Artists working on profit sharing model?

[lachek]

This may be naive, but is there any precedent for "hiring" an artist not with cash-per-page, but with profit-sharing?
Like a comic book or a children's book will often have a writer and an artist of at least somewhat equal importance?

Such a model might be suitable for someone who is just releasing their first game into a market they have no idea what to expect from. Just like a game designer might put in 500+ manhours of potentially unprofitable labour because they believed in their game, an otherwise unemployed or amateur artist might be willing to do so as well, to see the final product and for the recognition and potential earnings down the road. Further, it would make the artist more invested into the work as a whole, and while they may want more creative control of the final piece (including layout, etc) they would also be more interested in it selling well than if they had just gotten paid their cash and sent on their merry way.

I'm interested both in hearing if there is a precedent, and what people think of the idea - hurdles or gotchas, especially. For the record, I'm talking about something like a 50/50 split down to maybe a 70/30, depending on the amount of art in the book - not 95/5 or something equally insulting.

[iago]

Some artists will be willing to work on that model, but it's often not a good gig for them unless they're more interested in using it as a portfolio-building thing.  It *becomes* a good gig if your game turns out to be a decent-sized (by indie standards) hit.

I'm betting you'd have the most success by doing a mix: "I can pay you $X up front, and offer you Y% of the net profits (make sure to define what "net" is and how it's calculated) once the book's published."

[KeithBVaughn]

Hi Lachek,

Nearly every artist has heard this line before. It's along the lines of "I'll respect you in the morning.", and about the same thing happens. All it tells the artist is you don't have enough money to publish the game let alone pay the people who helped you put it together. It also screams: Amateur!

A good rule of thumb is: "The Publisher takes ALL the Risks." The other end of this is he gets all the rewards too. If you can't hire an artist to do some illustrating go to free sources on the web or get a friend who can draw to do your illustration. Or use copywrite free illustrations from the last century or before.

You may also want to budget out for artwork and then work with an artist saying you have this much and you want X number of illustrations. Some may take and others won't but you are giving them professional respect by paying them up front.

Keith

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Lachek,

This years Origins Roleplaying Game of the Year, Burning Empires used such a model. Luke shares the proceeds with Chris Moeller. Luke talks about that on one of my shows. I think it is good to give good consideration to the pessimism that's being expressed here, but I'm not sure it's something that should be absolutely ruled out. I think the likelihood of it being a good working model for someone starting out is questionable, but dealing with someone with an established game presence is maybe less risky, but it's never a terribly wise decision for someone to give away their work for promises.

[lachek]

Fred, Keith, Clyde, thank you for your insights so far. I recognize that since this is not the "standard arrangement", there would be some inherent suspicion to overcome. I'm questioning some of the assumptions you've made though, and I'd be interested in knowing if challenging those assumptions would change the way you're looking at this or not.

First off, the inherent risk for the artist - I have a hard time seeing the difference between promising "I'll pay you $100/page when you deliver the artwork" and "I'll pay you 50% of profits (which is defined as...) on this date every month". Sure, there may be an additional 3 months or so between completion of the artwork and publishing of the work, but the artist still completes and delivers all the work before they get paid, regardless of which payment model you've chosen. Artists always work on promises, whether informal or contractually bound.

Secondly, it seems everyone's assuming that the designer = writer = publisher. There is nothing stopping an artist from designing a game and hiring someone else to write it, or for an artist to hire a designer/writer, or for an artist and a designer/writer to get together and co-publish a game. The last model is what I'm mostly interested in.

Here's my observation. There's some indie game designers that seem to think that their vision, design and writing is so solid that art and layout would be little but a distraction - that their game is as good as a stapled stack of copy paper as it is in hardcover with full layout, art and design. I can see where they're coming from but the market is telling them they're wrong (with very few exceptions). The nature of their game hasn't changed, but the product people are buying and putting on their shelf certainly has.

