When doing permissions for Transparent Designs, I had a really great exchange with someone from IBM who not only gave me permission but went to THEIR archives and sent me a higher quality, cleaner scan than I would have been able to make myself.
If you are under the impression that personal contact with other people for the purposes of reasonable negotiation can somehow be ceded to third-party companies or, worse yet, automated systems…allow me to introduce you to the process of getting permission to reproduce images for academic books.
Meanwhile, another tech company that had an a semi-automated system gave me a flat no with no explanation.
Another with a semi-automated system did eventually reach a person who seemed to have no idea what I was asking about.
A third-party publisher with an automated system sent me an form generated email saying they wanted thousands of dollars for a hand-drawn diagram from a 40 year old textbook.
A cartoonist sent me a very warm response but said that the copyright was owned by the publisher, who I then learned had been bought out by a third-party, and that third-party never responded to any of my queries.
Jan 14, 2026 14:08All of these exchanges had various impacts on the final manuscript. In some cases, I added in depth descriptions (and had to cut other things to stay under my word count). In other cases, I cut the discussions of the visuals entirely.
