Illustration Friday – Farewell

The word this week is farewell, and the first thing I thought of was the movie "The Sound of Music" and the brilliant way the von Trapps escaped Austria after performing the song "So Long, Farewell."

If you haven't heard, the founder of Illustration Friday, Penelope Dullaghan, is stepping down after 10 years of running IF. I am so grateful to her for starting IF – it was one of the catalysts for getting me to illustrate after not doing so in about 12 years. Good luck Penelope and THANK YOU for sharing this great site with the world!

Great Resource About Commissioning Illustrations

There are a lot little intricacies about copyright law pertaining to illustration that are commonly misunderstood – mainly that the producer of the book needs to buy all rights to the art in order for it to be included in a book. I talk more about that in my post titled "Authors Who Plan to Self Publish – You Don't Need All Illustration Rights!"

I've found a great resource that I think anyone who works in the publishing business should read. If you are an illustrator, please read this, too. The more knowledgeable all of us are, the easier it will be to maybe get what our work is worth! It's a booklet written by illustrator Randy Gallegos and can be downloaded for free on Randy's blog.

Thanks Randy for this great resource!

New Postcard

Just sent this off to the printer last week. A goal of my whole critique group this year is to send out 4 promo mailings - Hopefully, they'll keep me accountable! One down, three to go!
I'll probably have extras, so if you would like one in the mail, email me your snail mail address.

Authors Who Plan to Self Publish – You Don't Need All Illustration Rights!

Since I started my journey as a children's illustrator, I've been approached by many authors who want me to illustrate books they intend to self-publish. And most of them think they need all rights to the illustrations - probably because there is so much misinformation out there.

Understandingly, most authors are unable (or unwilling) to pay a fair fee to an artist to illustrate a picture book ($5,000 and up for a typical 32-page book). On top of that, they expect to get all rights to the artwork for the less-than-fair fee. Traditional publishers that pay fair fees don't even do that. The industry standard to buy all rights is 100%-150% of the fair fee ($10,000 and up for a typical 32-page book).

Typically, the contract will give all BOOK rights to you, the author. Which means that the illustrator can't sell the art to anyone else to be used in another book, and you (the author) are free to use the art to promote the book. That's all you need!

Are you thinking: "What if my book gets so popular that I want to license my characters to make plush animals or action figures out of them to sell?"

I'm really glad you have so much confidence in your book - that will take you far! But, in reality, this probably won't happen, and if that highly unlikely scenario does play out, there can always be re-negotiation talks for more rights.

I think it's sad that so many first-time authors won't hire an artist who won't give them full rights. Most professional illustrators won't agree to do that, so the talent pool for the authors to choose from is shrunk to the inexperienced and unschooled in the industry. I feel like a lot of authors are really shortchanging themselves from having great art for their stories because of this mostly irrelevant issue.

If you are thinking about self-publishing, and put all the time and effort into writing and marketing your story, please consider how important the visuals are! The better the art, the bigger chance for your book to get read! And who is going to want to buy a plush of a mediocre character anyway?

Something to think about.