Copyright transfer

[turtleman]

Does anyone here have experience in selling the copyright of a picture as opposed to licensing its usage?

Suppose your picture is earning you xyz through licensing it/selling prints/whatnot. How much (more) would you value the outright sale of its copyright in comparison to xyz? Has anyone been approached for this kind of deal (excluding work-for-hire arrangements)? How would you compare it to the classical model of selling limited rights instead?

[andyw]

Originally Posted by turtleman

Does anyone here have experience in selling the copyright of a picture as opposed to licensing its usage?

Suppose your picture is earning you xyz through licensing it/selling prints/whatnot. How much (more) would you value the outright sale of its copyright in comparison to xyz? Has anyone been approached for this kind of deal (excluding work-for-hire arrangements)? How would you compare it to the classical model of selling limited rights instead?

I have only ever released/transferred copyright twice on images and they were images which were of absolutely no use to me at the time or in the future as they were very specific to the client.

I would never transfer copyright on any image which I had sold through licensing or prints.

Thus I have never really thought about the price I would charge for this but it would have to be a very large sum as there would be no way to know how much that image could make over the years.

An example for me would be a pretty average (imo) image which I took about 25 years ago is still selling and over the years it has probably made in the region of £15k for various uses.

There is no way that it would have sold for that as a one off with copyright or not.

[Biomech]

When I was young, I sold the copyright to a logo design for £2,000. The buyer after said he would have paid up to £5,000 :P