Licensing Deals I Wish I Hadn’t Signed

Do you want to hear how many bad licensing deals I have signed?

I started licensing my art long before I had any idea what a licensing contract even was. Some of the first ones were a casual PayPal exchange with a few sentences in an email about how the art would be used. That was the “contract”. Now I go through every contract with a fine-tooth comb, but I did not start out doing things the right way.

In this post I’m sharing the biggest red flags you’ll come across when you start licensing your art.

Side note though: we need to take some of those early not-great jobs to learn, so I am not saying turn down every deal that isn’t perfect. But here are the five kinds I have regretted over the years.

the exclusive ones

Exclusive licensing deals are something I don’t even consider anymore. There is one exception: a very well known company I’m dying to work with, one I’d be happy to have on my resume no matter what the financial outcome ends up being.

Everything else is a no. When you sign an exclusive contract, that design is off the table for everything else you might have done with it. No fabric, no calendar page, no print-on-demand, no second license, for however long the contract says. That’s a lot to hand over, and the payment almost never reflects it.

In general, I say absolutely no to exclusive licenses.

the no sales history ones

These are the companies that promise they will make great sales for you. They have an audience. They are so excited to work with you. Your work is exactly what their customers have been asking for.

Then you hand over your art and you never make a single sale.

I want to be really clear that a company being new is not the problem (we all start somewhere). Not being able to show me anything is the problem. Before I agree to work with someone now, I want a little proof that they can actually sell art:

What are they selling right now, and where?
Which artists have they worked with, and can I go ask those artists how it went?
What has sold well for them, and what hasn’t?

If those questions come back with a lot of enthusiasm and no specifics, that tells me what I need to know.

the you have to market for us ones

A lot of companies reach out and say they want to work with you as an artist. You ask which art, and they say, “You choose.”

That is a big red flag. What they are really saying is that they don’t care what art you use, they only want access to your audience.

It also tells me they don’t have much of a marketing plan, because they are counting on artists who probably don’t have an audience of buyers yet. Do I want to work with a company that is unwilling to spend money on marketing and doesn’t seem to know much about marketing either? Nope.

If I’m licensing with a company I really love, I am happy to talk about them in a post. Being asked is fine. Being required makes me wary.

Tip:

You can ask for edits on a contract. What they send you first is not the final version, it’s the starting point. Ask for the things you want:

Could my name be displayed on the page where you sell the work?
Could my name be printed on the product?
Could I get free samples to photograph so I can share about it on my social media?

These are often easy fixes that a company is happy to make.

the make it jazzy ones

These are the companies that want to license some of your work, but first they’d like you to “spice it up a bit” or “make it a little more exciting.”

Unspecified directions make me nervous, because there is no way to know when you are finished. You send a version, they say it’s still missing something, you send another one. That can go on for weeks.

Compare that to: “We want this pattern, but change these colors to these exact hex codes.” Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for being specific. Or “send it to us at 32 x 32 cm, CMYK, 400 dpi.” That is exactly what I want to hear. “Make it bigger” and “the colors don’t look right” are a different thing entirely.

the unlimited color version ones

Related, but even more scary: the company that wants to go back and forth on color forever instead of picking a direction.

Usually this has nothing to do with your art. They don’t know what they want, so they can’t tell you what they want, and the recolors quietly become their decision-making process. You end up doing an art director’s job without the title or the pay. (If you have sent round after round of color options and never gotten an answer, yep, me too.)

Tip:

Ask for the specifics before you say yes. Exact dimensions, color space, dpi, file format, and how many rounds of revisions are included. A company that can answer all of that in one email is usually a company that will be easy to work with. A company that can’t is telling you how the rest of the project is going to go.

None of this means licensing is a bad idea for some artists. It has been one of my favorites (a shower curtain at Target, cards on Minted, art I made years ago still earning). It just means the first contract someone sends you is a starting point, not a verdict. And artists have to be careful to protect themselves from companies who might be trying to take advantage of their time or assets.

Get Your Work in Front of the Right Licensors

Want to learn more ways to get your work found by the right licensors? Check out my Share Your Stuff Guide, where I share the best ways to get your work found by licensors and buyers.