Yesterday I had a heart breaking chat with an illustrator who is going through tough times with her publisher and she feels her agent is not supporting her.
She hasn’t worked in publishing for long so she doesn’t know what is reasonable and what is waaaay out of order.
She feels micromanaged and manipulated, even bullied at times, but doesn’t know whether to trust her gut. Her agent is telling her that this is all normal.
Basically she was asking me, ‘Is this normal?’
After our conversation I ran into my work room and did this quick chat to camera about what’s normal/ acceptable in the world of making picture books. There are so many grey areas and no hard fast rules, so how do you know when things are going wrong? And what can you do when the relationship breaks down?
After I recorded this I kept thinking, ‘I should have said this, why didn’t I mention that?’ But I hope this can be the start of a bigger conversation. Send me your questions and tell me about your experiences.
If you are washing up bung in your earphones — don’t have to watch me — there’s nothing visual you MUST see, other than my lovely face of course.
Helenx
P.S. The word normal always makes me laugh. Am I normal? Can
you just try to be normal for once? Ha, such a good word.
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