but I think I too will stay away in future.

Keith.

I have had a look at their terms and conditions -

14. The permission you have granted to us is not exclusive and therefore you may continue to use the user Contribution in any way in any medium, including allowing others to use it, provided such use does not interfere with or impair the rights you have granted to us.

It looks like I can put it on my flickr page

Keith.

Its an interesting state of affairs alright.

I guess the imagers fundamental decision is how much control do you want to keep as regards your images? If the answer is "as much as possible" then I guess that rules out certain publications. You may be happy enough to relinquish some/all control for special purposes such as competitions. I think Mick O'Connell may have gone through this last year with his stunning moon image.

But bear this in mind - much of today's media is published on-line. Whilst a lot of people still buy printed media, I would say a lot would get the bulk of their "news" online. Therefore, if you make you media available online, a lot of people are still bound to see it, especially if you advertise it on forums like this.

For the sake of a couple a quid and possibly a free mag - possibly nothing at all as Frank points out, I'd personally not relinquish any rights to any of my images. But then again, I'm not a professional photographer trying to scratch a living put of it.

And actually, if you look at my site, I've no problem with folks using any of my images for nowt as long as it is not-for-profit. Even for-profit orgs can use my images as long as they display my copyright tag and out of courtesy, let me know. Even better of they chuck me a free copy of whatever it is in

I'd be interested to hear Anthony's views. As an accomplished and much published imager, I know he has been through this before and made comments here on this site. Calling Greece!

One final thing - I'm prettry sure there are websites out there who gladly "publish" images but do not ask you to relinquish rights - APOD springs to mind.

Cheers
Dave