If you’ve ever wondered how reposting hurts artists- yesterday I found a post from 2012ish featuring one of my Sherlock/Doctor Who pieces. That post had 17,604 notes. It wasn’t my post. My post of that art had 0 notes.
Apparently I saw the post once when it was at 6k because an artist I admired reblogged it, but at that stage I was very unwell & not experienced enough with Tumblr to realise what effect it might have.
Looking through the notes now I see that in the six years since then-
- Several people got the design as a tattoo.
- A number liked it enough to want custom designs but didn’t know how to contact me so that’s approximately £300 I didn’t get a chance to earn.
- Someone used that art in the front cover of a comic by accident and while the company fixed it after I contacted them that’s exposure that it’s far too late to capitalise on now.
If you like an artwork that you find off tumblr, please, please I am begging you search for the artist’s name and see if they do actually have a Tumblr you could reblogged from instead. If you’re an artist search your username(s) every so often to see if your work has been taken.
A few hundred quid might not seem like a lot, but that’s a few months of income for me
Reminder to those new to tumblr that there is a difference between reposting and reblogging.
Reposting is where you save the image, make your own post, and share to others. Heavily frowned upon unless you 1. get permission from the artist and 2. still give proper credit to the artist. If the artist is off-tumbr and you want to share, again, GET PERMISSION FIRST! If they say no, oh well.
Reblogging is just using the reblog button (the button with the arrows) to share posts you see. In this case reblogging is actively encouraged because it can help spread the art of people you love while the artist still gets notes, views, and proper credit.