Promoting your work in the 21st Century: Self-publishing - presented at the 2015 Portrait Society of America, Atlanta, GA

As part of a panel discussing various approaches to promoting your work in the Twenty-first Century, I joined teammates Scott Jones (Legacy Gallery) and David Gluck and Kate Stone (artists and bloggers, Painting Stuff to Look Like Stuff) and addressed the concept of self-publishing for artists.

Rather than try to guess at how many handouts to bring, or to see people frantically trying to write down the notes from powerpoint slides, I'm just sharing the info here so it can be read at your convenience.

To simplify, I focused on three basic tiers to publishing art books:

1. Self-publishing, Print-on-demand (POD);
2. Self-publishing, short run (up through about 5,000 copies); and
3. Big publishing clearinghouses (e.g., North Light Books,Watson-Guptill).

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The following table highlights the basic differences between self published POD and short-run:

Courtesy Amy Strickland, Matter Deep Publishing

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Considerations in Self- Publishing

 •Template flexibility

•Hard/soft cover/digital options

•Cost/Pricing/mark-ups/profitability

•Editing

•Design assistance

•ISBN

•Marketing

•Distribution

…all of which should be driven by your book’s purpose.

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Some examples of Print-on-demand publishers

•MyPublisher

•Blurb

•Lulu

•Shutterfly

•Createspace

•LightningSource

•MagCloud (now part of blurb)

….and more being added every day :)

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Why stop with books?

Zazzle

RedBubble

FineArtAmerica

CafePress

FinerWorks

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Oh. And if you want to hire some help with your soon-to-be-published book?
Don't call me. You already know what I know.

Contact Carly Stickland at Matter Deep Publishing. contact@matterdeeppublishing.com