What to Expect in Different Illustration Markets
If you’re trying to earn a living as an illustrator, it’s important to know that different illustration markets pay very different prices.
Commissions and products for the general public will typically pay the least, because the public doesn’t have a lot of money to spend. Though if you’re business savvy and able to build an audience, selling your own products can become a good way to earn a living.
Children’s books tend to be low-paying, especially once you calculate how many hours it actually takes to complete an entire book. For example, $3,000 for 400 hours of work is only minimum wage. (A big publishing house should be paying WAY more than this for a children’s book. Unfortunately, it’s a saturated market, and I’ve definitely seen these sorts of numbers offered to young artists just starting out.)
Comics and tabletop games also tend to be very labor intensive for not enough pay.
Editorial, that most “prestigious” of illustration fields, pays shit, because they’ve kept prices stagnated for the last 50 years. The New York Times exploits artists for very little pay because they can. Very few illustrators can make a living off of editorial alone these days.
The entertainment industry (film, tv) has a LOT of money to spend, even though they hate spending it on “low-level” artists. Things like storyboarding, animation, and motion graphics can make for good stable careers, as long as you know your worth and are prepared to fight for it.
Video games! The big studios pay good money to established artists, but are notorious in their exploitation of anyone entry-level. I know a few artists who found success in video games because they built their portfolio in *other* industries first.
Most of my career has been in the tech world, which has money, and pays artists pretty well to make their tech feel more human. The trade off is that large companies like Facebook will own everything you do, and smaller tech startups have very fast staff turnover.
Institutions like private schools and colleges, hospitals, or government agencies all have money to spend and tend to pay good prices.
Nonprofits are always trying to get artists to work for a “discount,” yet they also typically have plenty of money they’re willing to spend.
Licensing allows you to make passive income on the artwork you’ve already created. That’s why the ownership rights to your work are so valuable. Even if you’ve already been paid for your labor, you can still sell your artwork over and over.
There’s an entire world of corporate in-house artists and designers making good, stable livings. It probably won’t be the most creatively fulfilling job, but your coworkers will be SO impressed by your work, like, all the time.
And finally, the industry with the most money to spend, and the best prices for illustrators: advertising. There is SO MUCH money in advertising. The downside, of course, is that you have to work in advertising.
The point is not to tell you where you should and shouldn’t work, but to help you make the right decisions for yourself and your career. Most illustrators work in multiple industries. Plus everyone has their own personal calculation of what makes a job worth taking, and compensation is only one piece of that. The most important thing as a working artist is to know your own worth. I might choose to do a $100 commission for someone I like, but I would charge thousands of dollars to an ad agency for the exact same image, and that’s because I know the true value of what I do.