💰 How to protect your time, energy and income as an illustrator

“Can you just do it for free?” NO.
In this week’s episode, we’re talking about working for free, how to say no without guilt, and why having nice strong boundaries won't ruin your career (we promise). 

Tania shares a BRILLIANT script for saying no to unpaid work. Thank you Taniasan, we luv ya.

Other good bits of note:

• How to stop feeling bad about saying no to cheeky requests
• How charity auctions can be a smarter way to give back
• Free pitching: where to draw the line
• That time Katie backtracked on a call (and the world didn't end)
• What to say when a client demands an answer right nowwww
• The biggest myth of all: “If you say no, they’ll never ask again”

Timestamps:
00:00 – Biscuits first. We have our priorities in order 🤣
01:00 – “How do I say no to free work… nicely?”
02:30 – Quotas, boundaries, and rude assumptions
04:00 – Saying no to friends and students
06:00 – Turning FAQs into blog content
07:00 – A better way to support charities (without giving away your time)
08:00 – “I used to worry people wouldn’t like me if I said no…”
10:00 – Paid development work in picture books: what’s normal?
12:00 – The pitch trap and how to avoid it
13:00 – Katie’s mural pricing wobble (and recovery!)
14:00 – The power of taking your time to decide
15:00 – You’re not being too picky. You’re just not people-pleasing anymore!
16:00 – On "playing": why your language matters

Oh! While you're here...

• You can join the Picture Book course here: https://www.thegoodshipillustration.com/PB

Taraaa,

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Okay. We've got two questions. One is a picture bookie one, and one is a money ish one. Which one do you want first? I dunno, but I've just eaten a biscuit and I'm worried I can still, you can still hear me. That's all right. Have a, there we go. Okay.

Have the other question, not the picture. Book one first while I get. Over the biscuit. Okay, you get over the biscuit. Don't talk about money. So the question was how do you tell people nicely? I don't do volunteer work. I'm assuming illustration, volunteer work, and the context. This is an anonymous question, says, people know I'm an artist, therefore many ask me to do free work.

What is the best way to [00:01:00] say no capital letters? And perhaps, are there times when I should say yes, capital letters? Thank you. Oh, well the one I was told, which was a nice script for getting out of it professionally and politely was that my quota for not-for-profit work for this year has been used up perfect, easy.

What else? You don't need to even elaborate on this. That is so perfect. Yeah. For every situation, which points out you're not mean and horrid, you do occasionally do work, but you only do it for things that you want to do it for. You are not there to be dictated to about what your causes are. Define your causes first, decide who you will work for.

You don't have to take all comers. ~Um, ~they're willy-nilly causes 'cause what's important to them isn't necessarily important to you. And actually, even though I didn't have a not-for-profit quota per year, it made me create one. I was like, okay, I'll do. Five to 10% voluntary work. ~Um, ~and, but I'll only do it for these ~particular, ~particular causes that you really care [00:02:00] about.

Yeah. Yeah. Because all the fundraisers that come to illustrators saying, this is good for your profile. ~Um, ~could you contribute to this, this, or that? A lot of people say,~ well,~ fundraisers are given a salary. If the whole act of fundraising is a salaried act, why is my not? And I'm not connected ~to your, ~to your charity or your cause.

So there's gotta be something in it for you. And I would probably just say to those people, yeah, you'd have to pay me for that one. Or if you want it completely free, that's the the other one. The other thing is to say you can't art direct any of it. If you want free work, I'll do it as a portfolio piece for me, but you have no creative input, which is what the advertising agencies do for a lot of charities.

So you see those things online where you see an amazing wild ad that you can't believe got passed. ~Well, ~it didn't get passed. It was done for the award ceremonies only. That's why they, it will appear on a TikTok or on a YouTube and you can't really tell what the brand was for. But that's the advertising agencies having a great opportunity to [00:03:00] showcase their creative talents without any client input would make it mediocre.

So you can't make it work for you that way. I. Nice. It's scary telling people no though as well, isn't it? Because I know when people, sometimes you'll get a very casual message and they're like, oh, hi, yeah, Katie, I've just got this project in. Those are the hardest ones, especially somebody you sort of know a bit.

