Licensing art

[kiriska.livejournal.com]

Okay. Looking for advice about licensing commissioned art to the commissioner commercial use.

So I am potentially going to be doing a lot of art for a guy making a tabletop RPG -- he'll be using all of the art in a guidebook that will eventually be for sale. Since this is something a lot of people want to do and since I don't know enough about the project to really form an opinion about how likely it is to be commercially successful, I would rather not deal with royalty payments that may or may not ever happen and would prefer a lump sum one-time licensing fee per image.

The guy pointed out that a flat-rate fee per image (in addition to the cost of the commission itself) would add up quickly for him, since he would need dozens and dozens of images. I understand this, and I understand that this is a very indie project and that he isn't a big business with lots of funds. I do want to be as reasonable and fair to him as possible, but I want to be fair to myself as well, and in the event that this guidebook is wildly successful, I don't want to have given away usage of the art for little more than what the art itself cost.

So I'm not really sure what would be a good compromise. I was thinking about percentages, like maybe a 5% licensing fee on top of the cost of each image, though some of the smaller images would be something like $20, so 5% is only a dollar, which seems.. silly? I don't know.

Advice?

Comments

[sigilgoat.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who publishes gaming books and I believe he does a flat rate. For his first book there were like...30 black and white images that were fairly small, all things considered (filling up corners and what not) and I believe he paid something like 400-500$ for the whole thing. It worked out for everyone and there were no complications from it. They added on a full color cover after that for another 100-200$

Charge whatever YOU feel comfortable with, and I'd suggest doing it as a whole lump sum instead of individual images and he needs to tell you exactly what he needs so you can make up your quote. Might want to make it a bit higher in case he tries to talk you down.

[kiriska.livejournal.com]

Hm, when you say your friend paid $400-500 for the whole book, is that the total cost of creating all the individual images AND the licensing fee, or just the total cost of the commission with no separate deal for usage? If the former, do you know what the licensing fee was in comparison to the cost of the art itself?

Charging lump sum for using all the images sounds like a good idea though -- less intimidating than charging per image.

[sigilgoat.livejournal.com]

That was for everything period: art, usage, licensing etc. His artists were also from South America, which might have effected the pricing, as maybe they don't expect as much with inflation/cost of living/etc.

He used the book images in the book, for some promotional materials and his website.