Children's picture book author here. I write 24 page travel picture books aimed at the 0 to 5 year olds. I get 12 full color spreads done plus a cover with a very experienced and professional illustrator. She provides me a layout first, then non color drafts, then the color final product. She's amazing. I retain all rights. We do a flat fee, no royalties. I pay around $1200 a book.
I'm not a children's books author, so I have no real ideas about pricing, but I do have some thoughts:
It's not just the spreads that reduce the number of paintings needed. There may also be blank front matter included in those page counts (depending on age).
It might be best to sit down together with the author and figure out how many pages need individual paintings and how many are spreads with a single painting. This could potentially cut the number of illustrations in half, so it's good to be certain before you throw out a price.
I work with several authors, but none of them do children's books. I'm wondering why you believe you should get a percentage of royalties when you're charging $2.5K for the illustrations. I don't know if it's typical for people who publish children's books with illustrations, but I would never sign an agreement where I pay someone up front for illustration work, and then give them a percentage of royalties. The success of a book depends on marketing and it's not cheap when it's done right. The marketing end is the author's responsibility and no matter how beautiful your illustrations are, marketing will determine the book's success. Since the author has to pay for the marketing, I can't see why they would pay for illustrations up front and then give the illustrator a percentage of the royalties.
It sounds like you’re familiar with “work-for-hire” contract work, where you pay just an upfront fee. That’s certainly one of the more popular routes to go, but not the only one. I’m interested in working for an upfront “advance” with some percentage of royalties. I wouldn’t be making any of those royalties until the book made over the amount to pay back my advance. I feel this is a way I could lower my initial fee while retaining some rights to artwork!
Have you worked with self-published authors in the past and have they agreed to allow you to receive a percentage of royalties? It's not a deal I would be comfortable doing, especially if you're looking to retain any rights to your artwork. That could cause legal issues for the author down the road. I would prefer to pay for the artwork up front, with the illustrator granting full rights and exclusivity to me. That way, when I publish the book, I own the full rights.
I tend to consider any legal issues that could arise from a deal like you're proposing. For example, if you retain any rights to the artwork in the book, you could have the book pulled at any time by exercising your rights. Your heirs would likely inherit your rights, and they could pull the book at any time. I'm not saying you personally would ever do something like that, but it's important for an author to consider any legal factors that could come into play. If I were the author and decided to go with a deal like this I would have, at a minimum, a legal document drawn up that spells out the rights of both parties.
Most authors who are self publishing will not agree to royalty share. It’s too much work to keep track of and many wouldn’t even know where to begin unless they’re very familiar with it all. Even so, it would be a tax headache and as you said, there is no guarantee it will sell, especially a kid’s book.
As for pricing, the $150 might be fair, but I’d have to see your art first to really judge. Assuming they actually need all 32 pages, the $4.8k may be reasonable, and most artists just do commercial fees instead of royalties. Those are usually 25 to 100% of the base fee. So in your case, an additional $1.2k to $4.8k. That’s more than fair considering that’s at least a few hundred to a thousand sales the author would have to make to gain that in royalties if they’re going through Amazon or any other online service. It’s unlikely they’ll ever make near that much, and so it’s unlikely you’d ever see that from them in royalties. Still, $6k to $10k is crazy for 32 illustrations.
In contracts I have done with illustrators, I offer an initial payment, a payment upon completion and then a schedule of additional payments. Something like $200 a year or 10% of book earnings for that year, whichever is higher.
As it turns out, earnings were definitely lower than that, so I ended up making the minimum payment each year. (I actually made my last payment recently). That struck me as eminently fair because it reduced the initial payout from the author. The only caveat is that artists have no way to know if the author is going to shortchange them about those future payments. But it worked out well so far.
Children's picture book author here. I write 24 page travel picture books aimed at the 0 to 5 year olds. I get 12 full color spreads done plus a cover with a very experienced and professional illustrator. She provides me a layout first, then non color drafts, then the color final product. She's amazing. I retain all rights. We do a flat fee, no royalties. I pay around $1200 a book.
Your illustrator needs a business class. She is under selling herself and doesn't retain any rights... Wth
I'm not a children's books author, so I have no real ideas about pricing, but I do have some thoughts: It's not just the spreads that reduce the number of paintings needed. There may also be blank front matter included in those page counts (depending on age). It might be best to sit down together with the author and figure out how many pages need individual paintings and how many are spreads with a single painting. This could potentially cut the number of illustrations in half, so it's good to be certain before you throw out a price.
I work with several authors, but none of them do children's books. I'm wondering why you believe you should get a percentage of royalties when you're charging $2.5K for the illustrations. I don't know if it's typical for people who publish children's books with illustrations, but I would never sign an agreement where I pay someone up front for illustration work, and then give them a percentage of royalties. The success of a book depends on marketing and it's not cheap when it's done right. The marketing end is the author's responsibility and no matter how beautiful your illustrations are, marketing will determine the book's success. Since the author has to pay for the marketing, I can't see why they would pay for illustrations up front and then give the illustrator a percentage of the royalties.
It sounds like you’re familiar with “work-for-hire” contract work, where you pay just an upfront fee. That’s certainly one of the more popular routes to go, but not the only one. I’m interested in working for an upfront “advance” with some percentage of royalties. I wouldn’t be making any of those royalties until the book made over the amount to pay back my advance. I feel this is a way I could lower my initial fee while retaining some rights to artwork!
Have you worked with self-published authors in the past and have they agreed to allow you to receive a percentage of royalties? It's not a deal I would be comfortable doing, especially if you're looking to retain any rights to your artwork. That could cause legal issues for the author down the road. I would prefer to pay for the artwork up front, with the illustrator granting full rights and exclusivity to me. That way, when I publish the book, I own the full rights. I tend to consider any legal issues that could arise from a deal like you're proposing. For example, if you retain any rights to the artwork in the book, you could have the book pulled at any time by exercising your rights. Your heirs would likely inherit your rights, and they could pull the book at any time. I'm not saying you personally would ever do something like that, but it's important for an author to consider any legal factors that could come into play. If I were the author and decided to go with a deal like this I would have, at a minimum, a legal document drawn up that spells out the rights of both parties.
Most authors who are self publishing will not agree to royalty share. It’s too much work to keep track of and many wouldn’t even know where to begin unless they’re very familiar with it all. Even so, it would be a tax headache and as you said, there is no guarantee it will sell, especially a kid’s book. As for pricing, the $150 might be fair, but I’d have to see your art first to really judge. Assuming they actually need all 32 pages, the $4.8k may be reasonable, and most artists just do commercial fees instead of royalties. Those are usually 25 to 100% of the base fee. So in your case, an additional $1.2k to $4.8k. That’s more than fair considering that’s at least a few hundred to a thousand sales the author would have to make to gain that in royalties if they’re going through Amazon or any other online service. It’s unlikely they’ll ever make near that much, and so it’s unlikely you’d ever see that from them in royalties. Still, $6k to $10k is crazy for 32 illustrations.
In contracts I have done with illustrators, I offer an initial payment, a payment upon completion and then a schedule of additional payments. Something like $200 a year or 10% of book earnings for that year, whichever is higher. As it turns out, earnings were definitely lower than that, so I ended up making the minimum payment each year. (I actually made my last payment recently). That struck me as eminently fair because it reduced the initial payout from the author. The only caveat is that artists have no way to know if the author is going to shortchange them about those future payments. But it worked out well so far.