Thread by @LogoSimian

Hypothesis: If you want to succeed as an artist financially, you need to do two things:

1) Find a way to lock creativity and consistency in the same room.

2) Get in contact with a thousand people who love your stuff enough to send you money.

1, the marriage of discipline and spontaneity, is the source of the biggest ongoing debate in art circles. @BrianNiemeier occasionally advocates working like a pulp author to achieve this. I defer to his advice for now, though I have thoughts of my own.

This thread is about 2: That Which Must Not Be Named. The Dread Lord Marketing.

Look at my follower count. I've got what, 400, 500 people at present? I've been growing about 10 a month. I can't teach artists to market. Not yet. Though give me a couple of months and we'll see.

But I can teach you *why*.

As an artist, when you think of marketing, you think of intrusive ads by massive corporations trying to push something on you that you don't want.

You don't want to do that because you think it's scummy and you resent it.

But when a trailer for a movie you want to see comes on? You watch that and share it. When you see an ad for something that will genuinely improve your life, you don't resent it at all.

Here's the secret: there are 7,600,000,000 people on this earth. If only a percent of a percent of a percent of them like your work, that's more than enough to keep the lights on and pay your bills.

Moreover, if your art is true art, that is if it is an attempt to communicate Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, then someone somewhere out there *needs* it. It is a moral good to find that person and get your art to them.

That's what marketing is. It's not pushing your product on people who don't want it. It's finding the people that need your art. Making connections with the people whose lives would be improved by it. They support your pocket book, and you support their soul.

Me? I made a fun kids' book about a shark and a mermaid, and an alphabet book. I want to make more books that are more fun and even better. To do that, I need money.

There are people with money who want these books to be made. I just need to find them and show them I'm for real.

Toward that end, I asked @ChroniclesNate how he grew his audience, and I'm starting to try his advice out.

I'm also enrolled in @joserosado's webinar, which starts in a couple of days.

Will this make me an independent awesome artist? I don't know. I don't endorse stuff until I've tried it. Ask me again in a couple of months.

Here's the thing: if it doesn't work, I'm not any worse off than I was before.

My mission is to make awesome stuff and get it to awesome people. You always fail a few times along the road. You gotta embrace that and not run from it.

Remember: someone out there needs your art. Part of your duty as an artist is to find those people.

/thread