The Catch-22 of Commissioning Art
All The Art!!!
If I have learned anything on author social media, it’s that art sells books.
That is incredibly understandable. People read books and have all these mental images in their mind about the stories they read. And then someone out there has the talent and imagination to actually make the story come to life?
I can think of multiple instances where I have been scrolling and an amazing piece of art comes across my feed and I have to look up the book as a result. Some of those books include:
Smoke and Scar Gretchen Powell Fox
Red Rising by Pierce Brown (hel-LO, Darrow!)
The Phoenix King by Aparna Verma
Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
When I read a book because I’ve seen artwork online, it is evidence that commissioning art for a book is a great way to market your book! Not only does it attract eyes, it also is a wonderful way for you to see how artists interpret your work!
Earlier this year, I commissioned Lucía (@lururoart) to draw a spread of my five POV characters. Immediately after seeing the sketch, I knew this was how I was going to picture my characters forever.
Of course, when the first commission turned out so well, I was addicted to getting more.
But the problem? MONEY!
Artists deserve to be paid adequately for their work, and here I am, a struggling author without a published book that desperately wants to pay more artists to draw stuff from her book, but I haven’t sold any books to pay for the artists to get them to draw my book art!
It’s a conundrum that I struggle with on a daily basis, especially when I see more and more amazing artists crossing my feed every day. I just follow their page, bookmark their art, and wistfully go, “One day…”
I was able to hold off for about six months before I felt the urge to commission a new piece of art. I had set aside a pretty big chunk of money for a special item for home, but then it ended up being super cheap, so I had a little cash left over to pay for art!
I reached out to several artists, and one that got back to me almost immediately was Marssketch. She had several images on Instagram that drew my eye, including a great one of Vi from Arcane.
Instead of just characters, I decided to do a scene that closes out Part 1 of my novel, Sword of the Ancient. I’m not going to explain the scene too much (just read it and find out what’s going on!), but it’s been the crux of the book for a very long time.
We discussed a few things, and I sent her a pretty detailed description of the two featured characters, the chapters from the book surrounding this particular scene, and an incredibly awful sketch that I did myself.
One very important feature was the lighting of the scene. Instead of a black-and-white image, we were able to do a black-and-white-and-orange image.
I asked for the art to be rough and raw, and I believe that is exactly what I got!
When it was time to post the work online, I got a little fancy with the editing and was able to use Sawano Hiroyuki’s song “4eVR” from Solo Leveling (which is the song I have in my head when I picture this scene playing out). I also used it to reveal the title of my novel!
With another piece of successful art, I thought I might be satiated for a bit.
But noooooo. I just want more!
The big thing putting a stop to any more art is the fact that I am hiring an editor to work on Sword of the Ancient. That is a big (and needed) chunk of change that will use up most of my savings, and then some. It’s my hope that a solid edit of my book will yield me more revenue in the long run.
And what will I do with that revenue?
Commission more art!