Marketing your art

Because I'm a bit rusty in the art marketing business, I picked up a copy of the 2007 Artist's & Graphic Designer's Market book to give me a few insights and leads as to where to push my work and to get a feel for what is wanted out there in the world of art sales.

This book is the standard reference guide for emerging artists who want to establish a successful career in fine art, illustration, cartooning or graphic design. It contains up to date information for more than 1,900 art markets, including greeting card companies, magazines and book publishers, galleries, art fairs, ad agencies and more.

AGDM also has website where you can sign up for a free newsletter and access other features.

In glancing through the book, I've noticed that a lot of businesses with freelance design work needs require that the submitting artist or illustrator have knowledge of Illustrator, PageMaker, Photoshop and QuarkXPress software. Others just ask that initial work be provided in files compatible with some of these programs such as TIFF or EPS, so read the submission guidelines carefully before rushing into anything.

Payments vary considerably from business to business, ranging from payments of $10 - $20 for a black and white inside spot drawing to $1500 and up for a colour cover.

Check out the art work that the business already publishes and see if your style will be a good fit for this company. The genres and styles are as broad as there are companies and the competition seems to be fairly brisk. As with any venture, you may have to knock on a lot of doors before you get a response and response time can be very slow.

Heather Castles' blog provides some great tips for submitting work to greeting card companies.

There are so many ways of marketing your skills as an artist. I found this from 10 Essential Marketing Tips for Freelancers by Leo.

Blog. It’s been said many times before, but the blog is the new resume. If you don’t have a blog, learn how to start one up. And don’t just rant about politics and talk about your cat. Make your blog look professional, write about things that would look good to potential clients, and offer your services to others (with contact info, of course). If you are a designer, be sure that the design is clean and creative. If you are a photographer, the photos should knock them out. If you’re a writer, have only your best writing on your blog. In all cases, have a simple, clean layout with well-written words. If you’re not good at this yet, constantly learn and refine. Look at other professional blogs for inspiration, then tweak. Then edit some more.

Its food for thought, as is all the information in the AGDM book. This is another step towards meeting some of my goals that I made back in January. I'll keep you posted.