Artists Needed for Children's Books! (Update: The first book has been published on Amazon as of 10/17/21

Hi all! For anyone who doesn’t know me, I recently finished an entry for the contest here, a comedic (in theory at least) sci-fi story called Nuclear Powered Toaster. I’ve decided to try and experiment with publishing some conventional stuff on Amazon as well, and to that end I am looking for people interested in illustrating several children’s books I have written. Because the amount of money to be made is unsure (and likely not to be extremely high, at least at first), this would be good for people interested in exposure or just getting in some paid practice. Money split is easy: 50/50 for everything earned aside from whatever the platform takes first.

Since this is experimental, I’m looking to do different artists and/or art styles for each book to see what works best. So feel free to respond even if someone else has. If you’re interested I’ll let you know what projects are still unclaimed.

So any questions, comments, or criticisms for this plan, feel free to drop them here.

Link to Lake of Ake: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JJ9FBC5

4 Likes

This was the first image result for “nuclear powered toaster” on Google:

6 Likes

Once upon a time the old site would have been the first result. Sometimes I am sad I let it lapse. Other times I remember that as cheap as it was, I still wasn’t doing anything with it for years, and didn’t know how to keep it up anyhow since our webmaster wasn’t available anymore.

Sounds like you need a Nuclear Powered Webmaster

Not anymore, I canceled the site and some spam blog has NuclearPoweredToaster.com now.

1 Like

Figure I will put this back out there, see if anyone is interested. Just think: only have to do the art once, at your own pace, and then you sit back and reap the rewards indefinitely. Not bad, eh?

3 Likes

Can i dm you for more info?

2 Likes

I am channeling my inner necromancer and raising this thread from its eternal rest because I have decided I want to put some of my Parenting Simulator earnings to work by trying my hand at getting some kid’s books out there. I have four written (complete with notes for the art; I used to write webcomics, so I’m reasonably well-versed in trying to spell out what I want things to look like so someone more skilled can make it manifest), with two I particularly want to see come about.

No one was interested when it was just a 50/50 split of potential earnings, which I can understand given the iffy odds of success in a world filled to the brim with self-published authors. So here’s the new deal: I’ll pay $200 for the art (which would be 25-30 color pages), with $50 of that $200 up front once we’ve established some mutual trust and general timeframes for completion. That $200 would basically be an advance; once the book had cleared more than $200 net income, we’ll split all net income above that 50/50. If it fails to ever reach that threshold, well, you’ll have made more off it than I did, which is just too bad on me.

Any examples of your work would be recommended, of course. In particular, one of these stories would require fairly lifelike animals (not overly anthropomorphized, although some will end up wearing certain clothing items), and the other would involving drawing planets that would, in fact, be very anthropomorphized.

I intend to put this out to the world at large, but wanted to give first crack to this community since it’s treated me so well over the last couple of years. And in particular I am still giving @Isa right of refusal on the planet story if she’s still of a mind to do it, since she had expressed interest before and I found working with her on the Parenting art to be a terrific experience.

Show me what you got, CoGizens!

5 Likes

Up to the point when I vanished from the internet which was not my best move.

Yes I just read this post from December, which is not the best move, either.

2 Likes

You’re always worth waiting for, my friend.

2 Likes

If this is still open/available, I’m interested. I do stylized manga/semirealistic digital works and you can find my works on deviantart at this link:

If you have any questions, feel free to dm me!

2 Likes

I am definitely still on the lookout for interested artists, so PM sent! I have two books in progress, but it’d be good to actually get one properly finished and published. This place has given me more success with writing than I had a right to expect, but actually holding something I wrote in my hand would be a new sort of experience.

3 Likes

Update: this story had a happy ending. But does the one that was spawned by it? @Hero87 and I would love it if you or your little ones found out. Lake of Ake, a fun and (hopefully) funny rhyming tale of snakes, lakes and Jakes is now on sale at Amazon for $3.99 as an eBook or $12.99 as a paperback! Any support is much appreciated, and I do still have other children’s books ready to be illustrated if anyone is interested in the $200 deal I outlined above.

And if this one proves a moderate success, or even if it doesn’t and we feel like it anyhow, expect that this may well be the first in a series.

Link for Lake of Ake: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JJ9FBC5

4 Likes

Any chance you’re still looking for more illustrators?

ETA that regardless of whether you are or not, wanna say your parenting simulator game is the cog game I’ve replayed the most, by far!

1 Like

First off, thank you, and I’m glad you’ve enjoyed The Parenting Simulator!

As for this, I would definitely encourage you to share some examples of your work here publicly if you’re up for it, so you can get more attention for your efforts in general (I’m all about artists getting their stuff out there to be seen!), or by PMing me if you’d rather not have that many eyes right yet. But I’m not certain about if I’ll do another children’s book again very soon or not. I always try to be transparent with my sales performance with my two Hosted Games and intend to continue that with any conventional books, and I will just say that self-publishing is pretty much what everyone says it is. You put it out there, the people you actually know who want it get it, and then not much else happens. At this point, Lake of Ake has sold 19 copies and the royalty total is $76.72, meaning I’m not even a third of the way to making back the money I spent on making it. And with only 2 of those sales happening in November, there’s little reason to think it’ll be in the black anytime soon.

What this means is I have to kinda decide what I want out of this. If it’s an attempt to be financially successful as a writer, I don’t know how feasible this business model would be. Might be back to the old drawing board, or even time to scrap the whole thing and focus solely on more Hosted Games, where marketing isn’t my cross to bear. However, if this is more of a hobby, supplemented by my Parenting Simulator and Nuclear Powered Toaster (ha ha ha, it is to laugh) royalties, then I can just keep going and treat whatever money I earn (and the artists, assuming any book can eventually earn out the artist advance to the point that we go to the 50/50 royalty split) as found money. I’m not a rich guy; my wife stays at home with our children and I make about $56k a year at my day job, so I can’t say as I have lots of money to burn even with my side hustles here and on eBay. But everyone has to have some sort of hobby, and if I regard it as such I can continue doing more books with FaerieWarrior, who I will say again is excellent and enjoyable to work with, as well as any other artists who are interested.

Sorry for the lengthy response to a simple question. If you’d rather not read all that, the short summation is I don’t know if this offer is valid or not, but I’d be glad to check out your art and at least discuss the matter a bit further.

2 Likes