Exactly. Or a friend. But I think people know, not to ask anymore, but in the early, early days people would send me messages like that and I'd reply with, my fee is blah, and I just felt awful, especially if it was a friend or something. I think sometimes I would say, I'm so sorry, I don't, I can't afford to work for free.

That also helped because I couldn't, I didn't have a secret pile of money. I wasn't like exactly. I had my rent to pay. I had bills to pay and I was like, if I do your free thing, then I don't have time to work on the work that pays my actual bills. Um, I also think it's very, maybe these people don't realize, but it's also incredibly rude to ask.

Yeah. They don't realize and they, they don't [00:04:00] realize they're putting you in a position asking something that's quite unfair. And then you, you are the one that ends up feeling bad because you have to say no and you feel like, ~you know, ~the whole people pleaser thing makes you feel like a failure because you're turning people down.

But it's a lack of understanding on many people's part. This isn't just a hobby. This is the roof over your head. Yeah. You could also say you're fully booked. That one works well, but that still, that doesn't see them off. They'll go and ask someone else. They need to know. It's not reasonable to ask this.

Sometimes you can't be bothered to educate them though as well, can't you? Oh, you like I've sometimes being like, oh my God, just No, I'm too busy. Sorry. Yeah. And that gets them out my in books. What about questions from students? I get quite a lot of that. Oh yeah. I kind of questions. ~Um, ~well, sometimes it's directly.

To me, so it will say, dear Helen, I like, name a book or something. They're not as bad as the ones that start, dear Illustrator, I'm studying at whatever, here are my 20 questions. Like, [00:05:00] okay, I'm gonna put my day aside now. Yeah. And, and so your 20 questions so hard, but sometimes it's from a student or sometimes I'll say out of, if they genuinely are asking me and they know my, they're my work and they've made that obvious and they might send me a lot of questions and I'll say, I'll answer one of them on my phone now and send it.

And that's all, that's good idea. That's all you're getting. But sometimes I just don't reply at all. Because sometimes they get my backup in some way. And the way it's worded looks like they've sent it to everybody and 'cause they pop up. Yeah. Mm. And some illustrators are really smart and they've done those questionnaires from students and then repurpose, unlike me for I've put it in an email and left it in the out tray somewhere and forgotten all about it.

~Um, ~and the student has got the answer, ~but you know, ~you could repurpose that onto the FAQs on your website. Yeah, I've done that before. It's really, and sometimes people have sent me such good questions that I've said, I'll answer it. [00:06:00] I'm gonna make this into a Substack post today. Yeah. I've done, and then that's said useful actually.

Yeah, that's, it's such a good way to do it because I've had people get in touch about pricing and they're like, how much should I charge for this? How much should I charge for that? And it used to get me really annoyed because they're like, I had to figure it out. You figure it out. But then eventually I was like, actually I'm gonna write a whole thing about this, and then if anybody ever asks, I can send them to this blog post.

Yeah. ~Um, ~yeah. And I think. That's probably a good way of maybe even covering your prices. Like if somebody gets in touch, are you available to work for free? If you had a page on your website, my about, ~you know, ~your availability, your prices start at, and then you could send 'em to that page and that page does all this embarrassing.

Mm. You know, like, how could I have asked this person Yeah. For free work when they outline your boundaries, how far in advance you need to be booked, blah, blah, blah. And then they'd be like, oh shit, they're actually doing this. Seriously. I can't just ask them for random freebies. But, uh, if you did want to help and you did, someone's got in touch with you from a course that you really care for, but you don't have the time to give them [00:07:00] two free days work.

What you can do is, and it doesn't always work 'cause you need auctions or sales, quite often these big charities will do those charity dinners and they'll put things up for auction. That is such a winner because if you've got something in the plan chest that you can give away, ~um. ~They'll often raise huge amounts of money for a print that you may sell for 150 quid auctioned with your signature or I dunno, some, maybe you can add something extra to it.

Like, you know, you can gold leaf a print or some tiny extra edition, which makes it different from the the stuff in your shop, but they can go up to a thousand, 2000 because people at these charity dinners want to be seen to be spending money and supporting a good cause and they'll pay a lot more than something is actually worth.

And it means there was nothing that you had to do, you didn't have to give working hours away. You've just provided artwork for it. And that's one of the easiest ways to help, I think, identify your charities and give work to them. Yeah. If it's things that you [00:08:00] don't want to use or sell, prints are the easiest.