Burning Empires is an excellent example, since it just won the Origins "Best RPG" award. It's fat, it's pricey, it's full on crunchy rules. I'm sure it plays well too (once you've gotten the hang of it), but the folks I've shown my book to have invariably had the same first reaction: "That's a really nice book". Then I explain the premise and some of the basic rules and they say "Um, alien worms infiltrating the collapsing space empire? Derivative. And these rules seem overly complicated. I'm sure if we slap Beliefs and Lifepaths onto [insert generic system here] it'll play the same." That's not a critique against Burning Empires, because those first reactions are not accurate. What I'm saying is, if it had not been for the format, layout and art in BE, I doubt many people would have given it a second chance. All those aesthetic elements scream "take me seriously", which is a requirement for a game as complex - and independent - as BE. I'm willing to bet that it owes at least 50% of its success to its aesthetics.

So Keith, when you say that an artist would take you for an amateur if you approached them like this, unless you don't have a large budget for art, design and layout your market will generally take you for an amateur and ignore your game. Would you prefer to search for an artist willing to work in this model, or for a market?

I'd like to see a model adopted where the artist is not an independent contractor, but actively involved in the art direction of the game. I encourage the use of CC-licensed or Public Domain art wherever suitable, but I'm not a fan of the trend of minimizing art expenditure in order to maximize profits. I'd rather see profits maximized by producing a nice, rich, professional product that is as much the work of the artist as the writer. I gave the example of a comic or children's book before and that's exactly what I'm going for - equal name recognition, equal responsibility, equal profits. As such, the model could be suitable both for first-time publishers and more established ones, depending on the project.

After that clarification, the following more directed questions:
1) Would any artists go for this, or is artist culture so different from writer culture that nobody would imagine doing lots of work for no payoff until publishing?
2) Are there any hurdles to this approach other than the potential difficulty in convincing an artist to do work on this model?

[lachek]

Clarification to the clarification: Burning Empires is an excellent example of the opposite.

Keith, the above was mostly in response to your post. While I appreciate the feedback and am glad to have learned that this is how some would misinterpret the "pitch", you're describing just about the opposite to what I'm suggesting - the "publisher/designer/writer" taking such an approach to save money and the artist getting screwed in the end. I'm suggesting a "publisher/artist/designer/writer collaboration" taking such an approach (especially when on a slim budget, or when dealing with an uncertain market) to improve the aesthetics of the final product, capture a wider market, and gain equal name recognition.

Oh, and I can totally see that most established artists with a goodly amount of work lined up might not be willing to experiment with alternate income models, by the way.

[guildofblades]

>>I think the likelihood of it being a good working model for someone starting out is questionable, but dealing with someone with an established game presence is maybe less risky, but it's never a terribly wise decision for someone to give away their work for promises.<<

I can see an artist working for profit sharing as a viable option IF the artist in question is trying to establishing a portfolio of professionally published materials, thus putting them on the same experience level as the inexperienced start up publisher.

As for payment up front, we have never and will never pay an artists all up front. We most typically pay an artist an advance with the balance of a contracted amount due at the satisfactorily completion of the work to be delivered.

When the Guild of Blades was first starting out we worked with a number of inexperienced artists and helped a couple to get their professional starts. A few were not of the quality of artwork we would have desired most, but you know the old saying, "beggars can't be choosers".

I sometimes see new freelance artists subscribed to a holier than thou attitude with regards to the types of contracts they should be getting from publishers and largely complaining that they don't get them. Well, experienced publishers tend not to be highly interested in giving professional level compensations to inexperienced artists the same way that an experienced artists that demands high contract rates isn't jumping at the opportunities to work with inexperienced publishers for profit sharing. It cuts both ways.

As a publisher if you don't have a track record of publishing success and you hope to get an artists to work on your venture on a profit sharing arrangement, just be honest with the artists you propose that to. Tell them you are new and while you have done your homework (assuming you have) and have consulted with numerous experienced small publishers and have a reasonable expectations of profits, don't overly inflate those profits base on your personal enthusiasm. Give the artist reasonable expectations and let them know in a worst case scenario there may be no profits or very small profits and  in the event that should happen that their only meaningful compensation might be portfolio building. If they are an inexperienced artists, getting both publishing credits and professional level practice and freelance experience might be a fair exchange with their "profit sharing" simply a bonus should your project achieve some strong financial success.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

[Jake Richmond]

Hi, lachek. I'll offer my opinion as both a working freelance illustrator (mostly for games) and as a publisher.

