How much does a professional cartographer earn?

[Hussein Horack]

I'm interested in this as I have no clue how much a commission costs and how frequently one receives them. Roughly how much do you earn in say, a month or a year?

[ladiestorm]

Never accepted a paid.commission, and I found myself asking the same thing a month or two ago. In a nutshell, the answer would be, it varies. I haven't figured out how to link yet, but if you search this forum for the thread: Should I? Shouldn't I? Need advice from the professionals you can get some good answers.

[Josiah VE]

Like Ladiestorm said, it might very. I am far from a professional cartographer but I have done some commissions. For a decent sized map you should get a good few hundred dollars. You'll get a better answer if a professional shows up and chips in.

[Gamerprinter]

Well I get consistent commissions from various gaming publishers, and as ladiestorm suggests "it varies". The best paid commissions I get is for creating maps for video game strategy guides, but there is only a handful (much less than 10) cartographers who do this on the entire planet. Most roleplaying game publishers work with extremely tight budgets, though cartographers are among the better paid illustrators in the industry, most maps are created for less than $100 each (often much less, like $25), though I have a minimum I'll accept. If you're looking for a job as a cartographic illustrator, you're better off looking for another job, and do game cartography as a sideline. Roleplaying Games really don't make anyone rich, including the publisher - for most of it, its for the love of the game and willingness to support, and earn a small income stream while doing so. Often private commissions pay more than publisher commissions, and most cartographers, even me, will take a private commission every now and again if the pay is decent. Also consider that the work is not steady. I create maps for a dozen different publishers, some of them several times a year for multiple projects. There are months where I have 2 or 3 weeks of solid work, and other months where there are no commissions at all.

For example in June of this year, I created 18 maps for Legendary Games for an entire 5 module adventure path, that was followed by 3 maps for Kobold Publishing, then in July I got no commission requests at all, then at the start of this month, I got a 3 map commission from Purple Duck Games. So when you ask what kind of income can you make in a month? It depends, commission work is never steady. I will say that most game publishing work comes in the winter time, versus the summer time related to Christmas sales.

Since I am a professional cartographic illustrator, and since publisher commissions are never steady, nor highly paid, I supplement that income by creating personal maps that I sell directly to gamers through DrivethruRPG under Gamer Printshop, my publishing company. Because I published a Japanese horror setting for Pathfinder RPG as an imprint under Rite Publishing since 2009, I have a lot of experience working in the publishing industry beyond just illustration work - writing, game design, editing, page layout, cover design, product sales and income management, as well as working closely with other freelancers. Because of this, I am a small publisher beyond the map products I create and release. I currently have 3 different author/game designers working on 3 different publishing projects of mine. One of them the author approached me (whom I've worked with before) and asked if I'd be interesting in publishing his project. The others are my own projects.

I do this because I want to support the industry in more ways than just working map commissions, and kind of do this full-time. I'm not getting rich, but I having to do a lot more than just mapping to get a decent, steady income stream.

In the last few years, I've been paid everything between $45 and $750 a map. It varies.

That's the best advice I can offer.

GP

[Hai-Etlik]

I'm interested in this as I have no clue how much a commission costs and how frequently one receives them. Roughly how much do you earn in say, a month or a year?

I'm assuming you mean an illustrator who specializes in fictional maps rather than a specialist in the combination of geography and graphic design who can present complex real world data sets in a clear and precise way. They are very different jobs.

[Hugo Solis]

It's a tricky business.

I've been doing maps professionally for a short time (some 5 years, this was my first map: http://butterfrog.deviantart.com/art...odge-266968344 ) and only recently (some 2 years) started doing it on a more steady fashion, and I believe there's only a handfull (literally) of full time cartographers.

It's far more likely for a full-time artist to make a living out of all kinds of art other than maps, because demand is much much lower, and the vast majority of companies that commission several maps on a monthly basis pay very low rates (average $25-75 for half page maps). Only a handful of gaming companies pay "decent" rates and you'd have to land steady jobs from at least three of those companies (lest say making an average of 8-10 maps a month from decent paying companies) to try and make a basic living from it.

So, I second pretty much all the post abode from Gamerprinter, if you want to make a (non.rich) living out of maps, you must do a decent batch of monthly commissions AND sell your own maps to your public.

My two centavos.

[Gamerprinter]

Hey Hugo, good to see you as a member here. While its been a while since I've been a regular here, I'm trying to get back into things. Hugo has done a ton of excellent non-cartographic illustration work for RPG publishers like Rite Publishing. I am familiar with his work, and we've both done work for Rite Publishing, so we kind of know each other already.

[Hugo Solis]

Hey Hugo, good to see you as a member here. While its been a while since I've been a regular here, I'm trying to get back into things. Hugo has done a ton of excellent non-cartographic illustration work for RPG publishers like Rite Publishing. I am familiar with his work, and we've both done work for Rite Publishing, so we kind of know each other already.

Hey there Michael! Didn't recognize you by your moniker in here

I'm also kind of a newby in here and I'm trying to get back, so let's storm this place!

[Midgardsormr]

A professional cartographer for real-world data working for someone like ESRI can make around US$50,000 / year.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/c...RCH_KO0,12.htm

On the fiction side of things, you'd be best served becoming a more well-rounded illustrator with maps as a specialty. That's more or less how I operate—I am a visual effects artist who often gets to work on satellite imagery and landscape shots. Not necessarily cartography, but the knowledge I've gleaned here has certainly been applicable to my job. I make US$70k / year currently.

[TimPaul]

There's all kinds of cartographers out there. You have to decide which kind you want to be.

I'm guessing that you aren't looking to make actual, factual, maps of the real world, that are usable by people for navigation and such.

I make about $10,000-15,000 a year as just part of my income from making maps for novels. In general, I get between $700-$1200 for a map for a novel. Some times less for smaller publishers, and I retain all rights, and only license the right to reproduce the novels in English. If a publisher wants to translate the book, and publish it with the map it, they pay me a reuse fee.

I don't get a lot of gaming commissions for maps, which is fine, because the pay is terrible.

I consistently get work from the same publishers, because they really like working with me. They can just put me in touch with the author and let me work with them directly, to work out any issues. I literally have one publisher who's editors put in requests for maps from me as soon as they can. This isn't a brag, it's to let you know, you need to build up a relationship with publishers, and really push the work, for it be a viable part of your income, and not just a now and then thing.

The rest of my income is from other forms of illustration.

If you are going to try the maps for novels approach, you will probably start of getting around $300-$400, which is decent. Always keep the rights to your work. Be careful of self publishers, they tend to not understand the difference between licensing and ownership of a copyright. Which you should learn yourself.

The bottom line is this. I can't tell you what to charge. I can only tell you what works for me, and why. You can take that, and figure out what parts of it are good for you, and what aren't. Same for prices.