For a lot of artists, the hardest thing about the job is pricing your work. Trying to figure out how much a piece should cost, whether it’s a picture book, an editorial illustration, or even a commission is so complicated. You don’t want to go too high and scare off a client, or unknowingly go too low and screw yourself over. And if a client comes to you with their own quote, you might be afraid to accept because you’re worried that they’re ripping you off. Pricing your work can be SO stressful…
But it doesn’t have to be.
When I first started my career I had no idea what to charge for my work, and I’d always dread hearing ‘what are your rates’ from a prospective client. I’d usually end up pulling a number out of thin air and hoping it was ok. Or if a client came to me with a project and told me what their budget was, I’d just accept it, assuming that this was what illustration costs, and not even realizing that I had the option to negotiate higher.
Now that I look back at what I had been paid for my first few projects, I realize I had been severely undercharging myself. Unfortunately, this is pretty common because I feel like pricing is not really talked about in our industry or taught in school. I’ve wanted to make this video for a while now because I hope that it might provide some insight for both new, and more experienced artists. I’ve been freelancing full time for five years now, and since then I’ve managed to pick up a thing or two on how to answer that stressful question so I hope this video might be helpful to you guys and give you the tools to be priced fairly.
Today, I’m going to go in-depth into how you as an artist should be pricing your work. I’m going to be talking about the difference between hourly rates and flat fees, how to calculate your rate, what factors determine your fee, I’ll share a bunch of resources, do a Q&A and so much more.
Before we talk about pricing I want to cover something important. I feel like this point has been talked about to death and I might be saying something you already know, but:
Should you ever work for free?
NO! NO!!! Absolutely not.
You should never work for free! You deserve to be paid; maybe you’re not raking in the big bucks at this point in your career, but you should at least be getting paid a living wage. Illustration is a valid career, and is so important, despite what some people might say. Art is all around us in the media we consume, every book, movie, advertisem*nt, infographic, and website, like it’s literally everywhere. It makes me so mad when I hear people argue that, if you’re being paid for art you’re a sell-out and you should be doing it for the passion. Or that, it’s so easy, I could do it too. But the fact is, they can’t, otherwise they wouldn’t be contacting you in the first place. And you’re not just being paid for the finished product, you are being paid for your skill, your time, and your experience. Like, you wouldn’t ask your plumber or accountant to work for free, don’t ask an artist to either!
I’ve seen this a lot with ‘smaller’ clients, like regular people asking for a commission, but unfortunately, I’ve seen big companies try to get away with it too. Some clients might insist that they don’t have the budget to compensate you at this time, buuuuut this would be an amazing portfolio piece, that it would look great on your resume, or offer you exposure instead of payment, which is still just as bad. Even if it’s for someone with 100k followers, exposure still doesn’t pay the bills, and honestly, I’ve noticed that it rarely translates to new clients because the right people aren’t seeing your work.
Instead of working for a client for free, you can spend that same amount of time marketing yourself and creating new pieces for your portfolio of subject matter that you’re actually passionate about.
Similarly, in some projects, a client will propose a job to you but will ask for spec work first, basically asking for a sample that would help them decide if you’re the right fit for the project. You could create the sample and still not be guaranteed the gig and they’d hire someone else, and while some clients will pay you for spec work, some don’t. It would be worth trying to negotiate a sample fee or you could offer a smaller sized sample that would take less time, but at the end of the day, you’ll have to determine for yourself if you’re excited enough about the project to risk not being paid if it doesn’t go through.
Also, I wanted to reaffirm why I’m making this video. Being an artist is a valid career and we deserved to be paid for our work, but we also deserve to be paid FAIRLY for the amount of work we put in and our experience. As freelancers, our jobs are pretty isolated and it can be hard to connect with other artists for help and establish a community especially when we’re starting out, so we end up in a situation where lots of newer artists aren’t aware of what standard illustration rates are and clients will try to take advantage of that because they’re always going to try to pay you as little as possible. When I was starting out, if a client came to me saying “we want to hire you for x project and we’ll pay you x amount’, I’d accept it without questioning it because I assumed this is what illustration costs, when actually they were underpaying me and I had no idea.
This is why I’m creating this video, to try to provide resources so that you are able to price yourself fairly. It's not only important for yourself, but for the industry as a whole. When you undercut yourself, you end up lowering standard rates for everyone. I know some creatives are afraid that if they are charging too high, the client might just find someone cheaper to do the job. If everyone has this mindset, we end up unconsciously contributing to a situation in which companies will try to pay us less and less.
Now, I don’t want to blame artists who are undercharging themselves, I know this is a very tricky situation and you have to provide for yourself however you can. At the end of the day, the actual problem is big companies that are exploiting artists. And I’ll be honest it’s also the fault of experienced artists who are not actively trying to strive for wage transparency. Because I have the experience and I am in a relative position of power, I want to use my influence to help new artists, and I hope that collectively we can raise rates for all artists, especially those in marginalized communities and those outside of First World countries.
OKAY. Now I’m gonna talk about pricing.
Terminology
In the illustration industry, you’re either going to be paid a flat fee or a rate.