~Hmm. ~Yeah. I used to worry if I said no to doing stuff for free or discounts, people wouldn't be my friend anymore. Wouldn't like me. And I was really, I was really worried about that. And I think as I've got older, I just don't care anymore. Yeah. I think that's a thing. If someone's gonna fall out with me because I won't work for free for them, then they shouldn't be my friend anyway.

~Yeah, ~yeah. Quite frankly, often those people, the people who ask for free work won't be employing you again later. It's not like, could you help this charity and then we'll give you a paid job? They weren't, and just work asking which illustrators are prepared to work for free for charities, and it should be an absolute no-no.

And for pitching, of course, no free pitching. ~Do, ~do they free pitch in picture books? Uh oh. That was in, on the last podcast we recorded when I spoke to the illustrator who was having a hard time,~ um,~ she's just been offered a new deal and they will pay her a small amount for development work. ~Uh, ~and [00:09:00] she was outraged by it because the situation had all gone so wrong that now she was in this situation of thinking, oh, the whole of publishing is a nightmare.

And, but that is quite normal for a, a picture book publisher might approach you with a text and they haven't decided who's gonna illustrate it yet, and they might ask you to pitch for it. So they might pay you a few hundred pounds to do a little bit of work, and then if you get the job, they take that off your advance.

So is is the amount you're being paid for that, do you think that is reasonable? For a daily rate? It's usually really low. So. It's a long time since anybody's asked me to do that, but I have done it in the past. For example, I've been paid, I think the last time I was asked to do it, I think I was paid 300 pound to do some development work for a book.

So I made sure that I did no more than a day's work. Yeah, because 300 pound barely covers a day. It barely covers a day. And I thought, well, they can see my [00:10:00] website. They can see my portfolio. Yes, they know what they're gonna get. Anyway. I guess they're wanting development work 'cause they've just, I've looked at the text and they are wondering how I might envisage the character or something.

So I've just done really, really basic character sketches. No more than a day. But you know, sometimes they do want you to do more than that, but I think you've got to be careful because you could end up putting a weak aside or more. And this illustrator thought. Uh, in a previous project she'd been asked the same thing, but the development work had gone on for months.

So you definitely need boundaries in that. You say, yes, I'll take 300 pound, but it's a day's work. But that is normal in publishing ~a, a, ~a fee for a little bit of development work. Sometimes design groups will ask illustrators to,~ um,~ do development work for a brand or a theme. I remember when we were at college just before BT rebranded itself, do you remember the, the kind of nymph with a trumpet?

Yeah, the blow, the flutie thing. Yeah, that's it. We all pitched in on that one and everyone was paid,~ um,~ I dunno, [00:11:00] maybe a couple of hundred pounds, and told something very vague. Like, could you have a male figure that looks slightly mythical with a long trumpet? ~Uh, ~you know, so there were probably 10 of us that I knew at least, who were working on that.

And there was development work fees paid. But amongst illustrators and graphic designers, I. The ethos is no free pitching and everyone has to adhere to that. It's like scabs. If people, ~you know, ~deny that and start, because it ruins the standards of the industry. If you don't stand with the unofficial union or agreement of design in the world of picture books, it is vague.

It's always really vague. And there's so many gray areas in picture books because,~ um,~ if I have a book I want to make and I am gonna take it to the publisher and that way I am pitching, but it's my own project, it's my baby, it's come from my head. And so I will work on it. 'cause how am I gonna convince them to do this book in my head without me putting anything on paper?

Yeah. So if I'm pitching it free, [00:12:00] obviously. But if they're coming to me with a text and they're usually doing that because they're asking a few illustrators and then they're gonna have a meeting and decide who, then they need to pay you for that. Yeah. ~I, ~I had a weird one recently with a client. It was an existing client, I dunno, mural for, and they want another one.

And I gave them a quote and then they just didn't get back to me. I was like, oh, well, fine, whatever. They must be doing something else. I didn't think about it. But then they got back in touch and they were like, oh, could you just mock up a bit of the mural so we can see the new mural? So it's see what it's gonna look like and live on the call.

I was like, oh yeah, that's fine. And also I was like, oh, and you've, you've got all the content, so I'll lower the fee a bit, that's fine. But then I got off the call, I was like, what am I doing? Mm-hmm. They already know what my work looks like. Why am I making it cheaper? I'm still gonna have to go to London, do the mural.

