The Art of Self-Promotion

Although most artists, writers, and musicians wish for an agent or manager to help them promote and sell their work, most must first prove their worth in the marketplace. Only when they have leveraged themselves financially and promotionally will an agent or manager take them on. This is because an agent or manager’s income is dependent on that of the artist: if the artist makes money, so will they. If an agent or manager earns an average of 15% of a writer or musician’s gross income, and her or his annual projected gross income is $30,000, the agent or manager would make $4,500. Usually an artist must earn twice that or show the potential of earning twice that to make it worthwhile for an agent or manager to represent that person.

Artists as Businesspeople

Artists must take on the role of businesspersons, selling and promoting their paintings, music, sculpture, craft, poetry, and so on. Learning business basics will make artists less prey to signing contracts that are financially and promotionally disastrous. Learning to do business is much easier than having to deal with the aftershocks of a bad deal or an incompetent manager and agent. On the plus side is the valuable feedback you will get and the pleasure of selling something directly to your fans.

Many artists have two obstacles to surmount when it comes to learning about or doing business. The first is the idea that artists do not make money and should starve for the sake of their art. The second is the notion that artists are handicapped from doing business because they are primarily right-brained, i.e., tilted toward the creative side.

Many artists have successfully taken on the role of businessperson and are willing to talk about their experiences and act as mentors for their peers. Some are quite famous. Seek them out.

Connect with Your Peers

Self-promotion is about connection with people. Hang out with your peers. If you are a musician, go to the clubs where others perform. If you’re an artist, attend gallery openings. If you’re a poet, attend poetry readings and slams. Go to large art and craft street fairs. Talk to artists; ask them what they are doing to promote themselves. Collect their promotional materials.

Join up with any local associations that promote your type of art: songwriter associations, blues clubs, quilter’s guilds, etc. Most offer feedback on your work, lectures and workshops about business, along with a chance to connect with others in your field. Also, don’t neglect the large state art associations and specialized conferences that directly help artists and business people connect with and learn from each other.

Get Educated

Lots of business education is available these days for artists. Attend workshops and seminars given by art associations, at community colleges, and at specialized private centers.

Study artist Websites. They will show where and how artists promote themselves, including shows they have participated in, clubs they perform in, and journals that have published their work. Do not completely confine yourself to artists working in your medium.

What Makes You Different?

The tools of promotion are common to every artist. They provide answers to questions that are commonly asked as soon as you say you are a writer/painter/sculptor/musician/dancer/etc.: what do you do and where can I find your work? They provide examples of your work and your history in a particular medium. Most importantly, they provide a method of contacting you—and you them.

Two things are of overriding importance when putting together your materials. The first is that you state what makes your work different. What is unusual about your work or better than that of people working in the same medium or genre? Why should people buy your work? Although visual and music materials will help make this clear, you need to identify that difference in words. What’s the hook, the grabber; what’s memorable? If you have trouble doing this, ask fans of your work, your family, and teachers to help you out.

Second, your promotional materials must consistently convey one dominant message and imprint in people’s minds what you are trying to convey about your art.

Assemble Your Promotional Tool Kit

Here are the tools common to every businessperson.

Mailing list: Every friend and family member. Anyone who expresses interest in your art.

Business card: These are so cheap to reproduce these days that you can print on both sides. Use one for basic information, the other for an example of your work, a photo of your band, names of published works, etc.

Biography: The biography is a résumé of your accomplishments and a statement about your artistic direction. Most bios start with a sentence or two answering the question, “What kind of art/music/sculpture/writing do you do?” The sentences that follow should highlight your accomplishments, with the most important information first. If available, insert a sentence of praise from critics, reviewers, or important peers.

Photos: Photos serve two purposes. The first is to quickly answer the question, “What do you do?” The second is to provide a work that can be reproduced in a newspaper or magazine. For this reason, black-and-white glossies, tightly cropped, with plain backgrounds are best.

Fliers: These are commonly used to announce shows, gigs, and parties, but they can also be brochures about you and your work.

Work samples: These are used when you are submitting work to be evaluated for galleries, competitions, showcases, gigs, publications, and so on. For audio and visual presentations, these must be high-quality reproductions of your best work. The competition is fierce. For written work, five to ten pages of written samples is usually enough for someone to evaluate your work.

Website: Your Website will be visited by two main groups of people. Your fans will want to know where they can see/hear/listen to your newest work. Business people will use it as an anonymous way to review your bio and samples of work. The design must be consistent with all other presentations.

Expose Your Work to the Public

You don’t need to be hired by a club to showcase your music and poems or have your work shown in a gallery. Here are some ways that artists commonly showcase their work.

Invite people to your studio and have an open-studio night once a month. If you rent space in a place where many artists work, collaborate with them and have an open-studio night once a month. That way everyone shares in the promotion and excitement.

Take your art to the streets and parks. Most cities and towns provide spaces and vending licenses for street art: music, dance, sculpture, craft, poetry, etc. Rent a booth at other music and entertainment events.

Showcase your work in malls. Many mall managers like to schedule performances in order to help bring people to the mall and entertain them when they’re not shopping.

Play your music or read poems at open mic nights at music clubs and coffeehouses.

