Glin Dibley - “Don’t Laugh at Me”

One important task of an artist's representative is to support and inspire good business and marketing decisions for our talent. So after taking to heart the challenge to find new avenues of income for my illustrators that didn't require drastic price increases or overwhelming numbers of assignments, the idea of selling stock seemed like a beautiful thing. The year was 1993 and we had just heard about The Stock Illustration Source and the concept seemed like a win/win deal. The first illustrator from my group to jump in was my wife, Sally Wern Comport. We had hundreds of images filed away and SIS could make these images available to companies that previously might not have been able to buy art because of time, money or expertise constraints. The stock company would handle everything, the transparencies, the billing, collection, even getting printed samples. We would simply receive the residual income. We thought that this would make higher quality illustration available to new buyers, after all, there were many great illustrators and images showing up in the early catalogues. We felt it wouldn't hurt assignment illustration, it would enhance it. More art to more people would open up new markets.

On several occasions we met personally with the owners of SIS and found them to be gracious and very good business people. I believe that there has never been any malicious intent on their part. To the contrary I think that they were visionary with their service and the demand for their product and services are evidence. Sally has made a good return on her stock images, but it became increasingly clear that there were larger issues involved.

The effect of stock houses, that is, illustrators relinquishing control over copyright, pricing and use of their images, has been unhealthy for illustration as a whole. It has hurt business, creativity and most of all it has damaged the value of art, in both the eyes of the artist and the client.

Over the past several years, we have begun to see disturbingly large numbers of our former clients now buying Sally's images from SIS. And why not? We used to joke with clients about the three things we could offer: quality, timeliness, and cost. Which one were they interested in? But the way stock is being offered, a client can have it all. So many of our best and consistent clients, across all areas of editorial institutional and advertising, were buying from the stock agency for less, a lot less. We have received a check for as low as $21.36 for an image.

But it took an article written by Michael Gibbs for SKETCHES, a publication of The Illustrators Club of Washington DC/Maryland/Virginia in the spring of 1999 to finally wake me up from my sloth and greed.