Today I was alerted that a crafter who purchased some of my images shared them with at least one friend. I'm CERTAIN this was done without realizing this was against my Angel Policy (see my blog sidebar) but I wanted to write a post today just to make things clear.
One of my great concerns in starting to sell my art digitally is that allowing people to purchase use of my illustrations for such a very small fee will cause people to think that since it's only "a 3 dollar illustration" it's no biggie to pass it around. But when you make a purchase from me,
I am not selling you the art -- I'm just selling you the right to PERSONALLY use it on your handmade cards. If you share the digital file once, that person will feel free to share the file and pretty soon I have lost control of my art, eventually someone even takes off my signature and no one knows who drew it anymore.
If this starts to happen, I will have to stop selling my art digitally. . . and that would make me very sad because I've been having a blast.
I trust and expect that the only people who use my images are ones I have either given permissions as a freebie (freebies may not be passed along by crafters either as even freebies are covered by my Angel Policy) or people who have purchased use from my store.
Please, just ask me if you have any questions at all regarding use of my art.
Thanks!
xoMo