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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Self Publishing: What's An Artist Worth?
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<blockquote data-quote="prosfilaes" data-source="post: 7695085" data-attributes="member: 40166"><p>To the extent that he successfully encourages (a) people to not become publishers, (b) use public domain work or (c) spend their art budget on stock art by established artists instead of new art by new artists, yes. It's a law, the law of unintended consequences; this is a complex system, and intervening in it will have consequences you didn't intend.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Creativity is an attribute of humans. Probably the majority of people have had dreams of being authors or artists or musicians or actors. Many of them have acted upon it. Most of them end up as mailmen or sysadmins or some other non-creative profession. That's the problem here; jobs that many people can do don't pay well, and that goes double for jobs that people would rather do instead of other jobs that pay better.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Microsoft might be able to spend more on art, but I'm pretty sure that the total art budget of the RPG community is roughly constant. Say it's a million, to grab a number much higher than I believe; that'll support 20 artists at 50K a year, or 50 artists at 20K a year, or 200 artists at 5K a year. Since I'm pretty sure there's 200 artists who want to grab a part of that RPG art budget, if the working artists are going to get a living wage, most of them are going to have to stop competing for a slice of the pie.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>With the exception of artists selling prints, you're just moving money around in the community. The amount of money people are going to pay for RPG books is not significantly going to be expanded by Kickstarter and Patreon. You can't get blood from a stone.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It's quite simple; you can't increase the money you're spending by a significant amount without increasing the income. And increasing the income of an established industry is slow at best. If your art budget is $200, and you plan on paying your commissioned artists 10 times as much, your choices are less art, more public domain art, or stock art. It's rarely going to be an option to just jump your art budget to $2000, and certainly not industry-wise.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>If you remove 90% of the publishers from the industry, so go the people they would pay.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prosfilaes, post: 7695085, member: 40166"] To the extent that he successfully encourages (a) people to not become publishers, (b) use public domain work or (c) spend their art budget on stock art by established artists instead of new art by new artists, yes. It's a law, the law of unintended consequences; this is a complex system, and intervening in it will have consequences you didn't intend. Creativity is an attribute of humans. Probably the majority of people have had dreams of being authors or artists or musicians or actors. Many of them have acted upon it. Most of them end up as mailmen or sysadmins or some other non-creative profession. That's the problem here; jobs that many people can do don't pay well, and that goes double for jobs that people would rather do instead of other jobs that pay better. Microsoft might be able to spend more on art, but I'm pretty sure that the total art budget of the RPG community is roughly constant. Say it's a million, to grab a number much higher than I believe; that'll support 20 artists at 50K a year, or 50 artists at 20K a year, or 200 artists at 5K a year. Since I'm pretty sure there's 200 artists who want to grab a part of that RPG art budget, if the working artists are going to get a living wage, most of them are going to have to stop competing for a slice of the pie. With the exception of artists selling prints, you're just moving money around in the community. The amount of money people are going to pay for RPG books is not significantly going to be expanded by Kickstarter and Patreon. You can't get blood from a stone. It's quite simple; you can't increase the money you're spending by a significant amount without increasing the income. And increasing the income of an established industry is slow at best. If your art budget is $200, and you plan on paying your commissioned artists 10 times as much, your choices are less art, more public domain art, or stock art. It's rarely going to be an option to just jump your art budget to $2000, and certainly not industry-wise. If you remove 90% of the publishers from the industry, so go the people they would pay. [/QUOTE]
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