I’ve been around Facebook and Twitter discussing pet peeves with other creators and have found a peculiar topic that circulated more than most: people who asks for illustrations with either no budget or the promise of % owned from a beginning writer.

Now I’m not bagging on those who are looking for exact partnerships from consenting adults who find interests in ground floor work and if that’s your thing then please disregard me and keep doing your thing, but I am speaking to those chumps that think “artists will come if I give them the promise of currency later”.

People can’t eat I.O.Us, especially from strangers.

A lot of people don’t ever want to do the ground work of: staying up in their communities and growing their writing while accumulating a following before laying pipe dreams and it sucks to see it. Why do you think anyone will work with you when you don’t even speak in these groups? Why are you entitled to someone who doesn’t know you?

The proper way to acquire an artist is such: with money. It’s one of those things you need to put in proper rotation and it’s one of the things I learned really early in my manga life. I started out looking for partnerships and then could barely understand when people would “ghost” me because “they were working on paying customers first” and it hit me hard as hell that maybe I should be doing the same. Some of these artists put in multiple hours over MULTIPLE days to make what you need and honestly, what you think is “not worth the money” is literally below minimum wage if you just factor in yourself. You need to think broader on how you approach anyone for a trade.

Another good bet is to invest in a Kickstarter, with good advertising, but that factors in on how well your community knows you. With that, my steps above about that is accurate.

Stop short changing artists, and stop thinking “they should be grateful I even came to them!”