Title: The Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock Photography
Autor: Alexandre Rotenberg
Genre: Photography, Microstock
Number of pages: 223
Price: $7.5

Content:

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Microstock Photography 101
• Chapter 2: What’s in my camera bag?
• Chapter 3: Achieving technical excellence
• Chapter 4: The legal side of photography
• Chapter 5: Licensing commercial and editorial images
• Chapter 6: Overview on agencies to license your images
• Chapter 7: How much can you expect to earn
• Chapter 8: Creating interesting images
• Chapter 9: Finding your niche
• Chapter 10: Keywording
• Chapter 11: Optimising your workflow
• Chapter 12: Opportunities outside of microstock
• Interview with Joas Souza, architectural photographer

My opinion about the book

Brutally, and honestly, this book is not for you if you just want to learn how to take a picture and how to use your new camera. However, I dare to say that it is one of the best out there if you want to plunge into the world of microstock. This book is a must-read if you plan to turn the piling pictures on your hard drive into money.

Competition is tough when it comes to the microstock industry. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Success will only be the result of your hard work. The book will give you a nice background on the history of microstock photography that will help you to understand the past, the present and the possible future of microstock photography. The number of microstock agencies out there are as many as grains of sand on the beach - and it is still growing. The first challenge to a microstock photographer is to choose where to submit and sell once work. Well known agencies might be the most reliable but overcrowded, while new agencies may become the future of the microstock industry. The book will definitely steer you toward where to submit and sell your work.

While gear may not be the primary issue when it comes to microstock photography, the author still give us a good review of his equipment and the minimum you should get when it comes to microstock photography. Even though I said that the book is not for beginner photographers who want to learn how to take great pictures, it still gives the basics and classic rules of photography, such as the rule of third and the importance of copy space.

While beginner microstock photographers are recommended to read the entire book, intermediate and experienced once would find chapters 4 to 12 most useful. You will learn about the legal side, licensing, microstock agencies, earning trend, photography and carrier improvement, keywording, workflow, and opportunities outside of microstock. The last part gives you some inspiration from the view point of a successful microstock photographer.

Despite me having a few years of experience in microstock, I still learned a lot from the book, such as about other microstock agencies that I never heard of but seem to worthwhile, and workflow optimization. Now I even think about taking my photography to the next level, thanks to the chapter on opportunities outside of microstock. The book also helped me to refresh important points such as the types of licensing and keywording.

I definitely recommend the book for anyone out there who loves to takes pictures and whishes to earn some money from his/her work! You can get your own copy of the book here.