So you’ve done everything I asked you to do, you’ve created a digital record of your work, loaded it on disc and look back every so often to see if there is something there you can use in a different way. What now?
Now its time to try out another market.
That’s right, when the places and people you’ve been selling to drop off or dry up, it’s time to see what other market you can break into.
Now having been a writer a lot longer than I have been a pictorial artist, changing markets is nothing new to me. When people hear you are a writer they always ask, “What do you write?” Like they have a complete catalog of all known writings and can look you up in a nanosecond.
I always say, “Whatever anyone will pay me to write.” Now that’s not very noble. It isn’t very artistic, but I have been at this a long time and long ago lost my notions of being an auteur. Sure I work hard at getting it right. I don’t like half-hearted work and while I don’t try to be Ansel Adams or Henri Cartier-Bresson I don’t just pass along the first thing that I see coming across the monitor.
So having the advantage of being fabulously unsuccessful, I can work on a lot of different markets at the same time and not feel like I am betraying my ART.
It must be truly hard for people who establish themselves early and set super high standards for their work, always having to top the last thing off their easel. Being unsuccessful means never having to say, “I’m sorry.” You have no reputation to live up to.
That’s how I wound up writing murder mystery plays, someone asked and offered to pay and I took them up. There were better, more credentialed folks in the running, but they had the handicap of being successful at their jobs and just couldn’t devote the time necessary to finish the writing.
Turns out I have a trick mind. Now, that’s not what I mean and it wasn’t very nice of you to say so. I have ability to visualize space and see how things will work in it without having the thing in front of me. This means I can write a play with no stage directions cause I can adapt it on the fly to any place that the client wants to stage it. Not very useful for film or television which require cameras and lights and microphones and all that jazz, but really helpful for starving theater companies which have tons of ambition and energy and not much money.
So I write murder mystery plays. Oh yes, I can figure out how to make anyone in the cast guilty after the play is completely written and change the ending so that you can stage the same play night after night and it is unlikely a single patron will ever see the same ending twice, again, very useful for theater folks with boundless dreams and no cash.
So I adapted and didn’t find my change of markets hurt my pride at all. I still write novels and hope to one day sell one, but if I don’t I can live with that. The writing itself is the payoff and I love my characters so I don’t have to have a check to enjoy spending time with them.
Then I moved and once away from the big, bad city I found a new place to focus my energies, art. Sure there are murder mystery companies around here and I wish them well and hope that they will come calling when they need a new crackerjack play, but I have no desire to chase them down crying, “Writer, writer for hire!”
So now I spend my energies on art and I like the folks in the art community a whole bunch so it is good for my socialization as well as burning off excess energy. But it does cost a bit and being an old guy and living on a fixed income and watching it get less fixed every day with interest rates plunging and my trip to the Croaker costing the same as a Bently Mulsanne, it would be nice if I could make enough to cover the costs of entering shows and paying for my frames.
New markets. Oh, you thought I had gone so far off on a tangent that I had forgotten the madness of the message? Not so, enter greeting cards.
Okay, the truth is no one is going to get rich selling to greeting card publishers or selling greeting cards. But you can if you work at it make enough to put a dent in all of that upkeep art causes.
So, first having a web presence, my blog silly, I added a page with some greeting card covers on it and the price for custom cards for all occasions. Sure it is hard to come up with a new and clever idea for every different thing which can happen in a person’s life, but that’s the fun part, stretching your mind to get the right phrase. Don’t like what I’ve done, don’t pay the five bucks; go get a Hallmark or an Ecard.
And now that I’m in the Biz, I thought I’d take a look around and see what avenues are open to guys like me who enjoy trying to come up with a new turn of phrase or a different approach to the card thingy.
Won’t help you sell, but it does tell you how to get your feet wet and that can be the most intimidating part of any new venture.
Try this when you’re ready to take a more aggressive entry into the market. They won’t make you rich, but they just might make getting that roof on the studio easier than you’d planned.
You can’t find out a thing by sitting on the sidelines. You have to get into the game to score, if not this market then another. The important part is to keep an open mind and be ready when an opportunity comes along.
I can do divorce cards and “the Boss from Hell” and you won’t find anything like that at the Hallmark store!
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