The Artist's Marketing and Action Plan Workbook [Paperback]

Jonathan Talbot (Author), Geoffrey Howard (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2005

This book has been written to help you become more skilled at the art of selling your art. It is a workbook, a book to write in. It will guide you through the process of learning how to sell your art and how to make money doing it!

The making of art and the selling of art are essentially different. For most of us, artmaking is intensely personal and private. Only when we are finished are we willing to share what we have done. Selling art is, on the other hand, a social activity in which we need to interact with the world outside our studios. This book provides a vocabulary and structure for that interaction.

When you have finished doing the exercises in this book, you will have a personalized, step-by-step marketing and action plan for selling your work.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jonathan Talbot is an artist whose works have been exhibited at The National Academy and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, have represented the U.S. overseas in exhibitions sponsored by the State Department and the Smithsonian Institution, and are included in museum collections in the U.S. and Europe. He is also the author of Collage: A New Approach

Geoffrey Howard is an internationally known consultant in marketing, customer service, and strategic planning. His clients have included Citibank, HBO, Chase, Weyerhauser, Hercules Chemical, Deutsche Bank and Pepsico.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Jonathan Talbot; 5 edition (January 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970168136
• ISBN-13: 978-0970168139
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #408,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard work but worthwhile, February 26, 2005

By 

Margaret (Santa Rosa, California, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Artist's Marketing and Action Plan Workbook (Paperback)

It seems that many of us who are artists are content to languish undiscovered, to deluge our relatives with gorgeous handmade cards and crafts, and/or to feel that we're really not good enough and motivated enough to sell our work - after all, we'd have been discovered if it was THAT good. This book will require you to answer questions and use a calculator, but once you've finished it you will have a marketing plan for your work - and you will feel that your work deserves it. You are neither too good for selling, nor not-good enough for it either. You can do it.

67 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Beginner's Guide, March 23, 2007

By 

S. Fizer "www.stephaniefizerart.com" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Artist's Marketing and Action Plan Workbook (Paperback)

This book is highly recommended for the artist who is either unorganized and just hasn't put much thought into the financial side of things. If you are highly organized or have done some planning regarding the financial side of the art business, skip this book. And if you are looking for actual information on marketing your work, skip this book.

This series of worksheets will help you recognize and organize your personal and business goals. It will lead you through the steps of calculating how you should be pricing your work and how to determine what your liveable wage is. It will not give you any ideas on how to acheive this other than a short checklist of different venues you can sell your artwork.

Personally, I hoped for a bit more marketing inspiration than this book was able to offer me. But I speak as someone who has already spent long hours calculating the dark financial side of the art world. If you haven't done that, go ahead and buy this book, it's worth the small amount of money. Otherwise, you're better off scouring the internet for marketing ideas.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now I Feel Armed, January 8, 2007

By 

Patrick M. Burke "Pat Burke" (New Orleans, Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Artist's Marketing and Action Plan Workbook (Paperback)

For those of us who sell our art directly to the public, anyone who can offer tips, shortcuts or revelations is a godsend. Ten pages into Jonathan Talbot's workbook: The Artists Marketing and Action Plan, I knew I had an ally. Where others fill space with wandering art theory and verbiage, Talbot gets right to work with valuable and insightful questions (such as "Why Are You An Artist?") and information on how to actually make money in the business. This isn't a book for your shelf, it's a rugged softcover that begs to be dog-eared, scrawled on and referred back to. It's a workbook in the truest sense of the word. Talbot doesn't so much tell you; the pencil is in your hands. You tell you, with Talbot's course plan guiding you to some very basic but subtle conclusions that you might have intuitively suspected yourself. This book is very much about self discovery. He just asks the right questions. And of course there are no guarantees of success with this book as there are none with others. You have to apply what you learn, or at least face yourself with your new found knowledge. That's what Talbot seems to be about; letting our own knowledge serve to direct us to do what must be done to succeed. It's inspiring, it's humbling...but it works.