Dear Mr. Gladstone,
I know you must be a very busy person. Your work is great. I especially love your caricatures. I don't know any real artists to ask advice of so I am asking you if out of the kindness of you heart you would help a stranger and answer a question for me. I am trying to find out what would a reasonable amount be to charge someone for illustrations done for a children's book they are writing? I warned this lady that from what I've read publishers hire their own illustrators but she likes my pencil and pastel drawings. I am a 47 yr. old mom of 11 who likes to draw pencil portraits for family and friends and I have no idea what to charge.
Thank you,
Lisa
Dear Lisa,
You're right, publishers hire their own illustrators as a general rule. Does the author even have a confirmed publishing contract or are they just working on hope? The best source for pricing guidance would be the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook, also known as the Graphic Artists Guild Pricing & Ethical Guidelines. You might find it at Barnes & Noble or the Graphic Artists Guild web site. Off the top of my head I'll tell you that book illustration is usually paid for with an advance on royalties that will at least compensate you enough for your time. How much is that? It should be at least a few hundred dollars per illustration. Estimate how much time the art will take you and price it as if you depended on this occupation to support your family. You may then want to double the time estimate because your client may spend a lot of time bending your ear and asking for changes to the sketches or even finished art. Don't do changes for free if their need arises from omissions or mistakes the client makes in the original instructions. After all this estimating, Discuss your advance on royalties in terms of a total fee, not hourly charges. I know some freelancers who bill by the hour but I feel that can too easily result in an aggravated client. If you know what you're doing, you should be able to estimate what the job will cost you in time and what it's worth. If your estimates are off, it's a learning experience that should pay off next time. If the book makes a profit, you should be getting 5 or 10% of net. That & everything else should be in writing from the start. Never depend on net profit alone for compensation because some publishers, music companies, television networks and movie studios will artificially inflate the advertising expenses on their records to cheat you out of your percentage. Never do anything, even preliminary sketches, without getting paid. I always get 25% of my fee before I do sketches, the next 25% before I do finished art and the balance on delivery. Always get everything in writing with signatures. Do not sign anything that mentions "work for hire" or transfers copyright beyond "first North American printing" unless you're getting paid a fortune. Never do anything for anyone who says anything like, "I'll pay you if it sells..." or "I need to see sketches of the project before I commit any money." If they like what they've already seen of your work enough to ask you to do anything, it's time for them to pay you or they're not for real. I've been asked by countless jerks to do sketches or even finished art on the premise I'll get paid IF the project sells. In polite terms, that's called asking someone to "work on spec." In the real world, it's called slavery. There is no end of creeps out there who would waste a million of your lifetimes while you never get anywhere. There is also no end of nice people who mean no harm but just don't realize how wrong it is to ask you to do something stupid. The research & results you already did before writing me demonstrate you're not stupid. Don't let anyone treat you as if you are. If your artwork is that nice, you might be able to sell prints on ebay. I haven't tried it yet, but it's a fairly easy, cheap, low-risk way to do something with your talent. I know someone who does watercolor as a hobby & sells prints at good prices at local art shows in PA.
Q- How did you learn to draw like this?
Since I was 5 or earlier I can remember drawing to be one of my favorite hobbies. My parents kept me well supplied with #2 pencils & letter sized paper used on only one side so I could draw on the back. I used to draw a lot of the time. Unfortunately, a box full of those old drawings spanning most of my childhood were lost in a basement flood in the '80s. In 2nd grade I had a classmate who would bring in beautiful drawings that made me obsessed with learning to draw that well. (I grew up next to a farm, so had little opportunity to get caught up in much of anything else. A lot of cartoonists grow up on farms.) So, for years I knocked myself out trying to draw like that kid in 2nd grade. All the practice, plus some talent which seems to come from my Dad's side of the family (my drawings in school always did show above average aptitude) resulted in conspicuous drawing ability a year or 2 later. I was easily one of the best artists in school. Only years later, (as I learned more about the reality of human nature) did I realize that kid in 2nd grade was a pathological liar & had traced all his drawings from Disney books. He lied about some other memorable things. I haven't seen or heard of him since the middle of grade school. I remember his name but am not mentioning it in case he would sue me for libel. By the time I realized his fraud, it was far too late. I enjoyed drawing too much & dreamed of someday making the kind of money raked in by Charles M. Schulz (Snoopy, Charlie Brown) & Jim Davis (Garfield). After a childhood spent drawing monsters, spaceships, superheroes, aliens & airplanes nearly every day & taking lots of good art classes in school, I got my Bachelor's in cartooning at the School of Visual arts in NYC and have been surviving by drawing caricatures at parties & trade shows ever since. In art school, I realized I didn't feel ready to write a great comic strip like Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbs & didn't want to try anything less in that field. I decided to try getting whatever illustration work I could find with books, magazines & advertising. It's very hard to find such work at fair prices & therefore it still accounts for only a small part of my activity. With perseverence, I hope someday to break through & make enough money with illustration so I won't need to depend on caricatures anymore. Sadly, I know a guy in NY who's much older than I want to be when I get out of the party biz, & he's still doing it.
) 
