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Hello I'm Katy Fryd and I'm an artist and I'm making these videos to help other artists
who are just starting out today's video is about self publishing I feel like with artists
so much emphasis is put on selling the artwork and to be honest we can't always unless you
are really doing well really making it selling your work which is obviously a goal for everyone
there is also this whole other market of people who can't afford the price you deserve for
your art but they might be really interested in your work and they might be able to afford
something smaller like the price of a book or something like that so I think they are
such a great idea for that market and they make a nice gift if you've got it listed on
Amazon people can put that on their wish list they could also tell people that is what they
want for their birthday present or christmas present or whatever so other people could
get that for them in like a gift list or something so yeah I think it's a really good idea you've
got a market there it also doubles as a catalogue of your work forever because you are going
to be putting these books in well if you go down one route you could put these books in
the five major libraries if you are in the UK or if you are in America it's probably
a similar thing I don't know exactly what it is in America so you've got those books
are in the libraries the major UK libraries for ever so like that is great for as a historical
document so yeah I would say work on a book I think with a book you need to maybe it depends
what kind of one you are doing if you are doing one with covering a lot of your work
in it then obviously you are going to have different work in there but even if you do
you should maybe have it so it's in certain sections so you've got collections of work
within that book or you could just do a book with one collection the book I'm doing at
the moment I'm concentrating on one collection of work that is similar so if you don't have
any if all your work is quite diverse at the moment and you haven't yet got anything that
is sort of collective maybe try and work on something so take one of the themes you are
working on at the moment and produce maybe five to ten similar pictures or in the same
theme or same technique or something like that so you've got an actual collection there
galleries like collections anyway they like to see that your work although your work can
change they like to see that you have stayed within one sort of way of painting for a certain
length of time anyway so if you are doing that for galleries as well I think it shows
that you can focus and concentrate on a certain thing for a certain amount of time anyway.
But that would be quite a nice thing to put in a book as well so you've got a collection
of your work and it's good for in the future for referencing your own work without having
to look through all your sketchbooks or wherever you've got a nice neat thing there referencing
all the work that you've done it's good for people who are researching you in the future
also when you sell a piece of work although you hope that the buyer is going to look after
it and take care of it there is always the chance it could be destroyed in a house fire
or a fire of some sort it could be damaged it could be lost or sadly the person might
get bored with the work and throw it away so once you've sold a work there is always
that thing of that you may never see that again and that might be the end of your piece
in a way so I think when you've got it all in a you have to not be too precious about
your work or you wouldn't sell it you wouldn't let it go but I think if you've got a collection
of it anyway you should be photographing your work then you need to then it is quite a good
thing to have it all in one place that you can remember the work that you've done and
how you've progressed so anyway I use Lulu.com I did look at a lot of self publishing books
when I first published a book and I settled on Lulu.com this was before createspace came
along and I have had a quick look at create space but I am not sure about it at the moment
I haven't looked into it in enough detail yet so I'm sticking with lulu.com at the moment
there is also blurb which I've heard is good for people in the UK but I like Lulu.com because
I could see straight away clearly that I could list my work on Amazon and that is where I
wanted to have it listed at the end stage because I buy all my books pretty much from
Amazon which I know might be bad but I do it is easy for me I trust them as a company
to buy with my bank details and things so I trust them so also it's got quite a bit
of kudos if you've got your book listed there it is more of a real thing as well so so I
just went for one that I knew I could get onto Amazon and also it had the possibility
of global distribution although I've only gone for extended reach distribution which
is an option on Lulu which means it's selling in the UK and America and I think some other
countries as well. But I haven't got it on global distribution but I did make sure that
the book I chose because they offer all these different books of different sizes different
pages and everything and I worked out the book that I could use the same template for
the UK USA distribution and then if I wanted to in the future go to global distribution
I wouldn't have to alter the book and redo it all although you could you know if it works
out you could do that if you wanted to have some different options for the book selling
I think there is no hard cover there is maybe a couple of hardcover books that you can get
at the global distribution level but they are very expensive with Lulu so I've just
gone for paperbacks yes so I downloaded a template of the book that I decided that I
wanted to have and then I could just write my book and paste my pictures into that template
so it was really easy to do then you've got a cover image and a back image and you can
work on that in either photoshop or gimp if you haven't got photoshop GIMP is a free thing
similar to photoshop and a graphic thing or you can ask somebody who is a graphic designer
to help you do that relatively cheaply if you are more of an artist and less of a graphic
designer or you are just not very technical when it comes to computers hopefully most
people are probably better now coming out of schools at computers than older people
anyway so you can get a free lulu isbn which is great because you've got no upfront costs
or you can go with having your own press in a way by registering buying some ISBNs from
nielsen and they register your books as your own company so with my first book I went for
the free lulu ISBN because it was free and it meant I could didn't have to wait to pay
for these ISBN thing and register it all but in the future I've decided I am going to buy
my own ISBNs and have my own press small press so that I'm the publisher they are the printer
and distributer so I don't know what the company would be in America but I'm sure there will
be a similar company that you could find out that registers ISBNs so in the UK it's about
120 pounds for a block of 10 ISBNs so that is quite good if you are going to do the books
in different shapes or hardback or whatever if you are going to do different ones for
different markets erm or you could save them for future books that you are going to do
and then if you've bought your own ISBNs you have to send 5 copies to libraries in the
UK they are basically the book depositories so that they've got a copy and that is like
a legal requirement they have a copy of that book for historical purposes so I think that
is a great idea as an artist because that means you are in the history books in a way
you are in history you are marked in history so if you like that kind of thing and also
if you've registered your own and if you've made up your own press name and everything
rather than having Lulu which people in the know are going to know that Lulu is a self
publishing company so if you've got your own company name it's less obviously self published
which some people are quite *** about self publishing which is fair enough because you
see some of the work on lulu and some of it is very poor and amateur but so that may be
a good reason to have your own name other artists that have published, self published
their work William Blake and there are some others as well but I can't think of them but
William Blake definitely self published his work so even great artists have done this
at some time so I don't think there is any reason to not do this. And I'm going to do
some more videos as I work through my second book I'm going to do some more videos on self
publishing so if I do finish any I'll link them at the end of this video so what I want
you to do is go and check out lulu.com if you haven't looked at it already put a collection
of work together if you haven't got a collection of similar works just even ten pieces of work
that are similar work on that and once you've got that photograph it and work on putting
it together in a book for on lulu or one of the other self publishing sites experiment
with them have a book printed I know on lulu you can have a book printed reasonably cheaply
as an experiment you don't even have to have an ISBN to have a book printed and just see
what your work is like and you can always change it afterwards - if you do get a book
as far as going on to Amazon which can take about six to eight weeks from the final publishing
so you have to be patient but if you do leave a link below because I would love to see something
that I've inspired you to do so if you get a book published and you've got it on Amazon
please post a link below this video on youtube and yeah if it was inspiring to you this video
please do like comment ask me any questions subscribe to my channel you can find me on
facebook either on my main page or my how to be a successful artist page. It would be
lovely to see you over there just drop in and say hi! And the links will be below and
see you again soon, thank you Bye!