Island map for YA fantasy novel

[olafmoriarty]

Dear Cartographers,

I'm self-publishing a YA fantasy novel this fall, and I'm interested in commissioning a simple map of the book's main location, mainly for printing on the book's frontispiece. A little quick googling brought me straight here, so I hope I'm in the right place :-)

Commission
My initial budget for this is $ 600, although I'm open for negotiation, so if that sounds very low, just let me know. I'm based in Norway, so the easiest way for me to pay you would be PayPal (or any other payment method involving credit cards - if you have a Patreon, that's also an option, I guess).

Subject
I need a map of a small island - "Troll Island" - located in a fantasy universe loosely based on Norwegian fairy tales (somewhere in the range from medieval to pre-industrial). The island is approximately two miles in diameter, so the map could be somewhat detailed.

I've drawn a quick sketch of the island in AutoRealm, click here to see it (Dropbox).

Here's a list of all (or most) of the descriptions of the island given in the book (Google Docs), but the most important points are:

• There's a large mountain in the middle of the island. There's snow on top of it, and the mountain is home to very many caves.
• On the east side of the island, there's an old jetty. The island hasn't been inhabited by humans for the past eighty years, so this jetty is the only built structure on the island. There are no houses, no roads... Just nature.
• A bit south of the jetty there's a small cove. There's a similar cove on the far south end of the island.
• There's a waterfall coming down on the south side of the mountain. This waterfall turns into a river that flows towards the southernmost cove.
• The southern half of the island, except for the beaches, is mostly covered by coniferous forest. There are a few clearings, notably one on the west side on the island and one a little bit east of the river. The one east of the river is described as being about five thousand square feet.
• On the westernmost clearing - I promise that this makes sense in context - a small spaceship is parked. It's the size of a small house.
• I'm picturing a map of the island and the island only. However, should the artist wish to draw a *little* bit more of the world surrounding the island, the island is located in the middle of a fjord, and I'd be happy to share descriptions of what the mainland surrounding the fjord looks like if you feel that you need that information.

For more description, click the Google Docs link above. If you wish to see all of these descriptions in context, I'm of course willing to send you a digital copy of the book (sans map), just drop me an e-mail (contact details at the end of this post).

Style
I'll be completely honest and say that I don't know a lot about different map styles, but the book will be printed in black and white (or black and cream), so what I'm looking for is either a monochrome black-and-white map (that's how I picture it - black lines on white background), or a greyscale image. In my opinion the map would probably look best if it looked as hand-drawn as possible.

Quality & Size
The map's dimensions in print will be 11 cm * max 19 cm, and the resolution should at least be 300 DPI. I'm a big fan of TIFF files for some reason.

Time Constraints
I'm hoping to publish the book this November, and I guess I got the idea of trying to find a map designer a little too late in the process... but I would really love to have the finished map done by the end of August, preferrably sooner. If that sounds like an impossible deadline I guess I just have to push it, although I hope it's not...

Copyright
The artist will retain copyright of the map.

I need reproduction rights of the map for the following purposes:

• Printing it in the printed edition of the book (note - the book is printed as Print On Demand, so our contract can't specify a run number or anything like that)
• Including it in all e-book editions of the book (at first it will only be a Kindle edition, but I'm hoping to put out an epub edition next year or something)
• In addition to including the map in the book, I wish to publish it on the book's website
• PREFERRED, but not non-negotiable: I hope that we can agree on a contract where I get the right to use the map in ALL future editions of this book, so that I can reuse the map if I for example decide to release the book in a new format or a different language or something like that without having to contact the artist for permission every time. But if that means, for example, triple the cost, it's not THAT important to me.

Apart from sharing the map on the book's website, I have no intention of using the map outside the context of the book. Should there in the future, for example, arise a situation where I think it would be worth the effort to e.g. print the map on posters or T-shirts, I will not do that without getting permission from and giving compensation to the artist.

The artist will be credited and noted as copyright holder of the map on the copyright page of the book (all editions of the book where map is present) and on the beforementioned website. I have no problem with the artist using the map for commercial gain.

Contact details
I can be contacted on the following e-mail address:
olafmoriarty [at] gmail [dot] com

If contacting me regarding taking the commission, I will appreciate it if you include a link to your portfolio.

If you have any questions at all, let me know either here or on e-mail, and I will do my best to answer them.

Thanks for reading this!


Olaf Moriarty Solstrand

[olafmoriarty]

Quick update: Of course, when you write big infodumps, at least one thing will be wrong. In this case, the Dropbox link above didn't work. It's fixed now. I hope.

I have been contacted by a couple of people already (three to be exact - if you haven't receieved an e-mail reply from me, that means I haven't received your e-mail as of the time of posting this!), and to avoid making a rushed decision, I will have a good look at all their portfolios and not make up my mind until either tomorrow or Friday. Of course, until I change the prefix of this thread to Taken, you're all welcome to still contact me, and I promise to take you all equally into consideration when deciding which artist is perfect for this job.

Thank you for your interest and your patience!

[olafmoriarty]

The request has been taken. Thank you all very much for a very warm welcome!

[jpstod]

Might edit the title to indict "Taken"