It all begins when you decide to self-publish for the first time. While you are trying to figure out what steps you need to take to make your book marketable and to make it available to the public without forgetting anything essential, you may find yourself stuck because of someone or something which is not who or what you thought they were.
To avoid falling prey to scammers or picking someone too inexperienced to provide the hassle-free experience you would rather have, the first thing is to ask questions and provide the relevant information regarding your project when contacting people you’re considering for the job.
Picking the right illustrator for your book isn’t only a matter of who draws it better or of who is the cheapest.
You want to avoid having to face:
Technical issues (when uploading your book in electronic form or to be printed by a third-party…
Legal issues, which could arise whenever your book or any element from it is showcased on any public platform…
Technical issues may include having the wrong canvas size for your images depending on the available print sizes for the type of book you’re creating.
To avoid that particular problem, you need to check on the publishing platform whether or not there are guidelines for books with pictures. Check if the minimum number of pages for printing allow you to get a square book or a rectangle one (portrait or landscape mode). Check whether you need the pictures to be saved as spreads or single pages (full bleed). In the event that you chose to have spots instead of spreads, you won’t have this issue.
Knowing in advance the size you’re going to choose to print your book will help the illustrator determine the canvas size and resolution settings for each illustration. It will save you both time and frustration on both sides.
Telling your illustrator exactly what you intend to do with the files is important.
The technical requirements for printing are different from what they are for electronic use. Similarly, the price range for using art on a single commercial item (or several copies of a single item) isn’t quite the same as the price range for using the art on your book cover, inside the book, on promotional materials (including billboards, merch, posters…), as a base for creating derivative art (to illustrate the next story).
Legal issues can appear out of nowhere if you can’t ascertain that everything delivered to you was rightfully made without infringing on anyone’s intellectual property rights (which include but are not limited to copyrights).
You need to ask if all of the elements used to design the illustration(s) are the original work of that particular illustrator. Sometimes they are. Sometimes not. If elements from a third-party are being used on their own or to enhance the original art your illustrator made, they need to provide documentation regarding the status of the graphic elements used (by themselves or as elements of a derivative work) in terms of ownership of the intellectual property rights (which include but are not limited to copyrights, moral rights, right to create derivative work from…). Your illustrator could have decided to recycle their own work and as a result, some of the graphic elements in your book may also be present on several of the stock photo sites which allow creators to get paid when someone downloads any image for commercial use.
Finding parts of your illustrations on such platforms isn’t in itself the sign of a scam. However, your illustrator should be upfront about this, if for some reason they decided to use recyclable elements (trees, streets… ) from someone else or from a previous project of theirs. When you do come across a full spread of the background used for a page in your book on several platforms, there is nothing proving anything one way or the other because on at least two of the sites hosting the graphic elements in question the name of the contributor (person claiming to be the rightful owner of the art) is can be different and by the looks of it could just be the screen names of your illustrator (Not everyone uses the same screen name on every platform they upload content to, and reasons for that may vary…).
You can have the case where your illustrator and the stock site contributor are one and the same or the case where your illustrator paid to use this (and maybe others) background because they are not good at drawing landscapes. Or it could be a scammer who ripped the images from some sites hoping to make a quick buck without doing much in terms of actual work. But you won’t know unless you ask questions and ask to see the licensing terms (if they indeed bought or created the graphics).
It’s in your best interest to ask these questions now to avoid any potential legal issues with your book.
