#QTNA How does a new writer even publish their first book to begin with?
Custom illustration for Birk Creativee
This topic related to publishing and illustration comes up all the time. By now, you all know I love talking about publishing!
Here’s how my conversation ensued with someone on Reddit:
Question: How does a new writer even publish their first book to begin with?
Me: “I have so many strategies around this. Do you still need help?”
Question: “Yes. I have two books I'd like to publish in 2024. Planning on using mid-journey to illustrate them (or something like...). I am interested in your thoughts.”
Me: “Yes! I have thoughts! And I am so sorry I am just now seeing this! Firstly, Midjourney... I wonder if the resolution is going to be good enough for printing. Also, read their fine print--they don't indemnify against copyright infringement like Dall-e does.”
Question: “Do you have recos? I also want to get a person defined and reuse in different scenes and I haven't seen anything doing that well”
Me: The safest thing to do is actually hire an illustrator. You can get illustrators off of Fivrr, however, some of them are in other countries, and on other continents from where you are, and there might be cultural language barriers. There could be more difficulty in translating your vision to their output. Also, you'll have to negotiate the rights to the images that they create for you.
For example, if they make a character for you and they haven't given you the rights to use the character in whatever way you want, that might pose a problem for you down the road because if for some reason, Amazon or Netflix is interested in your work, and you don't have the rights to your character execution, that might blow the deal.
I produced a course on how to do all of this so you start off on the right foot in publishing. Check it out.
You have to get into a space of negotiating exclusive rights for the artwork to use in perpetuity, things like that. Also, the artwork has to be constructed in a way that you can break it down and repurpose it for other things for example, animation or a T-shirt, design or other types of things like stickers. Adobe Illustrator and/or Photoshop are tools that help artist create layers for various reproduction requirements. You also may want to look into Adobe Firefly and see if there is guidance on image construction that you can share with the artist you hire. You’ll need to give them instructions on your requirements to also make sure that their style works with your requirements. Some artists do not create any digital constructions at all.
There's a lot that goes into hiring artist to do your work. MidJourney and Dall.E, they don't create the necessary layers for you, so you will have trouble like I said, taking their images and reusing them. I do like MidJourney for ideation purposes. So maybe you could work with MidJourney to refine your vision for a character and then take that refined character, and then hire the artist to help you execute it.
The best way to really do all of this is to hire a commercial professional artist in your country. Many are trained to work commercially. And it sometimes even helps if the artist has a rep/agent like a Friend and Johnson, because a rep can actually help you work through the negotiation in terms of the rights that you need for the artwork. They will be more expensive.
So be careful because you want to own your property you don't want someone else to control your property. I hope this is helpful! I am a former Art Director and I have hired many artists over the last 20 years and it can get a little tricky.
#qtna Questions that need answered. Happy to help. Drop me, JinJa Birkenbeuel a text to 312-834-7339 anytime!