I’m lucky. Where I live there is an excellent library system. I’m also a voracious reader and I often take out all the books on a specific subject. This makes for a tough load to lug back home sometimes.
Over the years since I’ve started selling my crafts at fairs and online, I’ve taken out all the books that my system has to offer. I’ve bought a few along the way as well. My favourite is still Barbara Brabec‘s Handmade Money , a classic book on selling your work. She has several other publications, geared to all stages of people’s development in selling and her site is chock full of good info. Her writing style makes it all easy take in.
I used a bit of a bookstore gift card on Craft Inc. by Meg Mateo Ilasco. Our own Lisa of Polkadot Creations sells this in her store. The book is attractive and hip with some good sections in it. A lot of it is intended for people who plan to make the making and selling of their handmade work into a fair sized business rather than a sideline one. There are a lot of interviews with professional artists and that’s probably the strength of the book. The checklists and bullet formats throughout help with scanning the book for information.
My library find this week – what made me think to post – was Making a Living in Crafts by Donald A. Clark. A lot of the library’s books on selling your crafts are a little dated and I was happy to see this one on the shelf with a publication date of 2006 by Lark. Lark is the publisher for quite a variety of art and craft books. I did a quick flip through to see if there were were any polymer artists in the book but no clayer interviews. There were a few artist pieces shown – Louise Fischer Cozzi and Irene Semanchuk Dean among others – and Luann Udell’s printed business materials were used as an example.
The book has a ton of pictures, is modern and has some great info all the way from how to pick a studio location, to picking your production routine, to pricing work, packaging and marketing your art, networking, attending fairs and customer relations. There are a variety of interviews throughout with artists and other professionals from the whole craft industry. One interview with Wendy Rosen, a show organizer, has very good and specific information on design theft and copyright infringement issues in the real world.