I started by PMing the Pixels artist. I don't think any licenses have sold over there yet.

This might be a case of the artist enabling licensing for his entire port, and forgetting that some of his work shouldn't be offered.

My head tilted a full ninety degrees, and I went to look at FT's EL agreement. Then I realized you were probably joking.

KimsCreativeHub.com is part of the co-op, I believe. Her page opens as "http://kimscreativehub.symbiostock-network.com."

I don't do photos, but about a year ago, I looked for a site that would let me license an image to one person only, and then display a "sold" icon on the image thumbnail thereafter. Photodeck and Photoshelter didn't have that capability when I looked. Some shopping cart apps have that capability, but it's not quite the same.

Artists and premade book cover designers would find it useful.  I myself gave up on the idea when I decided I didn't want to handle customers' personal info, troubleshoot download issues, or deal with chargeback scams.

Not at the moment. I've made stock art using LuxRender with aimed at book covers. I've also made premade book covers using a combo of Depositphotos stock and my renders, but I want to make sure the stock licensing for my covers is all good. Unfortunately, the agencies haven't caught up with self-publishing and haven't made the license terms clear enough, so we have to ask and rely on what a rep tells us.

I received an email today from Solid Stock Art. They say they've had their best month to date, but admit the types of sales haven't been that diverse.

We hope you are seeing and sharing in our growth. Also, by no means is this the best it is going to get. This is but a small taste of what is to come. We�d like to thank all of you for allowing us to distribute your amazing artwork!

We know not all of our artists are seeing the fruits of our combined labor so we�d like to share what is currently selling. As we bring on more customers we should see the sales be more diverse than they are now.

What is selling:

    Beauty and health photos
    Infographic illustrations
    Dental related illustrations and photos
    Medical related photos
    Travel photos
    Business conceptual based photos and illustrations
    Retro and filtered photos and illustrations
    Sport photos

   
What are customers requesting this month?

    Golf photos involving children and seniors
    Ballroom dancing with all age groups
    Curling (that sport involving ice and a broom)
    Isolated dogs and cats

Will you accept transparent PNGs?

ETA: Oh wait, these are separate websites?

ETA2: So who handles the payment and customer support stuff?

I totally agree. Every time I have contacted an author,  escort agency, sex dating site or whoever have misused images, they all said that they have acted in good faith.

I disagree with your grouping of erotic fiction authors with escort and dating websites. The wording of many license agreements specifically prohibits escort and dating website use. I've yet to see a license that mentions erotic fiction by name.

They have been under the impression that they can use stock photos however they want as long as print run is not exeeded. That seems to be the general understanding. Most of them havent even seen or read the licence terms.

My experience with authors and book cover artists is that many of them focus too much on this section:

In print media, digital media, product packaging and software including magazines, newspapers, books (including print-on-demand books), e-books, advertising collateral, letterhead, business cards, product labels, CD and DVD cover art, applications (including mobile "apps"), and opt-in e-mail marketing, provided that no Image is reproduced more than two hundred fifty thousand (250,000) times in the aggregate, and that the Images cannot be readily unincorporated from such digital media or software;

I once saw a respected book cover artist quote this to justify her sale of PoD art prints that incorporated stock images. Obviously, she later learned she was wrong.

Can't really say that the agencies are very helpful in these matters either. Their main focus is selling images and make profit, not going after "tiny" issues like this. If you are lucky you get a reply that they will look into it, and then nothing happens. It pretty much up to the photographer to deal with it and thats both time consuming and difficult.

I don't think it's a good idea to leave the agencies completely out of these situations. What if a photographer sees his or her pic on the cover of an erotic romance novel, jumps to conclusions, thinks it's for sure a prohibited use, and gets Amazon to take the book down. Then the author gets the stock agency involved and the agency sides with the author. I'm not a lawyer, but couldn't the author potentially sue the photographer for loss of income due to a bogus violation claim?

Isn't it better to check with the agency first?


Overall, I think the best solution is to pressure the agencies to look into erotic fiction so they can come up with easily-understood terms of what is allowed and what is prohibited.

Because there aren't just a handful of these books. This isn't just a few isolated incidents. There are hundreds of thousands of erotica and erotic romance books on Amazon alone. The vast majority of these books use microstock for their covers. This is a big deal.

There should be a separate model release that a model who is OK with this can sign, and these images could be made available at a premium price.
SS has a version of this, but they have a frankly ridiculous model where either all your photos have to be 'in' or all out.

I agree that a separate release and designation is a good idea. However, it has to be spelled out clearly, and not given a vague term like "sensitive use." My experience with authors and cover artists is that they don't understand these licenses.

The problem is that there isn't a publisher to contact. Often the author is the publisher and it is impossible to reach him/her. No contact info and often a pseudonym. Amazon is the only place that has the contact info. You cannot find out where the image has been licensed unless you contact Amazon. Misuse of an image is a kind of copyright infringement, but you should of course explain the situation and not claim that the image is stolen.

Or claim a license violation right away. Photographers should get the contact info from Amazon citing a "possible violation," and then (providing the author is forthcoming with license info) confirm with the stock agency.

My question to the agencies were simple. "Can i purhase an image and put it on a cover of a e-book in the erotica genre?
I did not say porn, i only asked about erotica. The answer was crystal clear from most of the agencies. No, that is not allowed. Depositphotos and Alamy were the only agencies that allowed it.

That's really interesting, because "erotica genre" includes many classy books put out by big publishers. There's also "erotic romance," which is the genre term for the "romance with an erotic twist" you mentioned in your OP.  Those books can also be interpreted as "erotica" by someone who doesn't know the difference.

Really, this is just another example of stock agencies not keeping up with the changes in publishing. Why should we have to ask whether an agency considers premade book covers SL or EL, or whether erotic fiction is porn or not? It should be spelled out clearly in the license agreements.

Written erotic fiction isn't the same as a visual porn magazine or website, which is why many agencies don't see erotica as porn.

On author forums and websites, I've seen agency responses reported as basically, "don't make it look like the model on the cover is anything but an illustrative image." I guess it would help authors if they put a disclaimer to that effect. However, most people have common sense and know the model on the book cover isn't actually being taken by dinosaurs for sexytimes:

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/10/qa-the-women-who-write-dinosaur-erotica.html

http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/10-real-book-covers-from-dinosaur-on-human-sex-novels/

These books were all over the American news a few months ago. Notice how these are just swimsuit shots. I did warn in a thread months ago that authors are now choosing less raunchy photos so their books will show up in basic search results. (Raunchy book covers will only show up in a specific kindle search.) So, yeah a model posing for a business or glam shot might show up on dino porn. Photographers need to perhaps hire models who understand this.

And photographers, please don't assume a picture on Amazon is automatically in violation of a license agreement, and then go straight to Amazon claiming copyright violation. I've seen many reports of this on author forums, and frankly, I don't think the practice is ethical.

In the cases I've seen, Amazon assumes the copyright claim means the picture was stolen (this is the unethical part because the photographer is claiming something that isn't true), and takes it down. The author then has to prove the picture was indeed licensed, losing income and book rank in the process. Once Amazon gets proof that a license was purchased, it puts the book back. The most a photographer can gain from this is that maybe the author will change the cover anyway (which I have seen).

If you see an image use you don't like, do the honest thing, and find out which agency the image was bought from, and then report it to that agency.  As we've seen in this thread, different agencies have different ideas about what is allowed. Don't assume.

I used to have a few transparent PNGs on Dreamstime, but people bought the white JPEG versions anyway. I guess they didn't want to pay extra.