I don't think there's anything wrong with making the kind of offer you are describing. But I think most artists will pass on it for a few reasons. Let me detail them:

1. No personal stake. The artist doesn't care about your project. Really, he doesn't. He might think it's neat. He might think it's worthwhile. But at the end of the day he doesn't really care because you're not paying him to care.

2. Given a choice between working for free on your project that he doesn't care about and working for free on his own project which he does care about, the artist will always rather work on his own project.

3. Yes, you are really asking the artist to work for free. The promise of a share of the profit in the future is not the same as a guaranteed paycheck. Any RPG freelancer will tell you stories about publishers who promised to split profits with him after publication.  Does this sometimes work? Sure. Rarely. More often the project is never published. Or it is published but the artist is never paid. Even when the artist is paid very often the profits are small enough to be insignificant. Really, if you don't have enough money up front to pay an artist a fair wage, you likely don't have the money to promote your book well enough to make the kind of sales that will make the artists contribution worthwhile. Yes, a lot of us have books that do nice sales over the period of a year or two years. No artist wants to wait to+ years to get paid.

4. It's unfair to ask an artist to work for free on your project just because you've already put 1 billion+ ours into it. Remember , this is your labor of love, not the artist's. For the artist this is just an alternative to flipping burgers. You may find a rookie illustrator who thinks he can't find work anywhere else and that a chance to work on your game will give him "exposure". Don't abuse this kind of artist. Pay him a fair wage. because if you do take advantage of this kind of artist, he will go on to get other jobs, and he'll realize that getting art jobs really isn't that hard, and that he never should have worked for free for you. He'll resent you for it.

5. The artist can always find other work, and would rather get guaranteed pay from someone else soon then a shot at splitting profit on an unproven game later.

My advice? Save up some money and pay the artist you want a fair wage. It may not be as expensive as you think.

Alternatively, if you really want to do a project where the artist shares in the profit, choose an artist you like and invite them to create a game with you. Treating the artist as a full partner who has full input in the game will (for at least some artists) be enough to give them a personal stake in the project. As I said before, an artist is always going to be much more interested in working on their own project then someone else's. Create a project together and you have the best of both worlds.

I'm betting you'd have the most success by doing a mix: "I can pay you $X up front, and offer you Y% of the net profits (make sure to define what "net" is and how it's calculated) once the book's published."

This is certainly a better offer. I take this sometimes, but only of the "X up front" is enough to make the project worthwhile. I view the "Y % later" as a bonus.

Nearly every artist has heard this line before. It's along the lines of "I'll respect you in the morning.", and about the same thing happens. All it tells the artist is you don't have enough money to publish the game let alone pay the people who helped you put it together. It also screams: Amateur!

Yup. Save your money up for some art.

You may also want to budget out for artwork and then work with an artist saying you have this much and you want X number of illustrations. Some may take and others won't but you are giving them professional respect by paying them up front.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I actually really like this. I always ask my clients what their budget is, then figure out what I can do for them based on that. You can very often get a really good deral for less then you might think.

This years Origins Roleplaying Game of the Year, Burning Empires used such a model.

There's a lot of differences there though. For one thing, Burning Empires is a liscensed game based on Chris' comics. For another, most (if not all) the art was from the comic. Chris didn't have to actually draw anything (or at least much) for the game. This is a very different situation then if Luke had asked Chris to draw 100+ illustrations for free for, say, a new version of Burning Wheel and then share the profits on that book.

First off, the inherent risk for the artist - I have a hard time seeing the difference between promising "I'll pay you $100/page when you deliver the artwork" and "I'll pay you 50% of profits (which is defined as...) on this date every month". Sure, there may be an additional 3 months or so between completion of the artwork and publishing of the work, but the artist still completes and delivers all the work before they get paid, regardless of which payment model you've chosen. Artists always work on promises, whether informal or contractually bound.