A rate is time-based pricing. Basically that the price is determined by how much time you spend working on it. From what I’ve seen the rate can either be an hourly rate, or a day rate depending on the client and project. This is a number that you’d quote at the start of the project, like say $65 per hour or $250 per day. And as you’re working you keep track of your hours and at the end of the project, you would send an invoice for the calculated amount. Sometimes you and the client might agree that you would only work a certain number of hours to stay within the client’s budget.
Flat fee on the other hand is value-based pricing, which is based on the deliverables, or the value, you provide to the client, rather than the time. You determine this number based on the artwork's ‘worth’ and there are a lot of factors that go into this, like how many people are seeing this, who the client is, who owns the rights, and so on.
This is going to be a payment that encompasses the entire project and would be a number that is agreed upon in the contracts before you start working. Like, let’s say, in the contract you agree upon 1000 dollars for a magazine cover.
Sometimes the entire fee is paid to you at the very end, and sometimes it is paid in installments, like 25% upon signing the contract, 25% on submitting the sketches, and 50% upon final delivery.
If you’re able to negotiate for installments, especially if it’s a long project, that works much better for you so you have some consistent income coming in to support you, rather than a huge lump all at the end.
Also, in publishing, this flat fee is called an advance. And royalties would be separate from this.
Flat Fee vs Hourly???
How do you decide which method is right for you?
Now in my experience, 99% of my illustration projects have been flat fee. I think this is usually the case for illustration gigs, but might be different depending on the specific industry.
The flat fee allows you to be more specific to the circ*mstance because as I mentioned already, a lot can determine what you’re being paid so the number might be different for every project. An hourly rate doesn’t really account for those details since it’s one number that fits a broad use.
Personally, I prefer a flat fee, it’s a lot easier for me to figure out project by project, and as someone who is a very fast worker, I actually would end up getting paid less if I worked hourly because I’d complete the work in less time. It basically punishes me for being efficient.
Flat fee also can be more appealing for the client. With a single number, they can determine whether your quote fits within their budget.
On the other hand, with an hourly rate, you can also make sure you’re being accurately paid for your time.
Sometimes with flat fees, you don’t account for exactly how long you’re going to be working on the project. You might agree to $1000 for a magazine cover, but by the end of the project somehow you ended up working on this cover way longer than you intended, either because you incorrectly estimated how long it would take, or things like unexpected delays and revisions.
With hourly, you don’t have to worry about estimating the time you’re going to spend working in advance.
My freelance character design work is where I prefer to take on an hourly fee. This is mostly because there are so many revisions and meetings and research and waiting for approvals where if I’m not charging for my time I get underpaid.
Hourly rates are also pretty simple to calculate and are a nice fixed number for all of your projects. For my character design work, I’m pretty much always getting paid the same rate regardless of the animation studio I’m working with so I can get away with having just one number for my rate.
I would say that hourly rates are better suited for ongoing clients, or for projects that don’t really have a predetermined end date, so you can be a bit more flexible with the price. And flat fees are better for a project where you know exactly what the timeline and needs are.
Let’s go over Hourly Rates First, and how we would calculate it, and then we’ll go over flat fees.
Hourly Rates
Let’s calculate your hourly and day rates!
I wanted to preface this by saying that I’m not really sharing any new information on calculating rates. There are a lot of rate calculators online, some explaining it much better than I can. So you might find better resources for that elsewhere but I’m going to share this one that I thought made the most sense to me. I am heavily referencing this article by Xavier Coelho-Kostolny. Please show them some love, they’re on Twitter @xavierck3d.
So the first thing you need to do is figure out what you want your annual salary to be.
What do you want to earn in a year as an illustrator? This should be a realistic number as well, as much as I’d love to be earning Beyonce figures, that’s not gonna happen. I’m not going to be aiming for one million dollars, but at the same time, I don’t want to be underpaying myself either. This income is something I need to be able to survive on.
You might already have a number in mind, but if you’re struggling to figure it out, the best way is that first, you want to keep in mind all of your annual household expenses. This includes things like your rent, utilities, health care, travel expenses, student loans, groceries, insurance, and so on.
Write down all these types of bills and recurring payments you’d see in a year then add them all up. Then you add on about 10–15% of that expenses number for safety payments, like for unexpected bills and rent increases.
If you have business expenses, add that in as well. This includes any subscriptions like photoshop, office supplies, studio space, art supplies, accounting fees, and your website.
You also want to think of personal spending; things like entertainment, clothing, and leisure. If you have an idea of how much you usually spend annually on personal spending, add that in as well. If you don’t know, you could add in another 25-40% instead.
Finally, as a self-employed artist, you are gonna end up losing a chunk of your income through taxes. To prepare for that, we’re going to add on another 25-40%. This number is going to be different depending on where you live so you’ll have to research what your local tax laws are to determine what that percentage is going to be.
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Obviously, this number will be different for everyone, especially if you are supporting family members, your local currency, or if you’re living in a city with a high cost of living so you want to account for that.
This number could be your annual salary, but technically this is the minimum you need to earn in a year to just survive. From here, you can determine whether you want to increase it to fit what you think you should be earning in a year.
Like, ideally I’d want to set aside some money every year, so I might add another $500 for my savings.
