Quote from: cthoman on January 22, 2014, 11:11

Seems like a good move to me.

I don't know if it's a good move overall or not, but I have noticed that the last couple of days my sales were about the same but royalties a bit higher.  I hadn't noticed that XS was gone, but that would explain it.  I must have had a large number of XS sales. 

I'm not going to complain about anything that results in (even slightly) higher royalties to contributors.

It seems like volume is dying. At least, for me it is. So, you might as well get as much as is reasonable out of each sale. Realistically, would any of us really join a new site that offers 1 credit sales at 15-20% royalty rates?

Although, maybe we would. Everybody did jump on board of the Stockfresh train to nowhere.

Did they announce this change anywhere?  If so, did they say why they have done this?

Quote from: fotoVoyager on January 22, 2014, 11:27

The real problem isn't low prices, it's the disgustingly low royalty rates. Even Apple manages to pay 70% to app creators.

Exactly. Apple pays 70% to the creators of iTunes music and the publishers of iBooks too. Not only that but the content creator get to set their own prices. Now that would make microstock interesting.

(I think it's the agents who get 70% from iTunes in most cases and not the artists. But I may be wrong.)

Stock royalties are too low IMO. But the Apple app store comparison is not a good one. Yes independent app developers get 70%. And Apple does well out of the App Store but ...

... the App Store is not the business. Apple is in the business of selling hardware. The App Store is one of the main reasons why people buy Apple hardware. The App Store exists to sell iPhones and iPads. Just like iTunes used to exist, primarily, to help sell iPods. The huge success of iOS today is partly because of the apps.

Apple needs for people to continue to choose to primarily develop for iOS. In some cases the makers of brands other than Apple actually pay developers to produce software for their platforms. That is how important apps have become.

Did they announce this change anywhere?  If so, did they say why they have done this?

Link is in the OP

Quote from: loop on January 22, 2014, 13:36

And so, which is the business of Amazon? They also pay 70% to kindle direct writers (provided they sell their books between 2.99 and 11), and they don't ask for exclusivity, they just ask you to don't sell cheaper elsewhere.

Yep. A different model from the Apple app store. Yes there are some independents and it is possible to collect 70% - but many semi-independent e-book only authors apparently still prefer not to e-publish independently. In many cases that 70% is not going straight to the writer.

Neither of us here has ever bought an independently published Kindle book. And we buy lots of Kindle books. We have 3 Kindles between us. I buy 2 or 3 books every month. In some cases I also buy a paper copy. How much of that 70% is going to the publisher and how much is going to the writer I do not know.

I am a book author and I can tell you that during negotiations for my contract the royalties were so low to me, the author, that I decided to publish the book myself. In my case it was 10% of the price of the book minus the production cost of the book. So in my case it would have been (18.95-4.06)x.1, or $1.49 per book royalty.

Quote from: loop on January 22, 2014, 13:36

And so, which is the business of Amazon? They also pay 70% to kindle direct writers (provided they sell their books between 2.99 and 11), and they don't ask for exclusivity, they just ask you to don't sell cheaper elsewhere.

Yep. A different model from the Apple app store. Yes there are some independents and it is possible to collect 70% - but many semi-independent e-book only authors apparently still prefer not to e-publish independently. In many cases that 70% is not going straight to the writer.

Neither of us here has ever bought an independently published Kindle book. And we buy lots of Kindle books. We have 3 Kindles between us. I buy 2 or 3 books every month. In some cases I also buy a paper copy. How much of that 70% is going to the publisher and how much is going to the writer I do not know.

When I joined Istock  it was selling L-size images for $1.50 (less with bulk credit discounts) and the artist got 30c, irrespective of the discount. As far as I'm aware they had a profitable business even back then (and a website that actually worked too). Before the sell-out to Getty in Feb 2006, if I remember correctly, they trebled their prices from when I had started. Since then they must have doubled their prices a few times more, making the business ever more profitable, but never once did they think to increase royalty percentages ... in fact they've only ever done the opposite with the RC system, discounts removed from the contributors' payment, etc, etc.

Microstock was a new market and the fact that the agencies were highly profitable, even when prices were a fraction of what they are today, proves that there was plenty of room to pay contributors a far higher royalty than Istock ever paid. Even DT paid a straight 50% for the first couple of years when all images cost $1.

I've posted before that a former pupil was signed up by the top agent/manager in his music genre, who also manages, inter alia, one of the absolute top current international pop singers. He apparently negotiated 70%, which I was dumbfounded by.
But it seems that he got that percentage to get him to sign up and is being suppressed. His so-called agent isn't working for him, blocks his ideas, hasn't taken forward the projects that were discussed before the contract was signed, and the FP is stranded trying to scrape a living in ways outwith his contract, and wondering when he'll be able to afford a lawyer to get him out of the contract.

Quote from: Mantis on January 22, 2014, 14:07

I am a book author and I can tell you that during negotiations for my contract the royalties were so low to me, the author, that I decided to publish the book myself. In my case it was 10% of the price of the book minus the production cost of the book. So in my case it would have been (18.95-4.06)x.1, or $1.49 per book royalty.

Would that have been for Kindle sales ?

ETA: your unit production cost seems very high.

It was high because the book was four color with a varnished cover and good paper, high quality binding. (printed in 2000). Not for Kindle.