A good freelancer gets at least 1/2 the money up front. But that's beside the point (and not always possible anyway). The difference between getting $100 a page and getting 50% of the profits is that the artist doesn't know if the book will ever actually be published. Even if it is published, the book may never sell enough copies to make money. Even if it does, it's very unlikely that this will happen right away. No artist wants to wait 2 years for your book to sell enough copies that it actually made a large enough profit for 50% to be a worthwhile amount. With a set amount the artist is guaranteed pay even if the book is never published. My own experience has been that about 40% of the books I've done art for never see print. That's just the way it is.

Secondly, it seems everyone's assuming that the designer = writer = publisher. There is nothing stopping an artist from designing a game and hiring someone else to write it, or for an artist to hire a designer/writer, or for an artist and a designer/writer to get together and co-publish a game. The last model is what I'm mostly interested in.

Nothing wrong with two talented people getting together to create a game. As I said before, that's what I would suggest. In this model the artist would also bear half the responsibilities as well, which I think is a good thing. Go ahead and find an artist you like and come up with something cool together. I think that's the best option.

So Keith, when you say that an artist would take you for an amateur if you approached them like this, unless you don't have a large budget for art, design and layout your market will generally take you for an amateur and ignore your game. Would you prefer to search for an artist willing to work in this model, or for a market?

It's still true that approaching an artist and asking them to work for free will sit off every warning signal the artist has. You don't need a large art budget or a lot of illustrations to make a successful game. There's enough games that we can all easily point to that have come out of the Forge for this to be evidently true. But that stuff does help. Sometimes. You can't expect to have a full cover hardcover without paying up front for it, right? You also can't expect to get good art without paying up front for it. Nor should you.

I gave the example of a comic or children's book before and that's exactly what I'm going for - equal name recognition, equal responsibility, equal profits. As such, the model could be suitable both for first-time publishers and more established ones, depending on the project.

Sure. And if this is the case it really should be a true collaboration between the artist and the writer, and not just the writer coming up with something and the artist drawing it. No artist wants that.

Would any artists go for this, or is artist culture so different from writer culture that nobody would imagine doing lots of work for no payoff until publishing?

Some would, especially if it's a collaboration. If it's not, you may well be (inadvertently) abusing the artist by (again, inadvertently) preying on his desires to get "exposure". Be careful.

It's always possible that you'll find an artist who thinks your game is amazing and that it will be a huge hit and is willing to donate his valuable time to the project while full realizing that he could use that time to make money on a different project. I doubt this will happen (and this has nothing to do with the quality of your project).

I can see an artist working for profit sharing as a viable option IF the artist in question is trying to establishing a portfolio of professionally published materials, thus putting them on the same experience level as the inexperienced start up publisher.

Any smart artist is going to realize that taking a job just to "build a portfolio" or "get exposure' is a waste of time. Better to spend your time on a project of your own that you can also use for a portfolio. It's a rookie mistake (one that I fell into myself).

As for payment up front, we have never and will never pay an artists all up front. We most typically pay an artist an advance with the balance of a contracted amount due at the satisfactorily completion of the work to be delivered.

Which is a fair deal, a I think.


Jake

[guildofblades]

>>Any smart artist is going to realize that taking a job just to "build a portfolio" or "get exposure' is a waste of time. Better to spend your time on a project of your own that you can also use for a portfolio. It's a rookie mistake (one that I fell into myself).<<

I don't know. I would also say that if an artists is at the start of their career and feeling in need of portfolio building and resume building that they would have to evaluate the exposure they might gain from doing work on royalties with a publisher vs the exposure they could get from simply building and promoting a portfolio of their own creative projects. In the end its all about exposure. Working on a project for someone else, and obtaining the ability to use them as a reference, builds both a portfolio and a resume. It shows the ability to work for others and deliver on spec.

