So, I finally got some information I needed yesterday about shutterstock’s rules for stock image submissions.

I have several celebrity caricature and political cartoons that I want to sell for stock images, but they can only be sold for editorial use because they’re images of real people rather than fictional characters and I don’t have a model release. Istock won’t allow illustrations to be sold as editorial stock, but shutterstock allows this, which is just what I needed.

I had a few cartoons and caricatures of Donald Trump, one of which was clearly offensive and kept getting rejected when I submitted it. I suspected it was being rejected due to being offensive, but they never said that. They kept saying they didn’t like my description or the keywords. I gave up on it for awhile, but I tried again a few days ago and I finally got a response that it was rejected due to being an offensive subject.

Which is fair.

It’s also what I needed to know.

My new Trump caricature (below) is very neutral. It’s not quite complementary, but it isn’t offensive at all. I figure this one should easily pass shutterstock’s censors and, based on my sales of my other Trump images, it should sell reasonably well also.

[Edit: Trump Golfing is now available on shutterstock.]