[Question] Typical Rates for Maps

[thirdkingdom]

I'm exploring the idea of starting an Old School D&D magazine and wanted to know if there were general guidelines for pricing maps (both overland and dungeons) in US dollars.

Thanks!

[waldronate]

It's too variable to say, really. It has a lot to do with the kind of map (a black and white map is often less work than a full color map), detail level (overland vs. city vs. dungeon vs. battlemap and many others), size (larger tends to require more detail / materials and be more expensive), artist (established and busy artists will usually want more than starving youngsters), rights (full, single publication, personal only, and so on), likelihood of follow-on work, location, and so many other things. Negotiations with individual artists is probably your best bet or announce a price and see if you can get any nibbles. Please consider that even a very simple map will take at least a full day for most artists and most maps are not at all simple (thus requiring much more than a day), so an offer of less than the prevailing hourly wage is unlikely to get you much interest, even if it seems like a lot of money for you.

[thirdkingdom]

It's too variable to say, really. It has a lot to do with the kind of map (a black and white map is often less work than a full color map), detail level (overland vs. city vs. dungeon vs. battlemap and many others), size (larger tends to require more detail / materials and be more expensive), artist (established and busy artists will usually want more than starving youngsters), rights (full, single publication, personal only, and so on), likelihood of follow-on work, location, and so many other things. Negotiations with individual artists is probably your best bet or announce a price and see if you can get any nibbles. Please consider that even a very simple map will take at least a full day for most artists and most maps are not at all simple (thus requiring much more than a day), so an offer of less than the prevailing hourly wage is unlikely to get you much interest, even if it seems like a lot of money for you.

Yeah, I know it's been tricky. I've been commissioning maps for awhile for some other publications, and was just curious to know if there were rough guidelines. I've managed to establish some rough payscales for artwork, but mapping seems to be trickier.

[Josiah VE]

Waldronate is right, it's too variable depending on artist and many other factors to give one price, but I would say expect a several hundred as a baseline from any established artist, at least for overland maps.