How to Profit from the Art Print Market provides insights, advice, examples, and resources intended to demystify the arcane world of art print marketing. Barney Davey has authored this handbook of practical advice for visual artists seeking to enter the art print market. The book is a result of his experiences and perspective culled from advising and observing leading art publishers and print artists in three decades. It details how artists can utilize the print market to take control of their career and create a profitable business from their original work. The wealth of benefits for visual artists in the print market include: secondary income from originals in print; third stream income from licensing; greater awareness for their work; diversifying their pricing; and keeping pace with demand for their originals to name a few. Given these advantages, it is surprising to find other fine art business and marketing books offer scant coverage of the print market. This dearth of information makes the details and insight offered in How to Profit from the Art Print Market invaluable. The book takes readers through a continuum of decisions artists must make to find success as a published artist. The hierarchy begins by helping artists define a clear goal of their career aspirations pertaining to commercial success. It moves through deciding whether to self-publish or to seek a publisher, assessing, and setting realistic goals based on available resources. It finishes with cogent advice on the multitude of actions necessary to succeed after settling on the best path to follow. In addition to specifics on self-publishing and finding and working with a publisher, the book offers advice on effective use of advertising, tradeshows, publicity and coaching on identifying trends, finding inspiration, Website and email marketing, licensing and more. Any visual artist with the desire to enjoy commercial success will find this book inspiring and informative.
My mother was a fine artist who was skilled in oil, pastel and watercolor work. She had some of her work displayed at the St. Louis Art Museum. I got my interest in fine art from her. Our library was filled with books on Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet and many other artists. I'm sure my desire for creative fulfillment through woodworking is stimulated by her own creativity.
My wife is an interior decorator with a flair for color and placement. She brings an aesthetic to our lives that never fails to delight me and visitors to our home.
My art marketing writing and consulting comes out of my experiences working with artists and publishers for Decor magazine and Decor Expo tradeshows. When I left there, I didn't plan to go into consulting or to write a book. Those things happened because I continued to meet artists who were interested in the specialized knowledge I had about the print market. They encouraged me to start doing workshops to help them and others learn and the consulting and book followed.
Having made the effort to produce the book and workshop series and offer consulting, I have been humbled to have had so much positive feedback on the efforts. It seemed to me if I could get just a few more artists on a national level to understand how to break into the print market, or even to decide not to break into the print market, it would be worth the time spent writing the book. That it turns out The Artist Magazine has selected it for its North Light Book Club and excerpted it in an issue, is very satisfying.