Finally, you should adjust your salary based on your experience and skill level. I wouldn’t want to pay myself the same salary now that I would have earned when I started my illustration career. After five years of this job, I consider myself to be a more in-demand professional illustrator. So let’s say I bump up my salary to $60,000 instead.
Ok, we now have our annual salary, let’s figure out our rate.
There are on average 261 working days in a year. Ideally, we want to subtract a few days for holidays, vacation time, and sick days because it’s important to set aside some time for breaks. Let’s say we decide to work 231 days in a year.
Now we divide your annual salary by 231. That gives us our day rate
For our example, that’s $60,000 / 231 which is $259.74.
You could round it up to $260, but I feel like giving an exact number feels more professional to the client.
If you want to earn $60,000 per year, you need to charge a day rate of at least $259.74, and you can’t go below that.
And for our hourly rate, divide your day rate by 8.
This gives me $32.5 per hour!
Hurray! You have a rate!
This number is the minimum I need to reach my annual salary goals, but you can definitely increase this rate depending on the circ*mstances.
For example, when a client is asking for a rush job. Their project might require you to complete it over the weekend, late into the night, or to prioritize it over your other projects to get it done within their deadline. You should definitely increase the rate by 25 or 50% if the turnaround is urgent to make up for the stress and inconvenience. The faster they want it, the higher you charge.
You can also price your revisions higher as well; this will discourage clients from taking advantage of you when asking for multiple needless changes to the illustrations and wasting your time. You could agree in the contracts that 2 rounds of revisions are included in your original rate, but additional rounds would be subject to the higher revision rate.
You also have the asshole rate. I didn’t really have a name for it before until I read it in Xavier’s article, I just called it the fine-I’ll-do-it rate.
But if you are ever contacted for a project that you really don’t want to do and you’d be fine if you didn’t get the job, like maybe the subject matter isn’t interesting, or the client is a jerk, you charge a number that really gets you excited. This should be at least double your usual rate. So that if somehow the client accepts, at least you’re getting paid well for a ‘fine I’ll do it’ job.
Finally, you might have to adjust your rate depending on how much work is coming in. The calculation assumes you’d be working 8 hours a day, for 231 days in a year. But as any freelancer knows, work is not always consistent. So if you feel like the number of paychecks coming in are kind of sporadic and you’re not reaching your salary goals, it would be good to increase your rate to make up for it.
Because my work is a bit more spaced out, I might decide to increase my rate to $55/per hour
I hope this calculation was helpful! As I said, there are a few other rate finders out there, some of which are more simple and some that aren’t, so you might end up finding a different formula that works better for you.
If you’re bad with numbers, the great thing is that Alexandria Neonakis created a spreadsheet based off of Xavier’s article It includes all the details I just mentioned, and so if you input all your expenses it’ll work its spreadsheet magic and churn out your rate for you. I probably should have mentioned this at the beginning, but oh well!
Anyway, now that we have your hourly rate sorted, let’s try to figure out Flat Fees.
Flat Fees
As I mentioned, hourly rates are determined by how much time you spend on your work. It’s pretty consistent from project to project. You’ll know that if you spend 20 hours on an illustration you’ll always be paid the same amount, regardless of who the client is or what the subject matter is.
You could use the rate calculator to find out what your flat fee would be. Theoretically, if you were contacted for a book cover and you estimate that it would take you 60 hours to complete, you just multiply your rate by 60 and you have your flat fee. But when it comes to commercial illustration, this model ends up working against you. This is because a lot more factors come into play besides how much time you spend working on it.
I have worked on a lot of books, but even for the same amount of work, I can be paid wildly different amounts from project to project. For example, let’s say I work on two book covers for two completely different clients. It takes me the exact same amount of time to work on both of them, and if I use my hourly rate calculator I could estimate that I should be paid at least $1800.
But Publisher A offers me $2000 and Publisher B offers me $5000.
Now, why is that? Is Publisher B overpaying me? Am I being cheated by Publisher A? Not at all, when you look at the factors that come into play.
Here we compare the two clients and details of the project.
We find out that Publisher A is an indie publisher, that they are printing 10,000 copies of the book, and that they only want the US rights to the artwork.
However, Publisher B is a major publisher with a larger budget, they’re printing 100,000 copies and they want worldwide rights. Obviously because Publisher B is going to be selling a lot more copies, they’re going to make more money than Publisher A, which means your artwork is bringing them more value and that you should be charging them more.
This is why Value-based pricing should be calculated differently for each client, and is dependent on how it is used by the client and how much value it brings them.
Here are the Pricing Criteria that you should consider when calculating the fee:
Size of the Client
Just as I said in the previous example, the size of the client is going to be the biggest factor. If you’re doing a product illustration for example, a giant supermarket chain is going to be able to pay you much more than a small business owner selling jams at a farmers market.
Client Location
I’m based in Canada but I’ve lived abroad for most of my life and I know that budgets are going to change drastically depending on where the client is located. The pricing is going to vary based on the cost of living in the country, the value of the currency, and unfortunately on how much value the culture places on art. That last point is really sad and is difficult to solve because it’s a cultural mindset. I remember being in high school in Pakistan and someone commissioned me for a hand-drawn portrait. It took me several weeks, and I had to really convince them to pay me 1000rs for it. I thought it was a lot of money at the time, but 1000 rupees is 10 us dollars, which is nothing for a commission and how much time I spent on it. Also If I tried to charge my current picture book rates back home now, I’d be laughed at for trying to charge that much for ‘art'.
