Advice on pricing

I was wondering if anyone here could give me some idea of pricing. I was contacted recently by a photo researcher for a well-known computer/tablet/gadget company, the one with a bit of fruit with a bite out of it as it's logo. They were asking about licensing an image from me, for, quote, Unlimited, worldwide use excluding broadcast advertising for five years from date of first use. The image in question is already licensed elsewhere, and along with a link to the image on the agencies website, I also provided a link to my Flickr stream of aerial shots, the majority of which are not licensed to any agency. Now they are interested in several of my images, and their production team is reviewing them. If they select any of the images they want edited TIFF's and also the RAW files.

I'm not sure if anything will come out of it, but they want a quote, and I don't have the foggiest idea.

Does anyone have any idea what would be a realistic quote? Any advice would be much appreciated.

I take it they do not want to buy all the rights I.e. the copyright and as you stated this is for non broadcast advertising, but does this include other media advertising I.e. billboards, newspapers and magazines?

As a rule of thumb I would say US$500 per picture, but you need to be careful with the contract as they do think that once they have the licence for the picture they can do what they want.

Another way of looking at it is, How much did it cost YOU to take the said picture, I.e. The cost of the camera, lens, travel, time, and then work out a percentage of between 6% and 10% of total cost. I guarantee the cost will be a lot lower then if they had to arrange for the photo to be taken.

I can't answer your question directly, partly because Apple is so unspecific about use, but to give you some context £350 is a reasonable fee for non-exclusive rights to reproduce a photograph on the jacket of a low-run (< 5,000 copies) book. I'd suggest a generous multiple for the exclusive and 5-year-long use envisaged.

You could always ask them to suggest the fee they would customarily pay for the range of uses they have in mind.

Dunno, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_%28image%29

Thanks for the replies- I was initially thinking $500 per image would be a starting point, but I was also thinking that was probably way too low. The images are going to be tied up for 5 years, apart from possible print sales. I could easily make more than $500 per image from stock sales during the same period if I licensed them to Getty; several of the images have been requested by them. I was thinking $500 per year would be a better starting point? I'm also not sure if they are specifically after aerial shots: if so, then I've got far more bargaining power. What I don't want is to realise later that I've sold them for a fraction of what I could have. On the other hand, I don't want to price myself out of the equation.

Sorry I wasn't clear, I did mean $500 per picture, per year, that's the going rate in the US,but if it's a specialist picture like you say as in an aerial shot, then we as a company would pay anything upto $1200.

If I was you I would work out what sum you would be happy with, 5 years is a long time for regrets,

Thanks, Matt, I'm giving them a quote of $600 per year. A friend of mine who sells work on a similar basis, though commissioned, came up with the same figure. I'll see if anything comes of it; the last time someone wanted to use one of my images, through an agency, the client cancelled the whole thing at the last minute.

If you are dealing with the most cash rich company on the planet think higher, these marketing boys have to spend to make it feel right for themselves.

Nobody ever got fired for hiring one of the top five accountancy firms for a project did they?

You don't become a cash rich company by throwing your money about and this cash rich company is about as tight as they come.
You can just as easily price yourself out of the market place and give yourself a bad reputation in this market, you need to think, little and lots as opposed to a lot and nothing.