Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

How much more fabulous can it get? There’s a whole website devoted to the magazine Jugend (19th century and early 20th century), with galleries of covers, ads, and histories.

This week’s discussion of Pixish has reminded me of a tip I’ve been meaning to share. Are you ever faced with the awkward situation of a friend (or friend of a friend) wanting you to work on their idea for a children’s book, with the promise of “exposure” or some sort of profit-sharing in the future? How do you say no (and you should) without ruining your relationship?

I have a solution, and it comes in book form. Whenever I’m faced with this scenario (which is at least twice a year), I first stipulate that they will need to read The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Children’s Books* first. It breaks down the realities of the industry on several levels: how to submit manuscripts (publishers never want to see unsolicited manuscripts with art**), how artists are chosen for books slated to be published (artists are rarely chosen by the author), and, if your friend is tenacious, what to expect if you want to self publish your book, including the revolutionary idea of paying an artist a competitive rate for their time and effort.

In my experience, recommending this book has two results: they pursue another route, not to be bothered by reading a book about the industry they supposedly want to break into, or they actually read it and learn the realities of their goal.

What do you do in this situation? Feel free to post your tips in the comments.

* Though I really hate that title. No one wants to be told to read a book for idiots.
** It’s also a great resource for writers who want to illustrate their own stories.

There’s a vibrant debate going on over at Metafilter over Pixish – the new web 2.0 site that sources illustration contracts like Threadless sources T-shirts.

What is Pixish?

More from their site:

“Pixish is a great place to find fun projects, ideas to fuel your creativity, and great prizes to win! Pixish wants to get your work out there.”

(Artists, don’t worry about “getting your work out there.” If you have a blog, your work is “out there” – Matt)

Pixish-founder, Derek Powazek, responds to the criticism by reminding everyone that the project is still in beta and not to get too riled up yet:

I just wanted to say that the concern over spec work is understood on our end and we’re going to be making some changes to the site to make it more clear that it’s not what the site is about. Remember, we’re still in beta. We released it early to gather feedback, so thanks for that!

Derek goes into a bit more detail in this post, Getting Published, Getting Paid, over at the site.

Personally, I don’t have time for anything like Pixish; competing with random peers for a “prize”. I don’t have time to participate in these sorts of gimmicks in the real world and I’m not sure why I’d do it on a web site.

What do you think? Is Pixish an opportunity for a great community or just an online sweatshop?

Am I the only one super excited about the upcoming releases by neophyte Graphic Novel publisher First Second? I’ve raved about French cartoonist Joann Sfar at least a couple of times, and it’s great to see these nice, thick volumes of his work available in english. First Second is translating some awesome Lewis Trondheim stuff, too. It all looks so delicious!