I think this can only really change if everyone collectively raises their prices and stands together for fair payment, but obviously, this is easier said than done.
Sorry for the tangent.
The US in general has a bigger illustration budget than other countries do, both because of the value of the dollar and because a lot of major companies are based there and have that kind of budget available. This is why even though I’m based in Canada, 99% of the work I take on is from US clients. US publishers have a larger budget than Canadian publishers and even larger than international publishers. If you’re taking on a lot of work from international clients, you might have to manage expectations.
How Many People Are Seeing it
The more people that are seeing your artwork, the more value it brings to the client. This could depend on how the illustration is being used. Is it for a poster for a local band? Or is it for a national newspaper? More eyes means more payment. This also extends to geography. Creating an illustration for an ad shown worldwide will pay much more than an ad shown just in one country.
Size and Location
Size and Location also relates to how many people are seeing your work. Where the illustration is placed will change how much you should charge.Obviously the larger the artwork is, the more expensive it would be. But it would also be more expensive the more prominent and visible it is.
For example, in editorial illustration, there are quite a few locations the art could be placed.
When thinking of a magazine, from largest to smallest you have the cover, and then inside you have two page spreads, a full page, half page, quarter page, and then a spot. You could create the exact same image for each of these, but each will cost a different amount because of how much space it takes up, and where it is located. Because the cover is the first thing that customers will see and is what convinces them to buy it, it brings the most value and would be priced the highest. Once you get into the magazine, spreads take up more real estate than full page illustrations and would be priced higher and so on.
Distribution
Again, the more people are seeing the work, the more it’s gonna cost the client.
How many copies of the picture book are being made? What is the circulation of the magazine? How many stores is your product going to be sold in? The more copies are being made the higher the cost.
Rights
This can be a whole other topic, but basically, when you are creating an illustration for a client, you aren’t exactly selling the illustration itself, but you are selling the rights to use and reproduce the artwork. This is essentially what we’ve been talking about until this point. You still own the rights to the artwork, but in the contract, you determine where and when the client can use the artwork; how many copies, how many languages, how many countries, and so on.
The more rights you allow the client, the higher the price. So let's say you illustrate a picture book and afterward the client asks for permission to use the artwork to create bookmarks for marketing for example, or the right to use the artwork for a paperback release, for each of these additional rights you need to be compensated fairly for them.
How long the client can use the artwork and how exclusive it is also determined by the price. For a magazine, for example, they might only have the rights to the illustration for one printing, and then you have the option of licensing that illustration out and reselling it. But a picture book could have it for 10 years. The longer a client wants to hold the rights, the more you charge. And if they’re asking for exclusive rights, that's potential licensing money you are missing out on, so you better increase that fee.
Of course, some clients will want to buy-out and own all the rights to the artwork from you and pay you one fee to avoid paying for additional rights.
This is called work-for-hire, and if the client owns all the rights to the art, they will be allowed to use it literally however they like. I’ve done a few picture books that were work-for-hire, and this means that they can alter the artwork without notifying me, create merchandise, adapt it into a movie, do literally whatever they want without paying me additionally for these new uses, involving me or even crediting me if they wanted to.
Most illustration projects have pretty standard licensing periods, like I think with editorial it’s one year, and some other industries might have different time periods. Generally there is no need for a client to have full rights to the work, and you should try to negotiate away from it.
However there are some instances where you can’t avoid it; for example if you are working on a project which involves IP (intellectual property), it’s probably going to be work-for-hire.
If a client insists on buying all the rights to the art, you better increase that fee a lot to make up for it, at minimum by 100 or 200%.
Work Load
While we aren’t entirely using the time-based pricing method for flat fees, time still plays a factor in how much you should be charging. A 32 page picture book would take more time than a 12 page book. Full color illustrations generally take more time than black and white illustrations and would be charged more. And we can add rush fees in again if the client is asking for a tight turnaround.
OKAY. So clearly there are a ton of factors that determine what illustrations should cost. I’ve given you a ton of rules on how to adjust your pricing for each situation, but I haven't given you an actual number to start for your baseline.
But not to worry, this is when we get into our next point:
Pricing and Researching your Flat Rate
So how do we figure out what an illustration should cost. Let’s say a client comes to me saying they want me to illustrate a picture book.
When a client approaches you for a project, it will either go one of two ways. Either the client lets you know what their budget is beforehand, or they’ll ask you for a quote.In editorial illustration and in publishing, especially for larger companies, they will already have a quote in mind because they have a history of how much they usually spend, and in editorial, there are pretty standard rates across the board of how much spreads and covers costs. If they come to you with the flat fee already, you have a base number to start with to determine whether this is a fair price or not and you can negotiate further if you feel like it could be higher. But if they ask you for a quote, it is a bit trickier.
The first thing we need to do regardless is getting some more information. You never want to give an estimate or a quote without knowing all the details. If they haven’t given you a quote, see if you can find out what their budget is, sometimes they’ll share it, and sometimes they’ll insist on asking for your quote because no one wants to set the price first and go too high haha.
