Where would We’re Going on a Bear Hunt be without Helen Oxenbury’s illustrations of the children’s search, or the Meg and Mog books without Jan Pienkowski’s images of the witch and her cat, or The Gruffalo without Axel Scheffler’s depiction of the monster? But illustrators are not getting the credit they deserve, according to the Carnegie-nominated Sarah McIntyre, who today announced that she would not be buying any new illustrated children’s books unless the front cover includes the artist’s name along with the writer’s.

Co-authors Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre share the limelight at the Edinburgh International Book festival. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

McIntyre, who writes and illustrates her own books as well as collaborating on titles with writers including Giles Andreae and Philip Reeve, launched her Pictures Mean Business campaign last year, when Oliver and the Seawigs, written by Reeve and illustrated by McIntyre, was nominated for the Carnegie medal award. The prize listing, however, named only writer, not artist.

She has since successfully campaigned for illustrators to be named alongside writers for the award, and for illustrators’ names to be included in industry sales charts. She has also garnered support from major writers and illustrators, including former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman, current children’s laureate Chris Riddell, Joanne Harris, Audrey Niffenegger, Holly Smale, Philip Ardagh and Axel Scheffler. Reeve, her co-author, was the first to support her.

“I think Sarah’s campaign makes sense in many ways,” he said. “Our books are joint efforts - we come up with the story and ideas together - so I was perplexed when I found that they are still sometimes presented as my books, simply because I wrote the words. But even in more traditional illustrated books, where the artist may be asked to interpret a text which has already been written, the words and pictures work together to tell the story better than words could alone. If that were not the case, why would publishers bother commissioning illustrations?”

But the problem still continues – on her blog McIntyre points to a writer not bothering to name the illustrator whose cover he was raving about, and another dismissing the time an illustrator needed to work on her book with the comment “he has a really sketchy style and he can just knock them out in no time” – and today she called on readers to join her in her stand and stop buying illustrated children’s books that fail to include the illustrator’s name on the front cover.

“We’re still hitting major hitches: writers, publishers, journalists and reviewers whom you’d think would support crediting illustrators – some of who’ve even heard of the campaign and expressed interest – keep letting us down. Writers and publicists launch new cover art with no mention of the illustrator. Illustrators of highly illustrated books are left off the cover. Articles show lavish book art without mentioning who created it, the list goes on,” she wrote on her blog today.

“Publishers: if you don’t think the fact a book is illustrated adds any value to a book, or that making people aware of this draws in potential customers, don’t bother spending the money to get your book illustrated. And then watch as the illustrated books soar ahead of your books in sales and those other books draw in the so-called reluctant readers, gladdening the hearts of parents and teachers”.

She added that in the children’s books world, “everyone can coast on a wave of niceness, never addressing the major issues that have illustrators flailing while often maintaining their rictus grins”.

“I want to do something that’s not exactly nice,” she wrote. “But maybe taking a stand will bring attention to the problem.”

McIntyre told the Guardian: “I’d like to see more publishers of highly illustrated fiction (sometimes called ‘chapter’ books) put the name of the illustrator on the front cover of the book, along with the writer. Both creators are authors, in that both create the story, in words and pictures.”

For a year, she said, to enable publishers to make changes, she will “make an exception for a book that has a dust jacket printed with the illustrator’s name on it, or if the bookseller sticks a post-it note on the front cover with that information.”

She added that she was “keen to stress it’s not an ego issue”, instead that “it’s about the importance of branding, name recognition, and supporting illustrators as they try to keep working in their profession.”

“It’s not easy to make money in this field and we need visible recognition to survive,” she said.

Reeve agreed that, having started out as an illustrator himself, “I know how much more time-consuming it is than writing. You can do a surprising amount of writing in your head while you’re walking the dog or doing the housework, but you can’t do any drawing that way. Illustrators work amazingly hard, contribute huge amounts to books, and deserve to be treated as true partners in the creative process, not simply as hired hands.”