Want to see your photography on a book cover?
I did. I desperately did after my first encounter seeing my self portrait photograph on a billboard for a book cover in Canada on a very random trip which is a story I’ll save for another day.
It seemed nearly impossible at the time, I tried, naively, to create more ‘book cover-esque’ photographs to put on Getty but nothing was really working (I honestly thought all types of work would be suitable for book covers, oh so wrong, so naive!).
It’s niche that’s for sure. But totally doable.
There are book cover agencies, stock libraries that specialise in book covers. I cover all of them and the specifics in my online course Breaking into Book Covers.
Pros of getting your photography on a book cover!
You get paid. This is always number 1 right? Money!
Get to see your photography in bookshops or on Amazon, pinterest etc (kindle, e-book, print).
Your photography is PUBLISHED. PUBLISHED. Potentially worldwide. Very cool thing to be able to say.
Often photographs are re-sold for other countries for the same book covers, so you don’t just get paid once, you could get paid numerous times for one photograph!
They pay the highest royalty rate out there, 50% and they sell all their images Rights Managed (RM) in the most basic terms, you keep those photographs solely with the agency (you can’t sell them elsewhere) but also means more money.
If you get a sale that is World wide (all countries) in one go, you can get roughly £950.00 or more for that one photograph. I’m guessing you actually have more than one photo too for potential sales.
Agencies do ALL THE WORK FOR YOU. You do NOT have to network, market, social media, none of it whatsoever. Nada. Zilch. So it’s kinda perfect for part time photographers or like me, introverts.
You simply upload your final images with a model release if needed and that’s it. No keywording, no faffing about with titles, they do that all for you.
If you have a lot of older work sitting on your hard drive you could have lot’s of potential content, in my course I go through that in a specific section.
Photographers of all skill levels can do this.
I’ve had over 700 covers published now in 4 years. It’s now my sole income which I’m thankful for. It means I can be creative, earn money and not have to constantly engage with networking and social media etc. I choose too because I love interacting with people who are keen to learn or are interested in doing book covers themselves.
So if you think you definitely want to see your photographs on a book cover you’ve come to the right place! My blog does have some tips here and there but my course covers every single step on how to achieve it.