So we email back and ask for more details to help calculate our fee; like what the workload is like, what their usage is, and so on.
Let’s say that this is a mid-sized publisher in the US, it’s not one of the Big 5 but still would have a decent budget. They are asking for a 32-page picture book, illustrated in full color. They want world-wide rights, it’s not work-for-hire and they’re asking for 5 months to complete the project.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but if you have an agent, you don’t have to worry about pricing at all because your agent will take care of it. They would come up with the fee based on their own insight in the industry, or consider if the clients own budget is fair or not. They’d also try to negotiate the fee to be higher and fairer to the artist. I know this information doesn’t help you if you don’t have an agent, but I just wanted to share this option if you didn’t know about it already. I have two videos talking about the world of agents and how to get one, which I’ll link below.
I have an agent but as I’ve mentioned in the past, she only deals with publishing-related projects and for all other inquiries I have to deal with them myself.
Anyway, let’s say you don’t have an agent. After you find out these details, there are four steps we take to come up with our flat fee.
1. Hourly Rate
I know I said that time-based pricing doesn’t work well for commercial illustration because it doesn’t account for rights and usages, but we are still spending time on this picture book and finding out our calculated rate for this project will give us a starting point for the minimum we need to charge. I could estimate how much time I’ll spend on this book and times it by my rate. Let’s say I end up with $5000. I now know that I should be earning at least this much for this book if I want to reach my salary goals.
2. Past Experience
Pricing your work becomes easier the more you do it and the more experience you have. As you get more projects under your belt you’ll have a better understanding of what the going rates are but you’ll also have a jumping-off point. Look back at your previous projects. Maybe you haven’t worked on a 32-page picture book before, but you’ve worked on a 10-page board book for $8000. Using that information we know that we should definitely be making more money for our longer book project. However, the board book you worked on was for a much bigger publisher than our new client, so the new fee isn’t going to be a huge increase because we are dealing with a smaller budget this time. So we kind of have to keep in mind these little differences to come up with our new fee.
If you don’t have similar past projects that’s ok, we now move to step 3
3. Ask your Colleagues
You might not have worked on a picture book before, but maybe one of your friends or colleagues has and you can use the steps above to see if they’ve done something similar. I mentioned this before, I think it’s really important to be part of the online art community and to make genuine friendships with your peers. And not in the sense of trying to use people to gain something, but actual friendships and you can help each other out and support each other.
I was recently approached for a board game project and I had NO clue what to price for something like it. Thankfully I had an acquaintance who worked on board games all the time and I was able to get some information on what the industry standards are like.
I find that usually artists are very giving and willing to help others out, and I think it’s important to get rid of the mindset of ‘you’re competing with all other artists, it’s you against them’ when actually the mindset is that we should all be supporting each other, and it's us against capitalism.
4. Research
Ok hopefully you have some estimates already, but if you don’t we are going to work a bit harder and do some research. There are a few resources I’m going to share which include industry pricing for illustration.
The most well-known is the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook, also known as the Gag Guide. I’ve included a link to the book below, but you can also try to see if it’s in your library.
This is an incredible resource and definitely worth the money. It includes sample contracts and forms, business and legal resources, and most importantly, a list of salary and rates for every kind of art related job.
They cover a lot of industries, mostly related to graphic design, but they also have a small section for illustration which is really helpful. Within illustration we have categories for editorial, books, fashion, packaging, medical, technical, greeting cards, and more. They get really specific too like if you look into the section for art for retail, you have pricing for things like apparel, shoes, toys and homegoods.
The pricing information is collected through a survey the Guild does, so for each section, they will share a range of what the flat fees could look like for this category, from the lower end to the higher end based on the results they collected.
The chart might also include additional information related to royalties, licensing fees, and work for hire.
So if I wanted to use this book, I’d try to search up picture books in the index and see what the pricing chart tells me. Since my example is not a major publisher, but not an indie one either, and because of my experience level, I might pick a number that falls mid-way in the range it tells me.
I first saw this book when I was in art school, and I actually don’t own a copyright now because I was waiting to buy the latest edition, and it looks like the newest one is coming out this year so yay!
I will note that I don’t think you need to buy the newest book, I don't know how big of a difference there is between the 2021 and the 2018 editions. I assume the rates will be more accurate to our time and it will probably account for emerging industries. The 2021 book is $60 which is a lot of money so I’m sure that the older versions will still serve its purpose, just don’t get like the 2007 edition that would be too outdated. I’ll just add that this book would count as a business expense so you can definitely write it off in your taxes.
Anyway, there are a few drawbacks to the book. The first is that all the rates in the book are standard professional rates. Which, of course, is technically a good thing. Ideally you want to charge these fair rates for your illustration projects. But they don’t really take into account smaller clients that might not have this kind of budget.
The rates can also feel nonspecific at times. You might see that one of the category price ranges is like $200-$20000. And it's so vague so you have no idea what to do with that information and where you’d fall in that range.
This book is also created by a US guild, and so they surveyed American artists and the currency is in USD. As I mentioned, US rates are generally higher than rates in the rest of the world, so the pricing might feel too high for your country's standards.
