Why would anyone pay for content if it is not by someone famous?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

What that has to do with anything, Edmund?

As I said, he is an amateur, he does not need to find a new content (accident) every day. You asked if those who are not famous have to give it away, and I provided an example where they don't. He asked, they paid. It is possible that they would pay him even if he didn't ask. I got recently a request to use one of my images they found on Flickr as a double-page spread in a magazine, and they told me in advance, without me asking, how much they pay for it.

So, what exactly we are talking about here? That magazines and publishers are hard to convince to publish something "half-good" (your words) from an unknown (to a broader public) author? Well, duh!!! How's that anything new? It's been like that for centuries. Ask any well-know author how many times publishers rejected them before they were well-known. How many paintings did Van Gough sell in his life (hint: zero or one, depending on source)? Ask anyone who tried to sell something how many times they were rejected. Average success rate for unsolicited offers is a whopping 1-2% (and that if you are really lucky).

So, once again, what exactly are we talking about here?

[eronald]

Slobodan,

 I kowtow to your deep wisdom and lucid presentation.

Edmund

What that has to do with anything, Edmund?

As I said, he is an amateur, he does not need to find a new content (accident) every day. You asked if those who are not famous have to give it away, and I provided an example where they don't. He asked, they paid. It is possible that they would pay him even if he didn't ask. I got recently a request to use one of my images they found on Flickr as a double-page spread in a magazine, and they told me in advance, without me asking, how much they pay for it.

So, what exactly we are talking about here? That magazines and publishers are hard to convince to publish something "half-good" (your words) from an unknown (to a broader public) author? Well, duh!!! How's that anything new? It's been like that for centuries. Ask any well-know author how many times publishers rejected them before they were well-known. How many paintings did Van Gough sell in his life (hint: zero or one, depending on source)? Ask anyone who tried to sell something how many times they were rejected. Average success rate for unsolicited offers is a whopping 1-2% (and that if you are really lucky).

So, once again, what exactly are we talking about here?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... In short: celebrity sells and for a lot of money.

Andy agrees with you:

[Nelsonretreat]

Slobodan,

 I kowtow to your deep wisdom and lucid presentation.

Edmund

The shortest put downs are are always the most elegant!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

The shortest put downs are are always the most elegant!

"...the internet has become a place where personal invective is substituted for resoned argument."

[Nelsonretreat]

My younger granddaughter, as a schoolgirl, won a small photographic contest. A Glasgow evening paper, perhaps with nothing better, local, upon which to pontificate, contacted the parents who, in turn, and to extend the photographic link in the story, supplied some snaps of grandpa in his studio, along with some of Brigitte Bardot. The copy was amazing: it covered an entire page and was all about me with hardly a mention of my poor granddaughter. According to the newspaper, I was Scotland's top celebrity photographer, and the studio shot was of myself directing Bardot for a Vogue shoot.

Okay, I did shoot Bardot and I did shoot for Vogue, but never the two in combination and I was certainly never a celebrity photographer: I was a fashion and calendar photographer. I was already living in Spain at the time, and I blushed reading the thing, wondering what a lying asshole my remaining Glaswegian peers must have thought me.

Yep, newspapers...

Gosh Mr C.. what outrageous conduct from a newspaper! Thank you so much for telling us in such detail about that awful, reprehensible and grossly unfair article in which you were accused of being a celebrity photographer. Thanks also and also for making it so relevant to the thread.  Don't worry I'm sure nobody thinks your an asshole! I, for one, felt I gained a huge insight into the person you are just from reading your account if it all.

[Nelsonretreat]

@Mr C. I forgot to say .... I bet you got your revenge on the paper by suing them for using your photograph of B BARDOT without your permission.