Royalty Fees?
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- hedgehog
Hi All
I'm trying to research something and figured I'd ask here. I was recently contacted by a client to create artwork for a book cover for them. They are paying me a certain fee for designing the cover for them but they also want to outright buy the copyright / royalties of the artwork as well. How much should I charge? What would be the going rate for them to outright own my artwork?
Thanks
- airey0
it can come down to the 'what you can get away with' fee. saying that it's worth asking yourself 'would i use this for anything else myself?'. if not then the issue of royalties may not be such an issue. if you're happy with an amount then it's all good.
an a grand and move on.
make sure you retain the rights to use the image yourself on a folio site and address that they can't on sell the illustration either. maybe. what do i fucking know.
- SoulFly0
You should keep the royalty fees... what if this book becomes a NY Times bestseller?
- inkpink0
if its just a cover i'd just sell the artwork and full copyright for a large sum. no experience with royalties but always thought they'd be a pain in the ass to keep tabs on.
fyi GAG book says 2-5% cover price for royalties on a fully illustrated comic book... so i'm assuming a single cover illustration can't be much.
- i was in wrong GAG chapter, there's loads of details on book illustration royalties.inkpink
- hedgehog0
I think they want the copyright because they want to be able to make posters and other marketing materials, and possibly tshirts with the image created and they basically want to "own" the image to do whatever they want with it.
- Bargels0
If that's the case you should keep the ownership of your art and charge them in each case to make the promotional materials, no?
- hedgehog0
well i am going to charge them for any time I spend designing something but they may or may not use me for making promotional materials. The client is insisting on "owning" the rights of the image so I'm trying to think up an appropriate fee for that.
- hedgehog0
Thanks for this info inkpink. It's about what I was thinking
- FredMcWoozy0
I want to play!
you need to find out how many of these books they plan on selling?
How much is the book?
You said you're just creating the cover art?
In that case you would get a low royalty. If you got $5,000 upfront for the art and .25ยข for each cover sold you would make an extra $2,500 for every 10,000 copies sold.
So answer the above questions, ask if they're capable of selling 10,000 copies each month over the next year or two then figure out if that is a better deal then just an upfront buy out.
- vaxorcist0
One reason they may want "all the rights" is that they have no idea what they will need, or how much the book will sell, or how much promotion there will be money for, and they don't want to pay twice.
This is more convenient, business-wise, but ideally you really should get a commission for sales, because your cover art has an influence on sales, but such arrangements are often murky.
The publishing industry is in major change now.... getting a reasonable fee is a good thing, make sure you get it in a reasonable amount of time. Photographers often insert a clause in the contract that says "in the event of nonpayment after x date, all image usage rights revert to the photographer"
- publishers used to have sales projections, friends tell me whole industry is up in the air now....vaxorcist