In the previous post, it was mentioned that some professional photographers will list their creative fee and licensing fee separately while others will combine the two fees into one number. Which method is better?
Combining the two fees:
• Some customers find a single fee easier to understand.
• The client doesn’t know how much each fee contributes to the total. This allows the photographer more wiggle room if they have to negotiate the creative or licensing fees.
• The client doesn’t know how much each fee contributes to the total. The photographer can benefit when relicensing the picture since the client doesn’t know what the original license fee was.
Listing the fees separately:
• Higher-end clients often prefer this method.
• More fair to the client when calculating a cancellation fee. A cancellation fee should compensate the photographer for lost time and not for lost usage since no usage is lost. So cancellation fees should be based on a percentage of the creative fee only and not on the combination of creative and licensing fees.
• In a copyright infringement case, having a separate licence fee makes it easier for the photographer to show the value of an infringed picture.
With a combined fee, the defendant could argue that most of that (combined) fee was for producing the photography and as such, the value of the (infringed) picture is much less.
• Easier to relicense a picture. With a separate licensing fee, both the customer and photographer will know what it costs to relicense that picture.
Say it was $1,000 to license a photo for one full-page advertisement. If the client wanted to relicense the same picture for another full-page ad insertion then they’ll know that it’ll cost another $1,000. There’s no reason for the photographer to offer any discount.
• Some photographers who use separate fees will negotiate the license fee but not their creative fee.
