Best Business Practices for Photographers [111]
This sounds remarkably like many a proposed editorial contract from a major publishing conglomerate. Little known, however, is what some photographers have changed in their contracts with these publishing houses. In some instances, when contracts are changed to be more balanced (in other words, fairer or better paying), a clause can be included, as noted in the beginning of this chapter, not to do something—namely disclose that the photographers have a contract that is not the same as the rest of the contracts that photographers are publicly objecting to.
What an Editorial Contract Must Have
As noted earlier, a contract is "often" signed. For me, all contracts must have my signature and the client's signature. Although a verbal contract is just as enforceable and binding as a written one, the problem with a verbal contract is that people have different recollections of what they agreed to, from rights granted, to allowable expenses, to numerous other issues. The devil is in the details.
It is my policy that an assignment is not undertaken without receipt of a signed contract from the client. This alone alleviates almost all disagreements about what was agreed to, with the exception of the client who, when presented with an invoice for $2,300 for an assignment that was originally estimated at $1,500, states, "I didn't know that when you called to say that the shoot had to be cancelled and rescheduled for two days later because of a torrential downpour, I would incur an $800 weather day charge. I didn't read the contract." Now, who do you suppose was at fault here? The assigning client's signature appears at the bottom of page two of our contract, and above the signature are all of the terms and conditions, including a weather day term. My ringing the client up at 9 a.m. for the 11 a.m. call time was to advise her of the weather issue, and my assumption was that she would either: A) ask that we move indoors, or B) allow for the weather day additional charge. However, this assumption is based upon the expectation that the client read the document she was signing—a reasonable supposition from my perspective.
Having all this in writing and agreed to by the client also diminishes the belief that we are trying to pull one over on a client and covers the fact that we were unable to complete other assignments on that day and will also be unable to take on other assignments for the new day needed to complete the assignment. In most cases, however, in addition to the assumption, I usually will say, "We're going to run into a weather charge, as well as another booking of assistant(s) for the next day," and this will either prompt the client to move the shoot indoors on the same day or accept the additional charges.
An editorial contract must also spell out usage—typically one-time usage in one edition of the publication, plus an allowance for the reuse of the cover that includes your image for advertising (if you're doing a cover shoot) for a set fee. I indicate whether the assignment is an inside use and the maximum size or number of images, or whether it's a cover use, and that affects our rates, of course. In some instances, we'll outline the fee plus expenses and then state that any use beyond a single image plus a table of contents use will incur additional usage fees. This is what is referred to as a guarantee against space. If the client tells me that the use is going to be a half-page horizontal opener of the subject, I'll quote slightly less than if the client states that it'll be a full-page vertical. What I want to avoid is a six-page article, which ends up being