The artists agreed to it, and a 50/50 split of the royalties.

Then came the first blow: because of their own inexperience with comics, they decided they would prefer to just do an illustrated novel. I had to rewrite the scripted sections into prose and talk the publisher round to simply a novel with colour illustrations.

Then they said their workload was getting to be too much, and they had to put work that paid upfront first, so we agreed to cut the number of illustrations to between 33-50pp.

Now, with only a month to go to deadline, they've only done 6pp of art and have said they're not sure if they can make it. This is despite me giving them notice about 9 months ago of the project.

The art is fantastic (http://www.troglodyterose.com), but we've already pushed the release date back 3 months because of the artists. What should I now do?

I've thought about it and I have a few ideas.

1. I managed to commission Vince Locke for Issue 1 of Polluto, so I could approach him to do, say, 10 B&W line drawings for the book instead, or as many as he could manage in the time available (the publisher could probably give us till June 1st if we were really desperate). That would be bigger draw than relatively unknown artists anyway, but it wouldn't be as colourful.
2. I could just use the images the artists have done and no more.
3. I could commission a few other artists to each contribute a few pages of art, although the overall effect would be less consistent.
4. I could release a text-only version now and an illustrated limited edition later.

The publisher has agreed, in theory, to all options should the artists fail to meet their deadline.

What do y'all think?

I am troubled to hear your troubles. It reminds me of the troubles I faced with contracters and such when I opened restaurants.

My Advice, The Art should be consistent. Coordinating the visions of different artist can be...well futile if not just totally frustrating. That being said, I don't really see the benefit of releasing the novel without art. It is difficult enough to sell a novel, but to sell two to the same consumer once the art has been published doesn't seem to be the best thing to do. Unless you bundled them, offering some sort of promotion. For example, you could release a PDF as advanced sale with the preorder of the novel. You could include some digital sample art and offer autographed copies for those who ordered this way? Just a thought . i don't know how much say you have over the matter.

Otherwise I might see if you could use the art already produced by the slow artist and commision the rest in B&W with the artist yo mentioned. This might work better if the Colored art were distributed throughout the novel, and not, for example the first nine illustrations.

My first two reactions aren't very helpful. Never, ever work with those artists again. And, obviously, renegotiate the royalty split if they're not holding up their end.

If it's been intended from the beginning to have illustrations, I wouldn't publish without any.

Which illustrations have the artists done? If it's all from one part of the book, you might be able to use different artists for different sections and get away with it. It would still be consistent within each section that way. Some illustrators are able to "work in the style of" another illustrator. Although I can see where that might slow them down, too.

Using black and white drawings would probably be my last choice for this.

As a point of reference, the current art is up at http://www.troglodyterose.com. I could get the new artist to redesign the whole thing using the old artwork as concept art? If, as you say, these professional artists can do 2-4 pages a week, we could have a decent amount of art done by summer.

I'm going to see if I can get in touch with any artists who might be able to do this for me.

I studied at the London Cartoon School (don't ask me, I was never very good) and the guys there could easily do a few pages a week.