I am in complete agreement with you Rob. I couldn't have said it better
myself.
me

Note that not every customer is going to order prints, but that's just a
part of the business.  If you sell the negatives, you guarantee that they
will never order prints from you.  Keep the negatives and make the customer
come to you for future product.

Not only that, but it's bad business for other photographers in your area.
There's the matter of being competitive, but it's important not to devalue
the market in general, which just makes things worse for all of your
competitors and yourself as well.

Agreed 100%.  If you absolutely must sell your negatives, you'll want to
charge a premium - by that I mean several hundred or even thousands of
dollars.  Consider that you're giving up a future revenue stream - it's
worth a lot of money.  But the best advice is simply not to sell them.  If
they customer wants prints, they'll have to come to you.

I sell CDs with reduced size pictures (not really suitable for printing,
though I'm sure some people do it anyway).  I'm loathe to even do that, but
it seems to be in high demand and many other photographers in my area offer
the same service.  See how that works?  It's possible the market has been
devalued by this practice, and it's a vicious cycle - once one guy does it,
and then a few more, pretty soon they all have to just to keep up, even if
it's bad business in general.

Someone posted links to pros and cons.  I admit I didn't read the links, but
I can't imagine a single long-term pro to selling negatives, unless you're
charging an arm and a leg for them.

that's it in a nutshell.
-c.

Why Randall, do you realise that was not only a multiple word response, but
actually quite civilised too...............I bet it didn't hurt as much as
you thought it would.
But unfortunately you are yet again wrong, well in part at least.

I know its a shock , but I actually have to agree in part with Randall this
time, what he should have said was that "IDIOTS" give away their negatives,
not amateurs.
No photographer is going to part with a negative unless there is a
substantial cash reward for doing so, and  I do mean substantial. The
Negative is the copywrite, there is only one negative and if you have it,
then you own the rights to the photographs it produces, Sell, or "give away"
a negative, and you relinquish your rights to any prints produced from it,
keep it, and if you find a print that you never actually sold, nor gave
permission for it to be produced, then you have grounds for a lawsuit,
although finding unauthorised prints of your work might be difficult if they
are simply reproduced by , for instance, the parents of a school child you
took photos of, unless they are printed in a publication or
poster/advertisement.
There was a guy on one of these groups, back last year, who found one of his
photographs used in advertising literature for a bus company, he had not
given permission , nor sold the right to use the photograph in the
publication, he approached the company involved and they had been given the
photograph by a third party, but were only too willing to pay for the use of
the photograph, without any legal action having to be taken, If that guy had
passed on his negative to someone else, and the bus company had taken it
further and demanded proof that it was indeed his photograph, he would had
no remedy available to him.
With "small time work" , like family photos, its obviously going to be much
more difficult to find illegal copies of any photographs, unless you
actually go to someone's house and find a copy in their home, these kind of
photos, are more likely to be copied illegally.
So the real question here is, should photographers take this possibility
into account when selling prints to individuals, rather than businesses, and
charge more for the work involved in taking the photos and producing the
prints, to cover this eventuality, or should they sell the negative with the
prints to stop any illegal activities occurring in the first place, as we
all know that someone copying the print for his granny, isn't exactly an
international crime, And they are hardly likely to make money form it
themselves, AND, its highly unlikely that they will ever come back to you to
buy another print from you in the first place, when they can simply scan and
copy it on their PC at home and save small fortune.

I think I have rambled on enough now
Thank you

Brian.....................

rofl...great list!

Well, I and other pro photographers greatly appreciate your efforts.  I'm
sure that some shops do copy these pictures, and they should be ashamed of
themselves (though I know they won't be).  They're hurting their own
position as well as mine.

What kind of stamp to I need to get made to put on my images so that labs won't
copy them? What does it have to say? And is it a special kind of ink?