In my last blog post, we looked at how having illustrations in your nonfiction book make it more engaging, increase sales and make it look professional. In this week’s blog post, we will be considering how to find an illustrator for your book that meets your needs and will suit the style required for your book. It is also important to make sure that you find them pleasant and easy to communicate with, as this will give you better results.
Types of Illustration
Before you even start looking for an illustrator, you will need to consider what sort of Illustrations you require and what area your nonfiction book covers. For example, if your book refers to a lot of statistics and data, you will probably need some charts to better display these and make the information easier for your reader to absorb. If you just want simple graphs and bar charts, it is possible that you could do these yourself, but you may still prefer to hire someone else if you will be having any other illustrations.
If your book describes a lot of processes, for example, the formation of geographical features, you will need diagrams to explain them. Having a diagram is a lot clearer than several paragraphs explaining the process and more memorable. This type of illustration is usually called technical illustration, which covers a wide range of areas. You may need to find one that specialises in your book’s niche, for example, geography or architecture.
If your book will be having drawings, consider what sort of style these should be. For books in scientific areas, for example, you may well need realistic drawings. Similarly, if your book requires your readers to follow particular instructions, such as for a carpentry project, realistic drawings are a must so that they can easily follow the steps.
Alternatively, a cartoon style is more common in political or satirical writing, of the sort usually found in newspapers. This style helps to draw the reader in and, hopefully, make them smile! While they are often paired with comedic writing, cartoons can also be helpful to lighten more serious sections.
Another common style is black and white or greyscale illustrations. These can look very striking and should draw the reader’s attention. They are also simple if you need to avoid cluttering the page. Finally, black and white images make printing your book easier and cheaper. There is less to go wrong if you don’t have any colours in your book and printers will almost certainly charge less if you only require black ink and nothing more complicated than this.
Finding an Illustrator
So, where do you start looking for illustrators? One of the easiest places to start is the internet, looking for freelancers, although you would need to vet them very carefully. Alternatively, you could try using an illustration company. The advantage of this is that they should have checked all of their illustrators and will offer you some recourse if the illustrator does not deliver. Recommendations are also an excellent way to find illustrators if you know anyone who has worked with one.
Now that you have some ideas about where to search, you can start looking for illustrators that offer the style you want. They should have a portfolio that you can browse to check how well their illustrations would suit what you want for your book. This is also a good time to check if the illustrations are up the standard you would expect, as having sub-par images could actually harm your book’s appeal and sales.
There are a few things to look out for in this respect, depending on what type of illustrations you want. Sometimes it will be obvious at a glance whether they are at the required standard, such as the realistic type of drawings you would need in a botany book, for example. Other times, such as for cartoons, this can be more subjective. If you will be having diagrams and charts, you need to make sure that these will be both accurate and clear so that your readers can easily understand them.
The next thing to check is how easy the illustrator is to work with. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as just looking at a portfolio! The best place to start is to look at reviews (not on their own website). These should flag up any major problems, such as them not responding to emails, postponing deadlines or just being generally difficult to work with. Alternatively, they could be lovely, but don’t understand how to convert your requirements to an illustration, so you are left with work you can’t use.
Once you have checked all this, you should have a shortlist of illustrators with work that you like and positive reviews. At this point, it is a good idea to contact your shortlist and learn what you can this way. Do they respond to you promptly? Are they friendly and easy to communicate with? From this, you might be able to rule out some people immediately.
Wrapping Up
I hope that this helps you with your search for an illustrator. In my next blog post, we will be looking at some of the common scams in self-publishing and how to avoid them, so come back in two weeks for that!
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