thinking about royalities

 need to find out about publishing so i can sort out contract, legality stuff for the childrens book brief client.
to do: go into waterstones or find illustrator of a book and message them about their conditions of sale for advice.

 ask what they did / how they got started

look at main publishers

guides for self publishing

Aggie has done something similar!

Speak to her about book publishing from the book she illustrated for NHS on kidney transplants – paid there an then or did she get royalties

taking note from Aggies Email from illustrator Contact!:

So mainly I would advice to go with a flat fee., you want to make sure you get some sort of a payment and not rely on "just royalties" ..if they offer no advance it's not a good sign., so let them know you'd like to have a flat fee and ask them for some details including their budget: 

If they had already sent you an offer in numbers figure out a way to see if it works for you..if it's way too low but you'd still want to do the book then you can say something like ‘It's a very nice book however the budget is too low..putting in mind the number of pages + cover I would usually ask for $(whatever is fair for you ) per page (or per spread) and $ for cover which makes the optimal budget way higher than what you have offered ..but putting that aside, would you please consider raising your budget to any point? I'd like to know if it's possible and I'd love to work with you..let me know your thoughts and we'll discuss it..thanks"

If they come back with a better offer thafs good ..your call now..or you can alter it to raise it to the closest zeros (ex: if they offer 18 you say let's make it a 20 and we have a deal..can we?) ...and get things going :)

Once all that is sorted make sure to say you usually take a percentage upfront., it could be 30% now or 50% now ..in 2 parts or 3 ..or sometimes it's after you send sketches and the approve it then they send you the percentage.depends.ask them for any kind of upfront money .

As my curent contact/communication with the childrens book client has been informal as we are friends (friend of a friend) i am finding it difficult appoach the serious matters of payment etc, especially as he has not done anything like this before either, neither of us know the right things to do or how to specifically go about things - i also dont want to make it awkward of seem rude when asking about money! 

ways i could approach the idea of royalties etc before sending an offical invoice form: 

Have you any publishers in mind to ask to print and distribute the book?

I’m asking as we need to consider how to deal with any royalties, given the work has taken a great 

deal of time to produce, it would be good to come to an arrangement where I could possibly recoup 

some costs if the opportunity arises.

Let me know what your thoughts are then we can sort it out. 

invoice set up (draft! - not made to look nice and creative yet!) 

messaging Client (Angus)

Hey Angus hows things? I’ve more or less finished the 10 illustrations you asked for for the book! 

I was just wondering if you’ve got any publishers in mind to print and distribute the book? Only because I’ve been told by my tutor  I would need to discuss royalties with you given the work has take a great deal of time to produce, so would be great to come to some sort of arrangement where I could possibly recoup some of the costs if the opportunities arises when/if it comes to be sold. 

let me know what your thought are and we can sort something out  x