Focused Fandom Countdown: 7 Weeks To Go

Thank goodness, the next Focused Fandom Book, “Focused Fandom: Fanart, Fanartists And Careers” is off to my editor.  It’s a huge relief.

First of all, the book got smaller – I tend to write in an include-everything manner then pare down/build up.  Usually starting with the “build up” side and paring down later.  In this case a few subsections were merged or discarded, and one potential extra Appendix was eliminated since it wasn’t needed.

The Edge section is looking good, and I think it’ll provoke thoughts and help you see fanart in a different way.

The Career section is pretty basic, but I think I included some valuable extra detail and thoughts to help people out.  Artists have such varied and potential careers finding the balance between too much (and thus distraction) and not enough (and thus being incomplete) was hard.

The To-Do section is actually deeper than I expected – there’s a lot of “Must-Do’s” for artistic careers, and the psychological ones seem to be the real important issues.

The book is looking good so far, and I think you’ll be pleased – and of course, when it comes out mid-April or so, I’ll hope you can help tell everyone.

Steven Savage

 

The Young And Hungry Fanartists

I'm noticing a trend at a lot of conventions I've been to lately.  I see a lot of young artists in the dealer's rooms and artist's alleys with a few things in common:

  • They've started selling their art in the last 1-3 years.
  • They have gorgeous, professional business cards and signage.
  • They're reasonably to very-well wired, with websites, porfolios online, and the like.
  • They do a lot of personal branding, even going so far as to dress to fit the theme of their table.
  • Their tables are professionally laid out with the right signage, decoration, and so on.
  • They're big on cross-promoting projects they do together, or with others.

Read more