Happy spring! I just returned from visiting friends in family in California, in full gorgeous spring since the few days of rain.

Returning to the NYC area is always a little hard, but the flowering trees help.

I am working out a contract with a small-ish publisher for a little book I'm writing and illustrating.

The only other time I did this was with a big textbook publisher, about 15 years ago. For that project, I got paid one time for the illustrations, and then had a separate royalty deal for the authorship, 12%, which was considered pretty decent at the time.

The current project would be a trade book, for which I have NO experience. I know we can't specify actual prices on the listserv, but maybe someone with experience could email me separately and let me know if 10% is a reasonable royalty amount for authoring a trade book? I'm at [log in to unmask]

Also, they have not yet mentioned the illustrations. For trade books, would the illustrations have a separate contract, like I had done previously?

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge/experience!

Take care,

marni