This industry is whacked. Definitely, positively, completely and definitely. While some industry commentators are desperately trying to get attention to their new pricing guidelines in a last , useless effort to save the RM model, others have just thrown sanity up in the air.

Most commercial stock companies are still around, not because they are doing good, but because their operating cost are low. Like the store around the corner. No big revenue, but then again, no big cost. And that could last forever. Once a year, they all meet up a [1] CEPIC, burning their hard earned savings, to congratulate each other on making it through another year, quite blissfully unaware that the storm has yet to come. It has just been bad weather up to now. The Hurricane has yet to hit.

And so, a huge amount of little store owners, more obsessed by cost saving then revenue making, gather around together for a few days, in a yearly bacchanal ritual of parties, drinking, table hopping and schmoozing, as if to give thanks to an indifferent God under some bored European sky. This year will be no different, as the island of Malta, lost somewhere in between its past glory and the Mediterranean sea, will host the secret and private gathering of the last believers.

Most have switch to RF, grant you, hoping that new fortunes will be made. Alas, too little too late. So in order to increase their offering, they exchange content, like kids with cards, or marbles. They become distributors of each others photographs, in a web of tangled relationships, trying to hide the frog in a bear’s costume.

They remain stubbornly confident that their model is the sole and only model and that new ideas are just hiccups. And so they sit in rows of chairs, listening to people who have never achieved anything in their careers, tell them how to operate their businesses hoping for redemption from these latter saint prophets.

Sure, there is fear and concern, but each one has its own “special” plan, carefully kept secretive and as powerful as a lottery ticket. It is most of the time disguise as a new website that will put the industry upside down, a miraculous search engine, or a new pricing scheme, that will revolutionize the industry forever. Most of the time, it is only just that, a lottery ticket.

“it use to be..” says the crowd, followed by a “remember when ?…” and ending as “ah well, what can you do…”. Getty and, although less and less Corbis, gets blame for everything, including if it rains on their little gathering. It is the cause of all evil, because God forbids, they are not the ones to revisit their decisions. It is the stubbornness of the assurance of things past. “It has worked so it will work” is CEPIC’s cry to the god’s of commercial stock. With a little adjusting of our pricing and a cool redesign of our website, we will see better future, better than we have ever seen.

There is more hope in these hearts and minds when they all leave to go back to the harsh reality of stagnant sales numbers. There is more conviction, because as a group, they agree. And we all know the majority is always right and that there is comfort in numbers . The election of George Bush as president of the United States is a living proof of that. There will be a huge celebration of conviction, an exciting confirmation of ideas past and the realization that change is just another word for stupid.

The imaginary gods of commercial stock photography will certainly be pleased as they wink to the new born microstock king.