When I first read this book in college when I was living in Europe, I couldn't BELIEVE these prices. Not only because of the currency difference but also because I couldn’t believe that an artist could be paid these prices. For example, the book mentions that illustrating a full calendar for a client should cost between $6000-$12000. At the time I thought that was insane; not because an illustrator doesn’t deserve that kind of payment, which hell yeah we do, but more that I couldn’t believe that this is what the industry was like and that there are clients out there willing to pay that kind of money.
Now that I read the book again, I think these fees are totally fair and standard for the industry, but I think it does skew to those bigger clients that are US-based. I still think this is a great resource; You might need to adjust these prices to fit your clients’ size and country’s currency, but at least you’ll have a base number to go off of.
Similar to the Graphic Artists Handbook, we have a UK version called the Association of Illustration. The AOI is an organization dedicated to providing resources and information to illustrators. On their website there are a lot of resources that are really helpful, covering topics like contracts, copyright, self-promotion, and pricing.
Some of them are free to view, and others, including the pricing calculator, are included as part of their yearly membership.
There are several different levels for membership; including students, illustrators, and an option for portfolio promotion. While I don’t have an AOI membership, I have heard good things about it and it could be worth looking into. While you don’t have to be UK-based to be a member and a lot of their information is universal, their pricing is based on UK standards and currency which might be more helpful for those you across the pond.
We also have litebox.info. This is a newer website, and definitely my favourite resource. Litebox is a volunteer lead group dedicated to wage transparency. Also, they’re 100% free which is so awesome!!
They share a ton of resources and I also suggest you follow their twitter since they’re always posting advice.
Anyway, their best resource is the rate finder on their website. The rate finder is a database of illustration pricing that real artists have submitted. Tons of professional artists have anonymously submitted their past projects, who they worked for, how much they were paid, if they were paid on time and what the overall experience was like. I’ve submitted a few rates myself in the past.
I find that this website is the most helpful because of how detailed it is. The rate finder has a search bar, so I could search ‘picture book’ and be shown a list of all their picture book rate submissions. I can see a full range of different pricings, going as low as $1000 to as high as $50,000. I can see if any of them are for 32-page picture books, and most importantly if there are any submissions from my specific publisher so I can see what their usual rates have been like.
For example, if I was contacted by The New Yorker for a spot illustration, I could search ‘new yorker’ and see what people have been paid in the past.
I find the rate finder to be super fascinating. You can see how pricing changes for each industry, like with picture books we saw that it's kind of all over the place, but with editorial it’s pretty standard rates across the board.
Apart from US companies they do have examples from international ones as well which is super helpful, but I should note that they don’t have as many at this point, but that should change over time. Because the database is dependent on submissions, the more people submit, the more useful the information is, so if you have past professional experience please consider submitting your rates!
Another smaller resource is Lisa Maltby’s Guide to Pricing Illustration. Lisa is a UK based illustrator, and has a blog with illustrator resources and articles. She conducted a pricing survey in 2019, where 210 illustrators across the world submitted their rates. Lisa created a really interesting article dissecting the information which I’ll link to below. After creating the survey, she later created this guide which includes information on how to price your work and rates collected from other artists.
This is a much newer resource but I think it is so important. This is the Third Eye Collective, which is a twitter page but they also have a discord. This collective was created to support ‘third world’ artists, in an industry that is heavily focused on North America and Europe. Global artists are routinely underpaid, both by their local markets but also from western companies that will try to take advantage of them by paying them less than ‘first world’ artists. While their resources are open for everyone regardless of where they are from, their server is specifically built for latinos, asians, africans and pacific islanders in mind, and to try to celebrate these places and peoples as much as possible.
Their goal is not to ignore their global origins or to “copy" the first world, but to celebrate themselves with pride at the same time as being on level footing with the first world market. At the time of this video, the collective is still in its early stages but their goals include creating a database of information, an faq, and a network of third world artists. Their discord is also there to connect artists and provide support and guidance. I’ll link both below.
When I was preparing for this video, I asked my Instagram followers what questions they wanted me to answer, some of which I’ll get to at the end of the video. But a lot of people asked if I talk about specific rates; like if I could straight-up share exact numbers of what illustrations cost. As you have learned, it’s hard for me to share specific numbers because there are so many factors that can change it. I can tell you that picture books can cost between $5000-$50,000, but that doesn’t really help anyone because it’s such a huge range depending on a bunch of little details.
And as much as I’d like to share what my past rates have been, unfortunately, I can’t, at least not publicly.
That being said, wage transparency is still super important and helps new artists understand what going rates are, especially for artists of color.
The reason I’m telling you this is that I have one last resource. There actually was a hashtag that spread over on twitter last year, which was #WhatPublishingPaidMe which was started by a black YA author called L.L. McKinney. (as well as #WhatAnimationPaidMe). The hashtag had writers and illustrators sharing what they were paid for the different books they worked on. This was in response to the fact that People of Color and other marginalized creators are largely underpaid and under-represented in the publishing world in comparison to white and male creators.
Anyway, I participated in the hashtag and shared my advances, but eventually I had to take it down because I didn't want my future clients to refer to that list I made when approaching me for projects. I don’t want to end up in a situation where I quote a price to them, and they go, oh well but in your pricing list you charged this much. My fees are going to go up every year in relation to my experience level, and I didn’t want to be tied down by my publicly posted old rates.
