If you're a plumber, accountant or shop assistant then you
have a useful occupation. You provide a service that somebody wants, even if
that somebody is just your boss telling you what they want you to do. Someone
wants you to do a task, you do it and you get paid. Assuming that it's a
regular job then that pattern continues indefinitely. Or until you tell your
boss what you really think about them after one too many tequila slammers at the
Christmas party.
An artist (and I consider authors in that category) doesn't do
a useful job. Their work is not a basic human requirement. We are 'extras' in
life's drama, and we don't have the luxury of a (more or less) guaranteed income.
Sure, some of our work is done to commission and if you're at the very top of
your game then you may be given a long-term contract to produce a certain amount
of work but for most of us at the bottom of this particular business heap
that's not the case. We're effectively living in a permanent artistic Dragon's
Den, pitching our work and, much of the time, hearing a version of "I'm
out" in reply. That's if we hear anything at all. Far too many times the
only reply I get from commissioning editors and agents is a deafening silence.
Struggling artists don't only have to do the work but they
have to promote it too. We lock ourselves away in our garrets, rehearsal rooms
or studios and hone our craft until it's the best that we can make it, but
that's only the starting point to getting it in front of an audience and
receiving even the tiniest financial reward. There also has to be countless
letters, manuscripts, emails, meetings. This is the side that nobody talks
about, the process of selling your work. And this is the part of my business at
which I'm particularly bad. Spectacularly so to the point where my letterbox is
used even less frequently than my bank paying-in book.
I've seen advice from "experts" suggesting that an
artist should spent 65% of their time creating their work and the other 35%
promoting it. That goes against every instinct that I have. At the moment the
ratio is probably more like 100% vs zero for me. I write because I have to,
because it's in my soul. If I wanted a proper job working in sales then I'd
have applied for one. As things are then I still may have to someday soon but
that's beside the point.
It's time that I got more comfortable with this promoting my
business business and the best way I know to become comfortable with something
is just go out and do it.
So…
BUY MY BOOKS! TELL
ALL YOUR FRIENDS!
How was that? Am I a salesman yet?
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