Hello. I'd like to get involved with a long-term illustration project for publication. What are the page dimensions of the final book? How many total pages would you estimate the final book to be? Have the pages already been laid out?
To give you some (perhaps) relevant information: I charge $100 per page to pencil, ink and shade gray-scale comic pages in the standard 11"x17" american comic format. If your project is to be reproduced in the standard american comic format, 10 pages (pencil, ink and shading) could take weeks. This doesn't include time and cost to layout the entire book before pages are drawn.
So, even though I don't really have enough information to quote you a final price, I'd still like to submit a proposal :) The above price is assuming a gray-scale comic reproduced in the standard american comic format. Take a look at the work in my portfolio. This is just the small portion of work Freelancer allows me to include with my standard free account, so let me know if there are some specific styles you'd like to see.
Thanks.