Obviously, any artists who can command market rates due a combination of talent and experience/exposure/connections, need not worry about such things and should obviously command what they feel they are worth. No one should ever under sell themselves. But it pays to be realistic with regards to your position as well. College students are far more likely to need to take an internship somewhere than to be negotiating for a position as a vice president or director of anything. So too must a new artists jump in with entry level opportunities to build a resume and portfolio.

As a publisher I can tell you that I am very reluctant to work with any artists that can not show a prior history contract work performed for companies I can relate to. The reason being, regardless how talented an artists is, it does not mean they will conduct themselves as a professional. They may take my down payment and cut and run and I might not get any artwork for my money. They might not do the artwork in the specifications desired. They might decide schedules are totally unimportant and might delay my publications. In the past when we've worked with newer artists we've sort of "stockpiled" artwork for projects to be produced sometime down the road rather than on a more important project on our active release schedule. I don't want to risk a rookie not getting it done right or on time messing up our schedules. Only artists we've worked with before or those that can show a credible history of professional contract work would ever get an assignment from us that was linked to a project already on the production schedule (ala, actually important to us at this time). And those who do get paid better, obviously.

So I wouldn't dismiss the value of building up that initial resume of contracts for references. If that can be done with paying gigs, absolutely great. But someone with no experience passing up chances at getting that contract experience and work references is also greatly reducing the chances that they would get a contract from us too. I can't imagine a lot of other publishers and biting at the bit to work with unproven talent either.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

[lachek]

Jake,

Thank you for your insight. I'm glad to hear from someone "on the inside" on this. And just to clarify, this:

Alternatively, if you really want to do a project where the artist shares in the profit, choose an artist you like and invite them to create a game with you. Treating the artist as a full partner who has full input in the game will (for at least some artists) be enough to give them a personal stake in the project. As I said before, an artist is always going to be much more interested in working on their own project then someone else's. Create a project together and you have the best of both worlds.

is exactly what I've been going for all along, and I'm surprised how hard it was to convey that. It was never my intention to "abuse an artist" by "not paying them" - I wanted to know whether or not there was precedent and/or interest in creating a game as a collaborative effort, with a 50/50 focus on game text/game art. If anything, I envisioned a model where the artist was given a greater control and ownership of the final product, where their efforts weren't limited to producing a product like "some filler on page 25"

The game I'm currently working on, should it ever see the light of day, will likely have a mix of Public Domain/CC licensed materials and photographs, with perhaps a purchased custom piece for the cover and select interiors. My question is for any potential future games, and for the benefit of others. Conceptualizing a game, writing a draft, and then approaching an artist for a 50/50 split on profits and creative control, I can understand why people would balk at.

[Vulpinoid]

I'd be interested in working through this type of collaborative effort.

I'm by no means an established artist. I'm just a guy who's been painting, drawing and illustrating 3d computer work over the past few years.

I've actually decided recently that I might try my hand at exposing my work over the next few months to see where that leads. I'm in the middle of building a website, and I've submitted the core rules to a system I've been working on for a while.

http://www.angelfire.com/psy/vulpinoid/TCRP_wPictures_.pdf

If you've got any comments on the work, please make a not in the thread on the playtesting part of the forum.

As an added challenge to my skill, I decided to participate in the "System in a Can" challenge on the endeavor part of the forum. So if you want to see the type of work I can produce in a hasty week of pressure, have a look over there.

http://www.angelfire.com/psy/vulpinoid/Shattered_Souls_1_5.pdf



I submitted artwork to the "big guys" back in the early 90's (At that time, the big guys were Palladium, White Wolf, TSR, etc.), and they had the opposite attitude to this. Asking contributing artists and authors to sign unsolicited manuscript guarantees and similar contracts for artworks which basically said that if you send them an artwork you lose all rights to it, and they might not even bother to use it anyway. I've been pretty possessive of my work, so this sort of concept just didn't sit well with me at all.

I've also done work in the local comics scene; but when I was doing that, the local scene in Australia was very unstable. Still, the artist was a lot more respected in comics than they were in roleplaying.

V

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

In the interest of more-points-for-comparison, this model ...

You may also want to budget out for artwork and then work with an artist saying you have this much and you want X number of illustrations. Some may take and others won't but you are giving them professional respect by paying them up front.

