1. Someone will do it without requiring IP. Unless you have special expertise to offer, your negotiating position isn't strong enough. 2. per-seat licensing is

1. Someone will do it without requiring IP. Unless you have special expertise to offer, your negotiating position isn't strong enough. 2. per-seat licensing is common in Enterprise software. Though usually that's for product sales, not for work you did for them. It's not unusual to negotiate to retain IP; then you can sell it to the next client, with only minor modifications. You could negotiate for royalties and charge less upfront, but it's unusual, and they'd insist you fix the rates so the client isn't priced out of the software they commissioned. Royalties (including tiers like "up to 10,000") are a pain to track and audit. Photography is easier to track than embedded software because it is intrinsically visible. (of course, webapps make royalty tracking trivial - for the whole app, not for embedded components.... unless "rented microservices" become popular.) Photography is more artistic; code is more engineering, giving photographers a stronger negotiating position. Maybe photographers have something closer to a union?