Link your art to a social and political cause and an organization working on its behalf. Every cause needs music, as well as artwork, and photographs for fliers and banners; art to auction, and so on.

Publish Yourself

Publishing means making your work available for sale to the public. These can be CDs that showcase your music or your songs, books and chapbooks of your poems or short stories, T-shirts that imprint your name or an image you want people to remember. You can also collaborate with others: for example, your poems with their photos or paintings. These can be sold wherever you showcase your art. The appendix of this essay contains the names of several books that will help take you through the self-publishing process.

Get People to the Event

Use your mailing list. Call people up and ask them to bring their friends. Pass out fliers in places such as coffeehouses, record stores, shops, malls, parks, clubs, bars, etc., where people who might want to see or hear your work congregate.

Make use of the calendar listings in newspapers, magazines, and other media available to you. They’re free. Call and ask how far in advance they need the listing and in what form.

Post fliers everywhere: laundromats, college campuses, lampposts, telephone poles, coffeehouses. Ask your friends to help.

Give Something Away

Whenever you have an event or showcase your work, give something away. Magnets, postcards, matchbook covers, a lyric sheet, a poem—these are relatively cheap items that will help people remember you and your work.

Conclusion

Self-promotion takes time, money, perseverance, heart, and commitment. Although it will take energies away from your creative work, it will pay off in new opportunities for making a living from your art and in the critical feedback that is so important for artists to receive. When you become successful, share what you have learned with other artists. It’s good karma to give something back to the community that nurtured you.

Bibliography

Crawford, Tad. Legal Guide for the Visual Artist. Fourth edition. New York: Allworth Press, 1999.
This highly acclaimed reference book presents a comprehensive overview of the legal issues faced by anyone working in the visual arts. The narrative text is arranged into twenty-four chapters covering: copyright, contracts, censorship, moral rights, sales (by artist, gallery, or agent), taxation, estate planning, museums, collecting, and grants.

Crawford, Tad. Starting Your Career as a Freelance Photographer. New York: Allworth Press, 2003.
A definitive resource for someone beginning a career in either illustration or graphic design. The book offers suggestions for getting started, selling your work, promoting yourself, creating a portfolio, making initial contacts, developing a financial plan, acquiring supplies and equipment, pricing work, and marketing on the internet.

Kimpel, Dan. Networking in the Music Business. Vallejo, CA: Mixbooks, 1999.
This book details what songwriters and performers need to know about where the power is, the current state of the music business, and where to go to make contact with decision makers. It also includes a list of resources.

Pinskey, Raleigh. You Can Hype Anything: Creative Tactics and Advice for Anyone with a Product, Business or Talent to Promote. Sacramento: Citadel Press, 1995.
Expert Raleigh Pinskey shares everything she and other top publicists, newspaper editors, and TV and radio producers know about understanding the media and harnessing the power of publicity-- from launching campaigns to handling interviews... from free PR to the dos and don'ts of visual materials.

Pinskey, Raleigh. The Zen of Hype. Sacramento: Citadel Press, 1991.
A book full of ideas for promoting a business.

Rapaport, Diane. How to Make and Sell Your Own Recording. Fifth revised edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.
This revised edition addresses major new technological changes that have occurred in the nineties, including the impact of the Internet on all facets of the music industry.

Ross, Marilyn and Tom Ross. Complete Guide to Self-Publishing: Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish, Promote and Sell Your Own Book. Fourth edition. Cincinnati: F & W Publications, 2002.
This book’s 521 pages are chock-full of up-to-date information on the publishing scene, on selling books, and on publicising books. It contains all the nitty-gritty details relating to self-publishing.

www.selfpromotion.com
A good Website for advice on Website design and getting listed in search engines.

Diane Sward Rapaport is a pioneer in music-business education. She began offering courses for musicians in music-business management and publishing in 1974, after working for seven years as an artist’s manager for Bill Graham’s Fillmore Management. Her goal was to help musicians and songwriters make a living from their art. In 1976, she cofounded, edited, and published Music Works—A Manual for Musicians, a magazine hailed as a “bible for musicians” by the San Francisco Chronicle. It was the first magazine in the United States to feature music-business and technology news. In 1979, How to Make and Sell Your Own Record, her first book, was published by Putnam and later by Prentice-Hall. It has been called a “bible and basic text” that has helped revolutionize the recording industry by providing information about setting up new recording labels independent of major-label conglomerates. It has sold more than 250,000 copies and is currently in its fifth revised edition. Her newest book, A Music Business Primer, was published in spring 2003. The book demystifies the industry’s infrastructure and makes it comprehensible to anyone who loves music and wants to make it her or his profession. Rapaport is also the founder of Jerome Headlands Press, a company that produces and designs books for musicians and artists. Its current catalogue includes: A Music Business Primer, How to Make and Sell Your Own Recording, The Musician’s Business and Legal Guide, The Visual Artist’s Business and Legal Guide, and The Acoustic Musician’s Guide to Sound Reinforcement and Live Recording. All books are published by Prentice-Hall.

Rapaport has given numerous music-business seminars for colleges, nonprofit music businesses, and music conferences, and she served as an adjunct professor of music business at the University of Colorado, Denver. She has written numerous articles for music publications. For further information, please visit www.dianerappaport.com.