“Picture editors like choice. They collect and retain their own records of illustration styles whilst on the look out for ever fresher ones. Your best aim is to find the picture editors that want to use your style but here’s another aim you might like to consider ….

Imagine what it’s like for a picture editor. They get emails, cards, flyers, calls, visits and sometimes presents from illustrators. They get a lot. To be noticed as an illustrator, proof reader or designer, you need to stick out from the crowd.

One very well known picture editor who loved my work but never used it, told me this : “Grant, I have an illustrator that does wonderful figurative work in pencil. I have another that produces the slickest photoshop work on car engines and everything mechanical. Every illustrator I use has a set talent I can depend upon for specific contract requirement. Go away and only come back when I can place you in my mind as a specialist. There are thousands of illustrators who have great bulging folios of their work, but unless their work burns into my memory on first view, they stand no chance of working with me.”

So yes. I went away and specialised. However, I returned three years later to find the contact had retired.

Another editor once told me: “I like to enjoy my work. I use illustrators I like. It’s not just about the standard of their illustration, it’s about the whole process of putting the team together, producing the book, launching it and celebrating its popularity and sales. Once we know an illustrator and enjoy knowing them as a person, they become part of the team.”

So agents? Some are great. Most are busy. Many spend all their time devoted to getting contracts for those illustrators already on their books.

Self promotion? You can do this in a standard way or better still, you can stick out from the crowd and get noticed.

Is there a third way? Yes. In this plug-and-play world, more authors are teaming with illustrators and designers to create near perfect finished books (pdf format), excluding the legal page. An editor can scan these very quickly and spot an illustrator’s skill at adding image to story.

Is there a fourth way? I’m sure there are many more ways for illustrators, authors, designers, photographers, film makers and publishers to combine and create tomorrow’s world of entertainment, education and effective communication.

My recipe – sharing all through the HoBB Publishing Community.