Regarding the posting "editorial illustration may soon be dead !" debate, this is something my peers have been talking about a great deal recently, wondering if indeed there's one of those periodic step changes in illustration, as there was just before everyone had a PC or Mac. Back in the 80's when I started, everything took way longer, colour artwork was produced on stretched paper and urgent jobs were biked. Relatively though we were paid more, in fact some greetings card fees now are the same, or less, than they were in the 80's and that goes for childrens book advances too. That's if you can get someone to even look at your submission (if they indeed they accept submissions !). So where to go ? Well, that's what I thought after my agent gave up on the picture book market and posted back my mock ups.
Thanks to embracing social networking, well linkedin to be precise (not the most sizzling and exciting one available it has to be said !) I teamed up with a developer, who takes a cut, not a fee, and together we've launched the first in a series of mini digital books for children. Its very exciting to have this much control over what you do. The audience, which is 40 million users plus, is solely iphone and ipod touch users but there is potential on the small royalty (my share about 50% of the download price) to grow. Other platforms may well be explored, but it may be worth waiting to see which is the next portable device (amazon kindle etc) to become ubiquitous-the investment so far has been time, not money. Now all I need to do is tell people about it...ahem, so hence the shameless plug here !!
With more digital gadgets hitting the streets weekly in the form of phones and netbooks, this could open new opportunities for illustrators in what has been very tough times for many. I'll keep you posted on how it goes....
