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February 19, 2008

Record $6m payday for Jennifer Lopez baby pics

By Jeffrey Blyth

A record $6,000.000 – or more than £3 million – has reportedly been promised to Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony for the exclusive rights to the first pictures of their expected twins.

The offer comes, it’s said, from People magazine which if true would set a new record for celebrity baby pictures. It’s at least two million dollars more than was paid for the first pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s baby Shiloh which ran on the cover of People magazine in June 2006.

The deal – although there is no official confirmation yet – includes sharing the pictures, and presumably the cost, with the international edition of OK.

It illustrates the competition for celebrity baby pictures which has grown fierce in recent years – especially between People, OK, US, Star, In Touch and Life & Style. There is growing evidence that such pictures do sell. The issue of People that ran the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt baby pictures sold nearly 2,200,000 copies – 45 per cent more than average. Also the issue – according to Advertsing Age – took in nearly $3 million more in advertising than usual, making the investment well worth while.

It is one reason presumably that People paid a reported $l, 500,000 – not a record but a substantial sum – for pictures of Christine Aguilera’s newborn son, featured on last week’s cover.

Is there a ceiling to what a celebrity magazine will pay? Not if Janice Min, editor-in-chief of US, is right. She told AdAge: “What we have seen with exclusive baby shots is that eight out ten of them sell well.” But then added that there is not a lot of “carry over”. Which is why, she claims, her strategy is not to go after newsstand records – but instead go for news covers that sell every week.

For the future there are several new infant pictures just waiting for the auction block. For example Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lynn Spears are all said to be expecting. So is Angelina Jolie who this time, it’s said, has a pair of twins on the way. Another record in the making?

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