Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Things I Didn't Know....

that are probably fairly obvious to everyone else #189 - Royalty free doesn't = totally free :D

I started working on my book trailer this past weekend (and was thankfully rescued from my weak attempts by the amazingly talented Lisa Amowitz) and in searching for images I learned something. Royalty-free does NOT mean free free.

I guess this should have been obvious. ROYALTY free means the images are free from royalties. Meaning you don't have to keep paying for the right to use them. However, it does NOT mean that you can use these images totally free of charge. You do have to pay a usage fee, which varies in price depending on how you want to use the image.

I did not know this. I feel kinda goofy for not knowing this. I am glad I NOW know this :D

There are luckily some really great sites with amazing images you can purchase at very reasonable prices. These were the sites I got my images from:

Morguefile.com (free images)
Stock.XCHNG (free images)
iStockphoto.com (royalty free)
123rf.com (royalty free)
Dreamstime.com (royalty free)
Fotolia.com (royalty free)

And I am lucky enough to be related to an incredibly talented musician, Bret Morrell, who let me use one of his songs. It's called Place of Dreams (you can hear a sample of it HERE and on Amazon. Check it out! It's GORGEOUS!)

By the end of it all, I found some gorgeous royalty free images, and several totally free images, and the wonderful Lisa combined them all to make a book trailer I am head-over-heels in love with :D Can't wait to share it with everyone! Someday ;-D

Do you have a favorite image site?

1 comment:

Eric said...

See, we keep on learning now matter what we're doing. Glad you figured it out before you got zinged. Now I'm off to go check it all out :)