The Forge Archives

Alright, it's too late for me...since my first 2 books are about to come out, but I thought it might be "nice" if we started a thread to identify what new publishers should be paying for various services.  If, by the way, this thread already exists (numerous searches couldn't find it for me) I appologize and will delete this.

So, how much does everyone think a manufacturer should pay for:

Art:  B&W by the page:
Art:  Color by the page:
Writing:  Freelance fiction by the page:
Writing:  Freelance rules by the page:
Editing:  By the page:
Layout:  By the hour or project:

Hiya,

There are a couple of points that will make answering your questions difficult, or rather, will make even a range of answers hard to parse into anything meaningful. I hope everyone can recognize them and work around them.

1. There is no "should." Financial arrangments, standards, and schedules are so highly personalized in a hobby like ours that you'll find nearly anything imaginable

Just to use art as an example, I've received donated illustrations out of nowhere as well as commissioned highly specific illustrations.

It will be useful to see the range of what people have done, but to cast the question in terms of should is almost certainly going to generate a non-productive debate about should-ness.

2. Most of the discussion in this forum concerns independent publishing, which casts the issue of freelance creative work into a shadowy area.

Andy Kitkowski, for his Indie Awards, specifies that 50% of the actual verbal content of a game book needs to be authored by the owner for him to consider it independent. By (very minor) contrast, for eligibility for a Forge forum, I don't have a personal percent cutoff, but rather focus on control over content. Others will have their own standards regarding "acceptable" freelance participation for independent publishing.

What does this have to do with your question? Well, all Forge-like definitions of independence (i.e. self-publishing and ownership) are going to be much freer, in application, than non-independent approaches in figuring out any of these costs. Literally, what you want to do and what you can work out on a personal level is your policy.

So let's remember that, everyone, in helping out with these questions. We cannot refer to some uber-standard or even a "well, this is how it's done" generally-held principle. We can provide an idiosyncratic spectrum of what we actually do. I think that would be interesting and very helpful.

Information about Adept Press
Adept Press (me) typically pays an artist $100 for however many black-and-white illustrations of whatever size that the artist thinks it buys.

For color work (covers only, all my books are b&w on the inside), I usually propose a figure in the $300-500 range and see if the artist is interested.

Since I don't ever commission written work, there's no policy about payment for it.

For layout, I'll typically do the same as for a cover and offer a fee to a particular person; for example, each Sorcerer book (4 so far) has cost me $200 in layout fees to Paul Mason (Panurgic Productions).

Best,
Ron

For my recent projects, I've been paying pretty similarly to what Ron reports.  Covers have run $250 to $500 (the latter pieces coming from an artist who would charge anyone else $1500 - and it would still have been worth it).  

Interior b/w art has been about $50 for a full page, though mostly I work in smaller sizes.  Because I prefer pencil art, several artists have said they were happy with that, but would charge about double for more "finished" pieces.  Also, I almost always assign a list of pieces so that most artists make $200+ per project.

I either do all the writing, layout and editing myself or through volunteers.  From the offers and other reports I've seen, professional editing often costs about $.01 to $.03 per word (and about the same for writing and layout).

By the way, it was my experience that freelancers wanted a lot more before I had a book printed than they did after.  Once I had a printed, bound book to show people, I got enthusiasm instead of skepticism... and at lower prices too.

I can offer a little data on rates for custom art (at least for mine).

As a freelance artist I generally charge between $80 and $120 per full page (and corresponding fractions of that price in keeping with the size - 1/4, 1/2, 1/8 etc) for black and white interior work, depending on medium & complexity (ink or grayscale, simple figure or tavern brawl). I've been known to go less, but not too often.
I haven't had much demand for interior color work, but it would generally add only a bit more. It would depend even more on medium than b&w and I'd have to think it over on a case by case at this point.
For cover work, I could go about $300 for a full digital painting (I can also work in acrylic, but it gets pricey). A complex cover, or wrap around, might bump it up a little, but it would still be in the ballpark. I have also had people opt to use a colored full-page line drawing as a cover also, which is an economical option if it fits the look you're going for.

As artists go, I'm not the cheapest you'll find, and I'm far, far from the most expensive. Hopefully the numbers will help provide some sort of yardstick, but the only way to know for sure is to start asking other artists.

Something to think about:
A good way to get an artist to negotiate a lower price if money is tight, is to leave them the rights to the artwork so they can put it to other uses, and to leave yourself plenty of room for a flexible deadline. If I keep the rights, and I can fit the drawings in as filler when I've got a lull in my workload, it makes a world of difference in how low I'll go. If you want all rights, and you want it yesterday... that's cool, but you're going to pay for it.

Hello,

Ah! That's a really good point, Calvin. I should specify that in most cases, I don't buy the art at all - I commission its production and lease its use. I also levy no conditions (first-use, etc) on the artists' use of their art - if they did the work, they have full ownership before, during, and after I use it.

Best,
Ron

Hi,

One thing I would like to add is that another way to get a price break on art is to find a relatively unknown artist with skillz. It is harder than it sounds to do, but often unpublished folks are willing to take a little less in exchange for getting published.  Foot in the door and all that.  If you live near an art school that is a good place to start looking for folks with skillz that would be interested.

Keith

I'm just adding a datapoint.  I recently commissioned four pieces of art for this game in response to an ad here in the connections forum.  I paid $75 for the four pieces for unlimited rights to use the images with that game while leaving similarly unlimited rights for the artist to use the images for whatever.  And I have the originals (which was about half the cost).  I think I was very easy to work with and I'm very happy with how my specifications were interpreted.  I have no idea if that is at all normal.

Chris

Another option would be to purchase 2nd rights on existing artwork.  If I remember correctly, that's what "Children of the Sun" did for their cover.

Lots of good thoughts and suggestions, and special thanks to Ron for clearing up the hot-points of my original post.

I'm glad to hear the $100 page is average for interior, and that's what I've opted to pay for my first two books.  I went more pricey than I wanted to with it, but since those books will exist for the life of the product line I felt it was worth it.  Where I think I took a bath is on my covers (I'd now be embarrassed to say what I payed) but ah well, that's why it's a learning process.

The one I'm still having trouble coming up with is a "fair" rate for freelance writing...but I'll keep working on it.

Thanks for all the responses!

Quote from: GregS
.  Where I think I took a bath is on my covers (I'd now be embarrassed to say what I payed) but ah well, that's why it's a learning process.

Depends on how good the covers are.

As long as you are getting product that matches in quality what you laid out in payment, it's really hard to spend too much on a cover piece. (First impressions and all)

My cover rates (for instance) are dirt cheap as I'm not at all established as a painter and I wouldn't expect a publisher to pay me as much as an established cover artist. Someone who had more of a background and reputation in cover work would charge far more.