However, a lot of posts in the #publishingpaidme hashtag are still up and available, and if you are approached for a publishing project, you’ll be able to see what other people have been paid before.
Ok! So hopefully with all this research, you have enough information to determine what your flat rate should be. Let’s pretend that after doing all this research I’ve determined that a fair fee for this 32 page picture book is $11,000. From here you and the client can negotiate until you settle on a price that is fair to you both.
While we’re on the subject of picture books I also wanted to very briefly talk about royalties. So in publishing, in some projects, the client will pay you royalties in addition to your advance. I’m not going to talk about percentages because that’s a whole other topic but basically, the way it works is that once the book is released, you won’t earn any royalties until your advance has been paid back. So let’s say I have this picture book offer for $11,000, and I’m supposed to earn 5% in hardcover royalties. So I have to wait until I earn $11,000 in royalty payments first which goes to the publisher, before I actually get paid my own royalties. Does that make sense? The publisher basically wants to earn back what they gave you for the project before you can earn royalties.
So because this is a small percentage and a large advance, it can take a long time before you ‘earn out’ your advance. In the majority of picture books, you never earn-out.This is why you want to negotiate for as high of an advance as possible instead of relying on royalties.
Secondly, this is so predatory, but if a client ever gives you an offer where they say that they don’t have the budget to pay you now, but will be able to pay you in so much royalty once the book or the app or whatever business becomes a success, RUN AWAY. There is absolutely no guarantee that this project will make money, and you might end up doing all that work for nothing. Always insist on upfront payment for a project, no exceptions.
Now let’s take this into the real world with some examples.
Scenario One
A publisher wants you to illustrate an educational textbook for $8000.
At first this sounds like a great offer; $8000 is a lot of money! But on further questioning, you find out that they are looking for 200 spot illustrations for the book in a lineless style that typically takes you a lot of time, and when you do the math, that ends up being $40 per illustration. If you spend 5 hours on each illustration, that’s only $8 an hour.
This offer doesn’t make that much sense anymore, and needs some negotiation.
There are a few directions you could go from here. You could negotiate to increase the overall fee to reflect the workload, or to reduce the number of illustrations or even to ask if they’d be open to a more simplistic style that would take less time per illustration to complete.
Scenario Two
A magazine is interested in a quarter page illustration due in a few days and they are asking you for a quote.
Before this video, you might have been stuck on how to answer this since they’re asking you for a number, but let’s use what we’ve learned so far!
If we have the gag guide, we can quickly search to see what quarter-page illos go for, or search up on litebox. Searching it up, we can see that spots can range from $250-500. If you’re a newer artist you might prefer to skew on the lower end, but keep in mind that they are asking for a fast turnaround. Considering that, we can email back saying that it’s $500 to account for the rushed deadline, but could negotiate to $250 if they are able to extend the deadline by a week.
Scenario Three
A local small business owner is looking for an illustration for their website header
This is a much smaller client than the others we’ve mentioned and would have a smaller budget as well. You could choose to charge by your hourly rate here, and calculate your fee based on how long you’d work on it. Even for a small job like this it’s important to still have a contract in place, and clear up any details before you get to work. For example, would they plan to use that illustration for additional branding in the future, like for packaging or marketing? If so, the illustration is providing more value to them and should be charged accordingly. If they’re looking to own the full rights to the work, remember to double or triple your calculated fee.
I mentioned a lot of negotiation in my scenarios, and unfortunately since my video is ridiculously long already, I can’t cover negotiation today, but don’t worry, it’s going to be the focus of my next video, so keep an eye out for that because negotiating with clients is an extremely important skill.
We’re almost at the end of the video, thank you for staying with me this long! The last thing I wanna cover is a little Q&A, and basically answering any questions that didn’t really fit in the previous categories.
When can you start pricing your art?
If you are selling your work, you absolutely should have a price tag on it, like even from day one. Don’t work for free! But if you mean like, when do you feel like you’re ready to start selling your art or looking for illustration work… I think it’s when you reach a point where you are confident about your abilities and your portfolio and you want to take your first step into this career. It can be incredibly daunting, but you can start by testing the waters and posting your work and seeing if there’s any interest, or submitting to art directors. And if you aren’t having any luck it might be a sign that you need to work on your skills for a bit and update your portfolio, or spending some time marketing yourself but you can always try again in a few months.
How do you figure out commission prices?
My video is mainly targeting commercial illustration, but we can definitely use what we learned for commissions. Since commissions are generally for personal use and you don’t have to worry about rights and usages, using the hourly rate calculator would be your best way to figure out pricing. Multiply your rate by how much time it would take for you to complete a portrait, a full body illustration, or any other level you want to provide for your commissions. If you are worried that the final pricing is looking too high and you feel like it would scare off customers, remember that art is a luxury, not a necessity. In addition to your regular style and pricing, you could offer a ‘cheaper’ option, maybe done in a simpler style or in black and white, so that if someone really wanted a commission but couldn’t afford the pricey ones, there is an affordable option that is still fair on you.
Which Country’s Currency should you Work in; Yours or the Clients’?
