Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines (Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines)

This is an excellent technical book, with a wealth of information between the covers. Most of that information seems "crammed" into the odd sized pages, and reads like a technical manual. For a handbook that's current and relevant, I can't think of a better one out there.

This guide is really a useful resource for a freelance artist like myself. It's most useful feature, in my opinion, is the legal advice it offers including templates for standard contracts for different types of work, as well as explaining in detail the pros and cons of the different ways that you can sell the rights to your work, many of which were not known to me. I find the pricing aspect less useful since all my work is on the internet, but they emphasize traditional media and have only a very brief treatment of "new media" (i.e. online) practices and pricing. Still, the legal advice is germane regardless of medium.

This book is full of very useful information. I recommend it to all designers and illustrators. The contracts and forms templates are great!

If you are working professionally at graphic design, this book is a "must have". Contracts, pricing scales...practices and standards or prices and trade customs are outlined here for illustration, graphic design, web design and so on...

Think of it as your manual for all the things they didn't teach you in art school (the business end).

You need this if you want to start thinking as a professional. There's templates for contracts and wording you would never think of as a newbie. It is, however, just a guideline when it comes to pricing. Illustrator Brad Holland said that pricing guidelines are "nothing more than a survey of what current prices are. It should be obvious that if you base future fees on a statistical average of what current prices are, you'll preserve the status quo. Many artists believe these guidelines are one of the reasons that illustration fees have stagnated for 30 years."

But, if you're new like me, you're clueless. Every bit helps.