Upwork is ****** up

[Michael Angelo Go]

@davidhohn I must ask have you ever heard of a children's book this massive? Or could they be talking about the same book duplicated over and over? Really odd number.

[NessIllustration]

@Michael-Angelo-Go I really hate discounts for bulk orders, never done them and never will. It makes sense for products but for services, not so much. It just means you get to do LOTS of work that's ALL paid like crap. No thanks! If anything I'm more likely to be talked into a discount if it's a really small project I can do quick then move on to a better paid project next time.

[Michael Angelo Go]

@NessIllustration Yeah no, obviously a discount with a request this massive is a no-no.

But I was thinking like what kind of children's book has this many pages? Or are they talking about mass printing? If it's the latter why would the illustrator be responsible for printing them out?

[NessIllustration]

@Michael-Angelo-Go Not sure, maybe he's thinking of doing a series?

[davidhohn]

@Michael-Angelo-Go That's a big book!
80 spreads is 160 pages.
120 spreads is 240 pages.
As compared to a standard 32 page picture book of 16 spreads.

I did an illustrated children's bible a couple years back that was 160 pages. It was a ton of work! I was really happy with the end result, but still. . .

I know that most graphic novels (terrifically popular these days) can easily get up to 160 pages. I have nothing but respect for graphic novel illustrators!

But a personalized childrens name book? (I assume it's one where the lead character is altered to the name of the child) No, I've never seen that longer than 32 pages. But doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just not common. Next time I'm at the bookstore I'll look around for the longest picture books I can find -- maybe I've been overlooking them in my preference for 32 pagers!

But now that I think about it, if the book is personalized would there need to be two sets of art, for boys and girls? Whew! Lot of effort!

[mag]

In defence of Upwork and similar sites...
When I first started with illustration, I was still working part time in a small publishing house here in my country (Czechia). I was absolutely clueless about everything restring picture books. I was an in-house creative manager and we’ve been creating colouring and activity books with licensed art (Disney, hello kitty etc), so my background in what should be the prices for pb illustrations was nonexistent... and I was the typical third world country resident (haha).
My art was bad, my rates were low and I was ready to take on any job. Back then, I was seeing my self as a kid who really wants to make some bucks by mowing neighbours lawn. Cheap work, bad treatment, all this lovely stuff included! I took it as a school, as a battlefield I could learn and grow on. After a while I raised my rates and applied only for jobs with bigger budget (btw, the client usually declares the budget for the job, so - if you’re not within the budget, don’t apply for the job maybe?;). Now I think I’m in a totally different place with my illustrations. I’ve grown, learned, took a ton of classes, and I’ve illustrated a ton of lousy self published picture books and I’m grateful for my clients they let me learn while paying me the money. Just like the kid who outgrows his lawn-mowing days for cheap and is ready to build a serious lawn-mowing company.
Yes, I was giving all my rights while working for this freelance projects.
Yes, the clients usually wanted just cheap and quick job, but with some learning it’s possible to avoid them.
And yes - I did not mind the cons. And I was always trying to do my very best, even when payed poorly.
With help of upwork (and other similar sites, but mainly upwork) I was capable of sustaining my self during the transition time, quit my part time job at the publishing house and focus on building my portfolio.
Right now I still from time to time work there, I work as an “in-house” illustrator sort of a think for a publishing house in New Zealand that creates educational books for kids, they pay me very well ($70per illustration) and since it’s a returning client, upwork takes only 5% and honestly I’m absolutely ok giving up all my rights since I don’t want my name to be linked to those books anyway (not that I’m ashamed or anything, it’s just that creating educational illustrations is not my goal, it’s just something that helps me get my monthly income, someone might prefer delivering pizza).
Long story short...
Don’t work on upwork if you don’t like the conditions. However, don’t dismiss it only because it’s not the the dream client. IMHO, I think it absolutely pointless to worry about my giving up my rights to the illustrations. In the beginning of my art career, they were such an ugly illustrations (in retrospective) I really really don’t care. And to think my clients might get famous because of a book I’ve illustrated for cheap and they now are super rich and famous and I have nothing of it? Well yeah... that probably will never happen.
Maybe you still need to paint some of those lousy paintings to get them out of your system... what a great opportunity to paint, learn and get a little bit of money out of it! But for someone this would not be the way to grow. Someone might be much better off with actually mowing the lawn to get the money and grow as an illustrator in their free time and jump on the illustration train with big clients and big publishers when the learning phase is finished....
But seeing upwork as a place to get a real big world client? Probably not. You might be lucky though, but for me the healthy attitude was to take it as a place to learn my craft while getting payed.
Sorry for this loooooooong post.

[Michael Angelo Go]

@mag one thing that was on my mind on this project was payment vs. quality vs. time. If my client wanted to pay me cheap but the trade off was that I could put as little effort into the drawings as possible that was a dealbreaker. Because even though it's more money than usual, my name would be on the finished book, and it would reflect on my skills and portfolio if I were to ever apply for future work, this book would be a reference. Now I could vouch to have my name off the book, but that wouldn't be worth it either on that price point.

Another concern for me was that it seems the client wanted to me to have that exact payment, for the typical (high) quality of my work, and work on the book for 3-6 months. I have a degree in architecture and I interned jobs for $18/hr. If I am going to work on this book, with the same type of quality of my professional work, for an extended deadline, I would be making less than $18/hr. if I got paid only $1, 500 for 3-6 months. Keep in mind also of Upwork fees so it's estimated to actually being $1,300 in the end. That would be a major dealbreaker.

The topic was okay, the pay was attractive, I thought the number of pages were okay too, and the deadline seemed reasonably loose. I genuinely thought this would just be another book for my portfolio. Until they started talking about exclusive rights all of a sudden the pay felt low (bc it actually is), and since they seemed keen on quality the page count suddenly felt too big for the given price and schedule suddenly felt tight. I would be selling away hardwork for less than minimum wage and deep down I know I'm worth more than this cheap gig. If I kept the rights, I wouldn't be concerned at all because at least I would have the right to share the project on my portdolio.

And another thing, let's say this books goes nowhere once it's released after 3-6 months of labor. I didn't have any decent portfolio content back in January so me committing to 3-6 months to this project felt like I was risking half a year's worth of time not optimizing my portfolio and instead committing to a project for pennies for months.

Overall, I think I made the right decision (in asking more to reflect what I was worth as an artist) and that the client made the right choice for me (impulsively withdrawing from the contract because I'm out of their budget). I cannot afford to undersell myself if I have the opportunity to make a better name for myself if I can prioritize my time.

[mag]

@Michael-Angelo-Go oh no, I definitely agree with you that you’ve made the right decision about this client! I wouldn’t go down that rabbit hole either. I just felt the need to share my story - I think Upwork might be useful sometimes, if handled correctly. As you said, the job must have some benefits, and if the client doesn’t allow me to put the work into my portfolio, it’s a bad sign (it actually never happened to me on upwork? Sometimes I even negotiated different terms regarding the (c)...).

[Michael Angelo Go]

@mag Hmm... you've had clients respect your rights to your work? Those are definitely rare in this field.

But yeah this author and my previous client did not want me to put the work in my portfolio. Not even a sample, not even the front cover (which would be all I need).

[lpetiti]

@mag it’s good to hear about good some having good experiences on these sites. We hear so much about horror stories with clients, but the truth is a lot of clients will respect your rights as an artist if we explain things to them and open lines of communication early and often. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have a lot of freelancers working with both individual clients and publishers. It starts with the contract. If things ever don’t feel right at that stage, we need to just bow out gracefully and try again.