You should always charge in the client’s currency and pricing standards; especially if the clients standards are higher than your own. As I mentioned before, we unfortunately are seeing more first-world companies try to scam third-world artists and try to outsource design work knowing that international artists are forced into the position to take on low-paying work.
In this scenario, the Pakistani artist would change their usual pricing according to what US standard rates are like. It’s totally fine to have different rates for different countries.
Sometimes you’ll have the reverse situation, where the client’s local standards are lower than yours. As a western-based artist I am sometimes approached by international clients who will have smaller budgets than my usual US market. I am mindful of their budgets but I also don’t want to lowball myself too much and stray far from my usual salary expectation. In this case I’d try to see if I can negotiate something in between their budget and mine, and if it’s out of their budget, I’d have to decide for myself if it is a project I really want to take on.
How Often Should You Go up in Price?
I think there are a few signs that show that you are outgrowing your current salary and could use a raise.
One is supply and demand. If you find yourself being approached for a lot of projects to the point that you are getting overwhelmed, or that you are rejecting them, it’s a sign that you are in demand and you need to increase your fee. Same for commissions, if you consistently sell out of commissions as soon as you open up slots or are getting a lot of tips, you are charging too low. When you raise your fees, you might lose some of those clients, but a number of them should still be interested in working with you, and those are the clients you wanna keep anyway.
When I was starting out, I had a big problem with saying NO to projects and was worried about missing out if I rejected something or I felt like I had to take these on.
I also thought that if I took on fewer projects, I would also end up with a lower salary.But the mindset is that you wanna prioritize quality over quantity. It’s better to have a few projects you’re really passionate about that are paying well, rather than a bunch of projects that are paying a little. It’s better to do 1 thing for $100, than 10 things for $10 each. You’ll reduce the amount of overworking and stress on your body, and when you charge higher with fewer clients you might even find that you earn more than you did before.
The second sign is that when you’re offering your initial quotes to clients, you notice that they all agree to your quotes very quickly. This might be a sign that you’re undercharging what the client expected you to say, and that you’re giving them a great deal. Ideally you kind of want the client to push back a little bit or try to negotiate. So if you feel like these quotes are being accepted too easily, maybe try to test the waters and increase your next few quotes.
Finally, you might know it's time for a raise if you just get one. This is kind of what's been happening with me. I started my career charging a certain rate for my picture books and then one day I got an offer that was a lot higher. I then kind of expected that to be my new salary and would negotiate any new books to be closer to that high fee that I got because I realized that there are people out there willing to pay me higher and that became my standard for a while. And then a year later I got another offer that was even higher than the last one and that became my new standard.
While I can’t share my rates, I think it would be safe for me to share this one at least because I think there is a lesson in here.
My first picture book project in 2015, was a 6 spread board book from a smaller publisher that specialized in kidlit. There were no royalties, and this was a project that was sourced by my agency. They paid me $2200 for it. I think this is a normal fee for this particular publisher, but it’s definitely not industry standard and definitely on the much, much lower side for picture book rates. Since it was my first gig, I had no idea what was normal or not and assumed that this was a good rate, especially since it was presented by my agency. My agency was trash by the way, I talk about it in my other videos.
But anyway. The funny thing is, is that my very first illustration project which I did a few months before this book, was a book cover for a major publisher. I was paid $2250 for that. That price is in the lower range for book covers, but at least within the industry standards. I didn’t make the connection back then but I find it so funny that I was literally paid $50 more to illustrate a cover, than I did for a whole picture book. Anyway, this is why wage transparency is important. I wish I knew what industry rates were like so I could have at least tried to negotiate that picture book offer.
I really hope this video has been helpful; I want to stress that I don’t have all the answers and I’m still learning, so if I’m wrong about some things, I apologize! My next video as I mentioned is going to be negotiating with clients, so if you have any questions about that you’d like me to answer let me know in the comments below.
If you haven’t already, please give this video a like and consider subscribing to my channel! These videos are a labor of love and I am just trying to create educational content for illustrators and trying to make it as accessible as possible, so I always appreciate any support you catapult my way.As always you can find me on instagram and twitter and tiktok, I am @foxville_art.
I also want to note; that I know I encouraged you guys to reach out and ask your colleagues for help with pricing, but I wanted to say that if you email me for pricing help, I likely won’t be able to respond. I would love to help each and every one of you, but since my channel has been growing I’ve been getting a lot of emails for industry advice. I try to help when I can, and I’m not discouraging you from sending emails, I just wanted to sadly say that with my busy schedule I might not have time to respond. I wanted it to be clear that I’m not deliberately ignoring you, my schedule simply doesn’t allow it anymore.
So yeah, thank you guys so much for watching. Check out all the links I mentioned below and also check out some of my other videos. I hope to have a new video out for you soon, but until then, stay frosty! BYEEE
MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE
✷ Xavier Coelho-Kostolny's Twitter
✷ Freelance Rate Calculator Spreadsheet
✷ # WhatPublishingPaidMe article
✷ Graphic Artists Guild Handbook 2018
✷ Graphic Artists Guild Handbook 2020
✷ Association of Illustration
✷ Lisa Maltby's Pricing Survey 2019
