Today Flickr announced they have 200 million Creative Commons licensed photos on the popular photo-sharing site. Writers can explore this massive repository to find free photos to use in book covers, blog posts and book illustrations.

If you want to use these photos in your work, you should go to Flickr’s advanced search function. Scroll down and check three boxes before you search: “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content,” “Find content to use commercially,” “Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon.”

Once you have selected those three categories, you can search by keywords to find free images to use in your work. Be sure to follow the license and attribution rules dictated by the individual photographers. Follow this link to learn more about Creative Commons licenses on Flickr.