This isn't intended as a direct response any particular post, so please don't take it as such.
I was sitting having lunch the other day when a chap I know asked if he could join me. During the conversation we got on to the topic of sales strategies - he was a professional salesman back in Britain - and out of interest, I asked him about methods of moving merchandise in quantity, my mind on stock pix. It was illuminating to hear how simply these things get done in supplier/supermarket land. Since the numbers are probably kind of similar, I suppose that parallels might be drawn, but the principal thing I came to understand was this: a total lack of interest in the nature of the product you are offering is taken for granted. In other words, you simply don't get involved in tryig to claim you have a superior product: you just make quantity/convenience offers that the store can't refuse, and you offer promotional backup via advertising on TV or wherever local it matters. The retailer cares as little about it, in the intrinsic sense, as you should: it IS just an item that needs shifting.
Maybe if all we photographers looked at it that way, as some seem able to do, we might be happier people.
So just disown your children; life will then sparkle.
Rob C
