Historical illustrations add a cost that a comparable work of fiction may avoid. Museums and archives rely on access rights as an important revenue source, so authors often have to budget for licensed photographs. The planned primers would probably draw partly on personal photographs and images from friends' collections, reducing out-of-pocket costs, although some rights would still need to be purchased. Fiction publishers may pay for cover art, editing, and typesetting without also buying historical-photo rights. In this September 2025 discussion, rights to a single historical photograph are estimated to cost as much as £1,000.
Notable Point · 1:51-3:02
Image rights shape the cost of history books
Licensing images from museums and archives can make a history book substantially more expensive than a work of fiction of the same length.