Photographer/podcaster Daniel Bedell wraps up his interview with illustrator James Yang. On this episode of Workbook Radio, the two discuss agent and artist relationships, as well as how James handles client feedback.
DB: “What’s your relationship to reps and the business side of things? Are you able, at this point in your career, to tune that out and let someone else take over it? Or are you pretty involved?”
JY: “You know, it’s a combination. Like, I’m lucky. My agent, David Goldman, and I have been together since 1987. So, we’re like an old married couple now. ”
(laughing)
DB: “Yeah.”
JY: “And he handles all the big business stuff, but I [have] some of my own house accounts too. So, I handle that on my own. But, a lot of it, we’ll talk about pricing and stuff. Or strategy. But he handles all the negotiations. And a lot of times I still treat him almost like a dad. Like, ‘Dad, read this contract for me. Yes or no?’ So, we’ve got a little bit of that. But it’s been nice to be consistent with him all these years because we know each other really well. You know?”
DB: “That’s definitely a long time to have an agent relationship. What do you think of the things, kind of the ingredients, that have made it so successful?”
JY: “Part of it is I have a business background [because] of my mom, a little bit. So consistency can be a good thing, and I feel like it’s nice to have. You know what helps is that we both have a similar point of view on how business should run…at least my business. Also, what to promote or how we go about saying yes or no to projects. And Dave is super, he’s a really good agent by the fact that I feel like he’s very respectful with how artists want to roll. You know? And he can be like a parent too sometimes. And I’m good with that stuff anyway. I’m a big believer in promotion anyhow. So, he and I are going to be naturally simpatico with that. And even some of the email strategy or what we put our advertising into, we definitely want to talk, and we come to an agreement, a lot that those are the things to do. Like, we’ll put pages in this book, let’s enter these competitions, and let’s have this many mailings per month. We talk about all that sort of stuff.”
DB: “And do you… is there a lot of debate back and forth? Or do you really rely on him for insight into what you do?”
JY: “Mmmm, there’s not a lot of debate back and forth. You know, once I get onto to a project it’s pretty autonomous. We’ll go slightly back and forth if something happens in a project, and we need to rethink the pricing or something like that. But you would be surprised. There’s not that much. It’s pretty much we’re in agreement and already both know how we’re going to approach something. But of course, we’ve been together for so long now, it’s almost like I can predict what he will agree with or not agree with. You know what I mean? And he knows the same about me.”
DB: “You know you’re doing something [art-wise] that a client might view as completely, easily editable because it’s digital based.”
JY: “Right.”
DB: “But I can see that you really don’t want to have too much re-doing of all this stuff. How do you approach that back and forth with that client? Do you start off with something very simple and try to get things finalized? Or do you make a lot of…go all the way to the endpoint with an idea, and then send it to them and make revisions and go all the way to the endpoint again because maybe it’s ‘easier’ in digital, even if that’s impractical and not true? I’m just curious how that goes.”
JY: “You know my work has a unique look to it. I would say about 95 percent of my clients are pretty much good with whatever I do. And ironically, you know if they’re not good with what I do, they would [not] call me in the first place. Does that make sense?”
DB: “Yeah.”
JY: “And then, my sketches are very simple, but they really are good at catching everything that’s going to be in the sketch that the client will expect. And then, when I do execute, they get a sort of pleasant surprise because usually I’ll send them three ideas in pencil form, and then they pick something, and maybe there will be some adjustment at that stage. Like, ‘Oh maybe the idea is more like this or that. Could you focus on this metaphor or that?’ And maybe I’ll send them another version of that sketch. And then from there, usually a client will say okay…I just got a final and rarely do I get adjustments.
“But if it happens sometimes; it doesn’t bend my nose the way that it used to. And it depends. If it’s a minor thing, I don’t have a big deal with it. And if it gets to be a little bit more like they keep having the target new or there’s multiple adjustments, that’s where my rep would step in. And then he has a great metaphor. He just tells them that it’s like we’re a taxi and the meter’s still running. (Laughing) And it’s amazing how decisive people get when they understand that. So it’s a little combination of both.
“But I would say, knock on wood, 95 percent of the time I’m fortunate it’s a very smooth process for me. I think someone like…I don’t know if you’ve talked to Tim O’Brian or someone who’s more realistic. In some ways it’s almost easier to critique [their work]; people think they can critique it because they feel like it’s more realistic. Where mine, since it is such my own direction, they’re like, ‘Is that actually a person you just drew?’ And I’m like,’Yeah!’ And they’re like, ‘Uh, okay, here’s your check.’ (Laughing). So I think I get a little benefit from that also.”
You can listen to the full episode below.
For more on James Yang, click here.
For more on Daniel Bedell, click here.
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