Hitting the shelves Tanya Combrinck speaks to four creatives about the process of turning artbook and graphic novel dreams into reality
Making an artbook is a particularly rewarding career milestone that results in a product both you and your fans will treasure.
If you have a large body of work and a strong following behind you already, then you might aspire to make a traditional hardback alongside a publisher. While for those working on a smaller scale, self-publishing a crowdfunded indie artbook is an accessible option that lets you make all the creative decisions to produce exactly the book that you’ve imagined.
“An artbook is the sum of an artist’s work, which may span decades,” explains Jean-Christophe Caurette, the founder of the Éditions Caurette publishing house, which works with select artists to produce a wide range of beautiful illustrated books and graphic novels. “My goal is to create a shrine to host those thousands of hours of work; a book that stands the test of time, and the artist is proud to call their own.” Making artbooks is a labour of love for the team at Caurette, so they give the artist a lot of creative control and work together to make decisions about everything from the content to the size, page count and paper stock. “It’s the artist’s book much more than the publisher’s book,” says Jean-Christophe. “Every artist is different. We don’t work in ready-to-wear; we work in tailor-made instead. That makes the books more expensive, but the process is a special opportunity to dive into an artist’s mind and their archives.”
In selecting artists to work with, Jean-Christophe has a simple test: he asks himself if their work is strong enough to make a book he would buy himself. But it’s not just about the art; making a book is a long and involved process, so the personal relationship has to be right as well: “Don’t make a book with someone you wouldn’t invite to your home,” he advises. “And that goes for both the artists and the publishers involved!”
