Episode Details

Every time we get an offer to do a book we feel super grateful and flattered that someone would want one of us to illustrate a book for them, but for many reasons we can’t say yes.

In this episode we get into the details of book publishing, including the economic, social, and career-building reasons we take on certain book projects, and why we say no to others.

Here are Will’s 10 Reasons for "Why I Can’t Illustrate Your Children’s Book.” Some of them deal more with submitting a book jointly with an author to a publisher, or self publishing a book; they are all things to consider and reasons for why you may want to second-guess saying yes to that person you sorta know who wants you to illustrate their self-published book.

1. Bad Protocol [5:40]

This question, about how to deal with people asking you to do their children’s book, is talked about often at SCBWI. The Most Asked Question: how do I find an illustrator?

Editors at publishing companies will tell writers, "You don’t need to find the illustrator, that’s our job." They take pride in this. One of the publisher’s major roles is to find the right illustrator and match them to the right manuscript. They have resources and lots of connections to find the best match.

Some people jump to conclusions and think that just because someone can draw and someone has a children’s book idea that they should be paired to work together, without doing research beforehand to see if they would be a good match. You wouldn’t go around prescribing medication to people before learning what their symptoms are and it's the same with writing and illustrating children’s books.

Publishers don’t want to be in an awkward situation where they love the manuscript but they hate the art, then they have to tell you and it can be something they just would rather avoid.

They have more art and manuscripts than they can publish.

They oftentimes will dismiss you, just because you are filing jointly, and the art is already done. As with everything, there are exceptions.

There are many other reasons as to why publishers prefer to pair the artists and illustrators. One marketing strategy they often use is to match a more veteran author or illustrator with a newer author or illustrator. A new author with a new illustrator, or vice versa, is too much of a financial gamble.

As you have more experience and become more well-known, you may have more power and influence over who you are paired up with.

Little Snowplow

2. Industry Perception [13:35]

Another reason Will would be hesitant to file jointly with an amateur or work on a self-published book is that it may affect publishers’ perception of him.

Even doing lots of projects on Kickstarter can look amateur. This is something that may be frowned upon merely because it’s a little more new. But sometimes books that started on Kickstarter can get picked up by publishers.

Even your online followers on social media has an influence on how much of an advance you are allotted.

One book that may be an exception to this :

Rick Walton Frankenstein book

They filed their book jointly and then 3 different publishers got into a bidding war over it. However, this is different, because they were two pros working together. So it’s not really an exception. We can’t think of an example of two amateurs who got a book published together that did super well.

3. I Don’t Know You [19:10]