1 July 2016: The Bookseller magazine highlights the #PicturesMeanBusiness campaign with its 2016 Rising Stars list.
“Rarely has a one-person campaign brought so much change in the industry as illustrator/author Sarah McIntyre’s Pictures Mean Business. Frustrated by a lack of recognition for her fellow illustrators (and herself: she was ignored on a Carnegie shortlisting for Oliver and the Seawigs, OUP, though fellow co-creator Philip Reeve was listed as the author), she embarked on a drive to ensure that industry players—including publishers, Nielsen BookScan, literary prizes and, ahem, The Bookseller—credited illustrators along with children’s authors. The campaign has largely been a success because McIntyre has stressed the economic case: “I keep saying it’s mutually beneficial; it’s another way for publishers and creators to make more money. If it’s a simple case of adding some metadata so kids and parents can search for, say, books illustrated by Axel Scheffler, why wouldn’t you do it?” There is still a lot of work to be done, which McIntyre argues is crucial for developing new talent: “It’s so hard to crack into the industry for illustrators, and even when you do, the pay is low and it is hard to make a living. Illustrators making a name for themselves is part of how they can make a living.”