... is what I typically do. By "up front," I pay when a first batch of rough sketches is available, if not before.

My experience is that no artist has ever defaulted, i.e., failed to produce the rest of the art. It's always been a win-win. (H'mmm. Just in case: any art-people, if I'm misremembering or have ever screwed you over as you see it, please get in touch by email.)

As a side point, typically I pay for leasing the art, not buying it, therefore I exert no input or control over any other use to which the artist puts those pieces, at any time.

Another minor point: I typically ask the artist how many pieces so-much-$ will pay for, and he or she tells me. If it's not enough money for that artist in the first place, or if it's too few pieces for the money in my opinion, then all is well, and we don't enter into the agreement, no hard feelings; otherwise, the exact number of pieces is set by the artist.

I'm not presenting any of this as a vote or as a statement of who should do what, but only as a datapoint - that's how I do it and that's how it's worked out.

Best, Ron

[KeithBVaughn]

Iachek,

My thoughts and models are from artist's opinions at rpg.net and what they will do. It also enters my own thoughts as I do artwork for my own games. I have had one artist work for "free" for me before. It was a talented young man who was working on his senior project at college. Our contact was through a friend who knew his advisor and myself. We gave him six pictures to produce during a semester, gave him specs for the illustrations and worked with him to produce them in a professional manor. He got an "A" and well deserved it.

>>>>So Keith, when you say that an artist would take you for an amateur if you approached them like this, unless you have a large budget for art, design and layout your market will generally take you for an amateur and ignore your game. Would you prefer to search for an artist willing to work in this model, or for a market?<<<<

I wouldn't say amateur as much as underfunded and overly enthusiastic. The model you propose is saying you want the artist to trust you to be able to market and sell a game effectively and make a descent NET profit. It also relies on your honesty as an individule when you have money in hand; I've seen that break down a few times.

If you want to keep costs down you have to learn to do everything involved in publishing your game. For instance I'm producing a game: One Million AD: Tales of a Forsaken Sun: Dead Earth Saga.  My cover for this game is nothing more than a gloss white cardstock with text and a symbol found in MS Word. The starkness makes it stand out  where color is almost mandatory. If this works it will be followed by others in the One Million AD series: Drowned Mars Shanties, Vespers for Venus, ect.

I'm laying out the interior, designing cover and back blurb, painting the interior pictures, learning inDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat to produce a professional product. There's an old saying: You'll accomplish things by paying either money or sweat.

A couple of suggestions: pick up "The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams; published by Peach Pit Press. Find some public domain art (Dover Books with a CD enclosed.) or some of the sources found in other threads--some quite old. And your best education is found right at your FLGS. Look at how the books are laid out and how the art does or doesn't fit the theme of the book. With this knowledge you'll be able to commission better pieces of art for your vision.

There is also a philosophy that I've used with art: Art sells the first book, writing sells the second.

Good Luck with your game,
Keith

[guildofblades]

>>My thoughts and models are from artist's opinions at rpg.net and what they will do.<<

Ah...RPG.net. I have heard some publishers express that they would rather gnaw off one of their arms than seek out freelance artists on RPG.net. The impression expressed was one where there is a community of artists that all adhere to the standards and expectations of the most senior of its members whereas most among the community have neither the talent or experience for that to be justified.

Not knocking some of the talent there. In truth, I have never used RPG.net as a resource to find artists either, so this is all second had. But of what I have heard, I'm inclined to look elsewhere should we ever need to seek out artists.

Thankfully we have a good cadre of local artists we have picked up over the years from the local comic con and a rather large collection of quality submissions from freelancers who have solicited us for work in the past.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com

[Jake Richmond]

RPG.net's freelance forum has it's problems, but it's still a worthwhile place to find artists. I know part of the reason some publishers don't like to post jobs there is that artists there tend to report publishers who treat them badly. If you're a publisher who makes it a practice to pay your artists 3-9 months late, or not at all, then you really want to avoid hiring artists who actually talk to other artists on a regular basis. Word gets around.

Jake