So I emailed, it was a very awkward email to write. I was like, um, I've come to my senses. I'm not gonna do it for free. Like if you want to go ahead and you're signing the contract, obviously I will mock up the design before I show up to do it, but I'm not gonna mock it up before you've decided if you [00:13:00] want me to do it or not.

You know what my work looks like. And also the fee is what I originally quoted. It's not the new one that I just. Good for you. Yeah, right. And I, and I also had this attitude of like, if you don't wanna go ahead, good. 'cause I can't be bothered to do it anyway. But I think like that's, that attitude is what I was missing in the early days because I was so desperate to do anything and I would've been like, I'm so sorry.

The fee's lower. I'll do it for free. I think that element of giving yourself time to think about it is really, really important. And I think, I'm gonna go back to the illustrator I spoke about in the last podcast,~ um,~ with the situation with the publisher where she's had a bad time, they were really eager for her to make up her mind.

Now, do you wanna do it? Do you wanna do it now? For sure. They want an answer and then she's been offered a new deal and they're doing the same thing. And I think that is a thing that happens quite often, but you should always give yourself time. Always. Yeah. Never, never agree on the phone or on the spot.

Never. People will push you to do it, but never give a price on the spot. If they push you, you say. Unless there's like a really, [00:14:00] really big reason why like when I did that book I was talking about for UNICEF and it had to be out in time for Commonwealth Games and they were gonna pay me more. There was a situ, that was a situation where they were being pushy about time 'cause it was genuine.

But most of the time it isn't. ~Um, ~so I always think if they're being really pushy and when I've said actually I need some time to think about it, if they carry on, then I say, I'm out, then yeah, I'm out. If you're gonna be, if you want an answer now, then it's no, it actually feels like a big relief, doesn't it?

To be like, if this isn't gonna work out, no hard feelings. Bye-bye. I will be having a nap or doing something I like with my life. ~You know, ~it'd be nice to do the job, but it'd also be nice to not do the job. I don't care either way. That great realization when you, when you realize your boundaries aren't going to crucify your career and they're actually okay to have, and people quite often are fine with it.

It's only your desire to please in early career times that have cast the client as the baddy because you're always. ~You know, you, ~you are always bending to their, you think that you're bending to their [00:15:00] will, but in fact what you're doing is just anticipating wrongly what they want. But you're, you're like, yeah, yeah, I'll do anything.

So abandoning yourself along the way. Mm-hmm. And I used to look at people in companies and be really envious thinking, you know how all this works and you know what the boundaries are and what's reasonable. I wish I knew. And you, you do have to make them up yourself. And then you realize, oh, they're fine about this.

Mm-hmm. I was making it difficult by just being o an over pleaser. ~Mm-hmm. ~I think we're all extra sensitive to feelings and stuff as well, aren't we? Maybe broad creative is a bit touchy feely as well, isn't it? So it's not like we're in the financial industry doing something we perhaps don't like. Mm-hmm.

And people think we loved what we do and we do to a certain extent, especially if it's our own idea. But sometimes, sometimes people's other ideas aren't such fun to work with and it is just a job. Mm-hmm. Yeah. ~So. ~That's when we find it quite hard to say no because it's supposed to be something like playing in the sandpit and having fun.

And the moment [00:16:00] you get over that attitude,~ like,~ do you remember I used to say the one of my clients who's a really lovely designer, I got her to come into the Hong Kong Poly YouTube, create the students so that they could have an experience of working with a professional designer. And they were, they would use language that minimized what they were doing and saying things like, I was just playing with this idea.

And she was like, stop that right now. You do not play with an idea. You're a professional designer or illustrator and the client is paying money. And so you're just encourage encouraging them to think that you're just playing and this is a kind of hobby, so you can't use that sort of language if you want them to respect you professionally.

And I thought it was such a great point. It is. It's like we all say those words, like playing around with an idea or, yeah, just stuff that makes it seem valueless. So the language we use is really important. If you're gonna convince clients that you've just spent the last 12 hours or stayed up till three in the morning, figuring out which color something should be and angsting over [00:17:00] it, that certainly isn't playing.

So we've done ethics, money and working for free. Don't do it unless it suits you and give away prints for auctions and that's a better way to make money. Ta bye Bye.