in addition to all the postive reasons mentioned above for submitting similars, there's the additional random factor that what the artist considers their best 3 or 4 may all get rejected by reviewers, while some that the artist rejected could be accepted.


there's some merit in the argument that similars steal from each other and hurt search placement, but there's no actual evidence that a buyer who takes 1 shot would automatically chose a similar if there were only 1.

not a while ago DT rejected a bunch of my pics with a model, total different clothes, total different hair BUT the same actions not even 1 was approved, basically because it was the same model (all other agencies approved 100%)

would they sell? I am sure of that once they are selling all around, its my lose and their too in the end

Lisa, I told you his head was going to get really big some day from all his fame 

LOL!  Yep, he's got a swelled head.  Or (someone else's) undersized body

I upload similar images...but not too similar.  I'll let the buyer decide what s/he wants.

Interestingly, Photoshelter did a recent interview with the editor of Sports Illustrated magazine.  He accused photographers of not knowing what the client wants and he encourages his own staff not to self edit before he sees the images.  I thought it was kind of funny, but it was interesting hearing that from a magazine editor.

he's 100% correct, but i also blame clients for not giving us any clue as if we had a magic wand.

stock photographers have hardly any talk or contact with stock buyers.
so, how can they judge if a set of photos has a high or medium or low commercial value ?

stock buyers never go in stock forums discussing in depth what they really need, nor they go in droves in photo fairs around the world or write articles in photo magazines or blogs, and if even if they do it' usually useful only regarding their very small niche.

photo editors can also be a nasty bunch of over inflated egos, one will tell you your photo is superb and the other will toss it out of the window, no surprise the photo editor of Sports Illustrated talks like he was the king of the hill, it must be a prerequisite to become photo editor i guess.

Not sure if it makes sense for many types, but certainly for some.  Buyers often don't know what they want until they see it and the subtle differences between a series of shots lets one grab them.  It makes sense to do a vertical and a horizontal. I dont do many myself but cannot see that it helps or hurts with one exception, and this is a slight off- topic veer to this thread. Sorry. 
I frequently upload a shot along with one or two cropped versions of the same photo.  Of course I lose size potential, but the cropped photos usually outsell the original by a large margin.  So much for the copy space idea, I think it is often a matter of simple eye appeal.

I can't see a reason for an agency rejecting similars, unless the quality of the whole series is below par. Storage prices are going down, so that's no excuse.

Buyers want a variety and I brought this up before, the agencies "simply" should offer a feature for the contributors to group series during upload, picking one shot that best represents the series. This one shot will appear in search results with a little icon underneath indicating that there are more or that this is part of a series.

I bet buyers would love that and if they like the look of the "main" preview they most likely will check out the rest of the series. Similar to a light box but being a part of the regular image search.

Alamy is still doing that, kind of. They group images, I think based on keywords. Still, all the images show up in the search but you can see underneath how many more are available from that photographer.