What can you Do?

Ask for Credit

If you see something where you should be mentioned and you are not, politely contact the person responsible and ask. You can always refer them to this site if you want to. In most cases it is not deliberate, it may be that they were not told who illustrated the book. People generally want to support illustrators and are more than happy to help, so maintain a professional approach.

 Get credit covered in your contract

Contact Nielsen to correct data 

If your name is missing from Nielsen or Amazon data, contact your editor, or get your agent to contact your editor, and ask them to add your name. If you’ve asked and they haven’t done anything, speak with other illustrators and use the hashtag to highlight the issue. Sometimes it’s more effective to champion another illustrator’s cause than your own; keep this in mind, that if you’re there for other illustrators, there’s more chance they’ll be there for you when you need it. 

Sign your artwork whenever possible

If your images get loose on the Internet, it will be easier for people to trace them to you. And then people who crop off your signatures are more obviously and intentionally doing something wrong.

Get a Twitter account. 

Publicists love Twitter, and if you’re not on it, you won’t realise just how often you’re getting left out of discussions, festival listings and promotion. In fact, you don’t ever need to write a single tweet, but DO set up an account; post a profile image so people can tell you apart from other people with your same name, and put a working link to your website in the short bio area. When people see you don’t tweet, they’ll click over to your website, which is where you wanted them in the first place.

use the hashtag #PicturesMeanBusiness 

When you tweet about illustrators’ credit, use the hashtag #PicturesMeanBusiness. It helps raise our profile and people can click on it to find out more about the campaign. It’s useful online for pointing out where a missing credit is due, and discussing issues surrounding credit and data. It’s also helpful for pointing out where something’s done well, and these kind of tweets keep the campaign looking positive on balance.

Keep the Hashtag campaign focused on Credit

The exciting thing about this campaign is that if we really hone in on the issue of credit, this is one important issue that CAN be solved. But what we’ve learned while running the campaign is that we need publishers and writers to trust us; they need to feel confident they’re not supporting a campaign with some sort of mission creep that will eventually take away money from them. While it might seem obvious that issues such as fair illustrator pay, control over copyright, and art theft are essential for our business, our campaign message will be less clear and effective if we stray into that territory. In issues of pay, copyright, and theft, it’s not clear everyone wins, and often someone will lose money. But when illustrators are credited properly, no one loses anything. Illustrator pay, copyright, and theft of images ARE hugely important, and need addressed but they needs separate campaigns, with separate hashtags.