Illo Agency - anyone experience signing with them?
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@NessIllustration I like your view that the energy saved in marketing time is what pays for the worth of an agent's take. @davidhohn your comment about how the agent should be hustling to find you work makes a lot of sense in that context. So happy to be a fly on the wall for this conversation. Commenting just to receive alerts.
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I guess it depends on what you are looking for.
I was with an art agency for about 6 months at the start of my career. I left because I just could not figure out how to make a full-time living financially. The commision fee was 30% , and the kind of gigs I could get via the art agency was just not paying enough. I was working non stop for 6 months, and I was far from making a living. The advantage was that the art agency did provide me a wide range of projects - I had many offers, and I did two books due to the time constrains.
After the 6 months, I switch to a literary agent, and started writing my own picture book. I prefer writing and illustrating my own book, much more than doing illustration only gigs. Currently the commision fee is 15%-20% for my projects. If you are interested in writing your own story, I would recommend seek a literary agency or a hybird agency (the CAT agency for example). Even many art agents help with presenting your dummies to editors, a literay agent is more suitable to rep an author/illustrator, both in terms of industry knowledge, and finance (15% commision vs. 35%).
With artists I met online (most of us are at the begining, or a couple of years into our career), I see there is a tendency that artists who are repped by a literary agency (or hybrid boutique agencies) tend to be happier with their agent than artists who are repped by an art agency. There are always exceptions of course, but so far that is my impression on artists I have chatted with.
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@miranda-hoover I have never heard anyone manage to negotiate the commission percentage. It should be the same for every artist an agency represents. I would be super uncomfortable if an agency offer different commission percentages to different artists without being transparent.
There are other things an artist can negotiate, but I think commission percentage is a difficult one.
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Thanks for the conversation guys! All good points. To be honest I would prefer a literary agency like Xin mentioned. I want to specifically do picture books and I have a couple of my own. But I was with an agency for the last couple of years who took 25% (that's standard), and got me a ton of work yet not what I really wanted to do. Now I have this offer from Illo Agency and I like that they're international. But going from 25% comm to 35% hurts a lot. At teh same time, my old agent was asking for a bunch of extra money to cover advertising costs, and even to be on their website (total BS). these guys don't. So yeah, ideally I'd get my own work without an agent but it seems daunting for some reason. I'm a working mom with limited free time and I do love that the agent does all the work of going after the work for you. But there's the obvious downside of paying commission. So I don't know... Maybe I'll look into more literary agencies before signing with these guys.
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As new illustrators, do you think we have a chance of negotiating that percentage down at all? Or are we stuck with what is offered if we want to sign with that agency?
Been thinking about this.
I'd love to say "Yes you definitely can negotiate the percentage down"But I'm a realist. So I have to qualify that "Yes" a bit.
The reality is that while it is possible to negotiate an illustration agent's (IA's) percentage down from 35% to (say) 25%, I think it's unlikely.
To be clear there's no rule saying that an IA has to charge a certain percentage. No governing body that will overrule them. The contract between you and the IA can be whatever you both agree to.
It comes down to how much the IA wants to work with you.
If they really believe in you and your work and your career they will negotiate to terms you both are happy with. After all the fundamental idea of an agent / illustrator partnership is that you both team up to make money together.
If they don't have that enthusiasm then they will not be willing to negotiate.There's another question that you didn't directly ask but I'd like to address:
Should you try to negotiate with an IA who is asking for 35%-40%?
For sure! As often as you are willing to do so.
Ask them to explain their fee. Ask them to clearly explain what they will do for that fee. How they plan to grow your career? How will they generate the kind of income you need to stay in this career?
Counter their offer. Explain your position. Be willing to find a middle ground that works for both of you.This is especially effective if you already know the negotiations are not likely to work out, because you won't be negotiating from a position of fear.
As was noted in @NessIllustration post above, the person willing to walk away holds considerable power in the negotiation. So you may find yourself in a stronger position that you expected.
But in any case you will have a chance to practice one of the most important conversations you might have in your career. The choice to partner with an agent can be long and fruitful relationship. Knowing what you want and need from a partnership like that can be incredibly beneficial.
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I would be super uncomfortable if an agency offer different commission percentages to different artists without being transparent
This is an interesting position.
Can you explain further?My own take is that this is simply standard in business.
Different people get different deals all the time. It reflects the real (or perceived) value they bring to project or a company.But I'll admit that I haven't thought about this that deeply. Just a "taken for granted" kind of thing.
The idea of transparency is interesting to me as well. What would that potentially look like? -
@davidhohn Very good points! Thank you, I'll keep those in mind!
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@davidhohn
Hmm. good question.
I think it has something to do with a sense of fairness, and trust. It will create a weird dynamic if I discover another artist pays less commission percentage to the same agent I work with without any clear reason. This would not be good for building a long-term partnership.The first art agency I worked together with has a 30% commission rate for every artist they take on. I actually negotiated the rate with them then. I asked if they would willing to go down to 15% commission percentage for author/illustrator books and remain 30% for illustration-only projects. My argument was that 15% was the standard rate a literary agency would take for an author/illustrator book. They were not willing to negotiate that as they prefer to have the same rate for all their artists and did not want to make exceptions for the reason of fairness. I respected that.
I guess people have different perspectives on every aspect of this business. There is no right or wrong way to go about finding an agent, negotiating terms. It comes down to what you are comfortable with.
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@lizbrizzi 35% is wayyyyyy to high you won't be making what you're worth. They'll be taking 35% plus depending on what tax bracket you're in that's like at least 50% cut taken from you with every check.
I checked out your website and your work is great! Your portfolio is strong enough that other agencies will want to work with you.
My agent takes 15% which to me is fair. A 20% cut would be the most I'd give up, we illustrators do so much work for not enough money. -
@Dan-Tavis I so agree with you. I'm just in a weird position because I'm breaking up with my agency. They took 25% which is actually standard for this type of "illustrators only" agent. An author illustrator agent takes 15% I think. Anyway I'm just scared to not have an agent now because they were giving me so much work. My clients still want to work with me, agent or not. So that's good. But it feels weird to be on my own for a while. It might be best to wait for the right agent though, as opposed to signing with whoever makes me an offer first.
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@Dan-Tavis Also, I just checked out your work and just wanted to say I love it! And that you and me both started drawing because of Math class. Haha!