Why people won't pay for your art

Pricing and getting paid decently for your work is one of the hardest things to deal with as a professional artist. Ideally, we'd all just create and have people give us enough money to live happily ever after, but the reality for most of us is that we have to constantly sell ourselves.

We have to submit to galleries, show portfolios, scan craigslist and other job posting sites for freelance work. Some of us get agents. It's not the easiest profession in the world.

A huge hurdle that lots of us face is that if you don't work in a creative field, you often don't know what art/illustration/design is worth. I'll be honest, in the past, Monkey + Seal have taken a lot of low paying jobs since sometimes you have to do what you have to do to pay the bills. However, if you can at all help it, turn down these jobs!

Often, we get approached at conventions and shows and asked to do book covers. Unfortunately, it's not by large publishers (although we're hoping to change that soon) but by everyday people who have an idea they want to see made into a children's book, or who have written a novel and want a cover for it to self-publish.

According to the Graphic Arts Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines (which all creatives should own, btw), for a small press (runs of 3000-7000 units) book cover, you should be looking at anywhere between 1,200-2,500. Even assuming it's smaller, offers of $200 are a bit insulting, to be perfectly honest. We're super happy that you like our work, but for some of our illustrations we have spent upwards of 50 hours on. Illustration takes research, thumbnailing, colors and value studies, and piles of sketches before the final execution.

Besides the 50 hours, what clients are paying for are the years invested in honing our craft. Even for our paintings, if you see us whip something up while we live paint, even though we might finish something in an hour, that doesn't take into account the thousands of hours we've spent sketching, researching, studying other artists, playing with color, learning how to use our paints, experimenting with various mediums. So there is a lot of time invested in what you don't see. After all, Michael Jordan didn't just play basketball for those 48 minutes in every NBA game. Every day that you weren't watching him dominate the court, he'd be practicing in a gym, first there, last to leave. He got paid the big bucks because all of the behind the scenes work that the average viewer doesn't see.

Another large hurdle is that our culture doesn't value art like it does other trades. For example, for some reason, people think artists "just paint and draw" unlike, say, auto mechanics or doctors. This, however, is plainly false. The best analogy I've ever heard is like this: you don't go into an autoshop and say "Can you please fix my car, and then maybe if I like the way that it drives and it makes me some money, I'll pay you." You'd probably get thrown out. However, all the time, we hear "Can you please do this book cover illustration for me, and then maybe if I like it and it sells a lot of copies, I'll pay you." Not cool, people, not cool.

The more of us that take this spec work (which is highly looked down upon), the more and more people hiring us will come to expect that as a norm. Not cool.

If you think of hiring a creative:
-Our work takes time! Please be respectful of this - we usually can't do an illustration in an hour!
-If we can do an illustration in an hour, you'll probably want revisions, and those take more time.
-If you think we charge too much, please try and do it yourself. What we do is a craft - it takes lots and lots of practice.
-Please don't try and sell us on "exposure," unless you're representing 200,000 viewers/readers, or have a name like Nike or Pepsi. Even then, you should have been around long enough and have enough funds to pay us anyway.

So if you are a creative:
-Stick up for your work! Don't be afraid to ask for what your time is worth.
-Don't take spec work! You're working for free!
-If you have to take a job, we know that sometimes if its between a low paying gig and paying rent, you need to take the gig, but resist if at all possible!

Valuing our work

As creatives, Monkey + Seal have found that society as a whole tends to think that for whatever reason, our services are negotiable. Monkey + Seal are guilty of dropping their rates since we were "students" and not really valuing our own work. However, no other industry would ever allow this to happen.

When Monkey attended a professional designer's society's mixer, he heard a speaker who talked about this. The speaker said, "you would never walk into an automotive shop and say 'Well, can you fix my car first, and then maybe I'll pay you for the work?' You would never go 'Hmm, can I have my dinner to go, and if I like it, I'll stop by next month and pay your for it?' to a restaurant."

However, this is what we often do, because we're afraid of not getting work, never being "discovered," or of losing a bid. We work on spec, enter into contests and give away our rights, and when you compare our business to that of any other profession, it's just plain ridiculous. The public doesn't hire creatives as often (how often have you personally hired an illustrator versus hiring a doctor or a eaten out?) so it's difficult to change the way the public thinks about creatives and their work. Thus, it's up to us to stick up for ourselves and make sure we aren't under-valuing ourselves.

Now we cannot judge anyone, as we completely understand the need to make some cash. Everyone's personal circumstances are different, but we think that low-balling your work hurts the industry as a whole. If you're a student, it's a little more acceptable (you can get dental work done by students at lower prices), but once you've graduated, it hurts all creatives.

If you are a graphic designer or an illustrator, realize that there IS such a thing as an "industry standard." Check out the Graphic Arts Guild's Handbook: Pricing and Ethical Guidelines. It's definitely helped us set our pricing for freelance work, and we do our best to stick by it. The best part is that is has concrete examples (and is pretty specific) for a lot of general jobs, such as a quarter-page illustration for a local newspaper versus a nationally-distributed paper.

The more work that is done on spec or is given away in hopes of getting money back is going to lower the industry standard as a whole. Although it doesn't affect emerging artists now, when/if they ever do become established, they'll find that it is harder and harder to find clients willing to pay full price. As creatives you have to realize that you have the ability to do something that most people cannot.

As a visual artist (or any other creative) you are responsible for expressing ideas in a way that others cannot. If a client ever asks you why you charge so much, ask them why they aren't doing the job themselves. If designing a complete branding identity was so easy, then why doesn't your client do it themselves? Ask them to try, and when they realize how difficult it is, then they can come back and hire you.

Monkey + Seal often have to fight the constant battle of making sure our prices are fair and affordable but also that they don't sell our work short. We have heard a lot of other artists deal with this as well. If you do, how do you cope with this?