I received an email a few weeks ago that said something like this,
“I want to learn more about how to contact manufacturers, and please dumb it down because I’m new.”
This just made me shake my head and say, “REALLY?” I have so many resources for learning about the many facets of art licensing but they want me to answer them personally, oh, and dumb it down too. I’m all for being helpful – really I am. I’ve written articles, done many free interviews, done more than 25 ask calls that are available free to anyone who listens live and many replays are free too. There are more than 400 blog posts about art licensing. If a person isn’t willing to look for some answers and just expects a personal response to a basic question that is readily available, they probably aren’t going to do so well in this business.
You have to work hard and make things happen – they aren’t handed to you on a platter.
However, there are so many artists who read and look and learn that I thought this would be a great time to point you in some helpful directions when it comes to finding information about interacting with manufacturers.
ARTICLES about finding and working with manufacturers
- The Seven Steps to Art Licensing Shopping Research
- The Art Licensing Equation: What it Takes from Both Sides to Make a Great Partnership
- In Art Licensing, Communication is Key
- When NOT to ask “What are you looking for?”
- In Art Licensing, Who Comes Up With the Ideas?
- 7 Ways Finding Manufacturers Who License Art is Like Online Dating
- 5 Reasons a Company Might Choose to License Art
- 5 Reasons To Consider Promoting Yourself in Art Licensing
VIDEO about finding manufacturers
eBOOK: How to Find, Interact and Work with Manufacturers Who License Art
ASK CALL REPLAYS – many answer specific questions about manufacturers who license art
Look through the many free and for fee audio replays – over 250 hours worth – to see what questions have been asked and answered about manufacturers. You can see everything at www.ArtLicensingInfo.com/audio-archives.html
If you have specific questions, feel free to submit them for consideration for the next call. The schedule and links to the website(s) to submit your questions are also on that page.
I hope that helps! Wishing you much success!
– Tara Reed
Hi Tara, if I may add some input, maybe they meant to not get to technical with vocabulary used for licensing. I see both viewpoints and both are valid…or maybe I’m just trying to look at it in a positive way but I know that when I first wanted to learn more about licensing I felt overwhelmed and so much I didn’t know that it was kinda confusing hearing people speak about licensing and specially hearing the terminology such as royalties, non-exclusive and exclusive contracts…and so on and so forth. I didn’t even know how copyright actually worked and how to get a painting/s copyrighted. So basically maybe he/she was probably trying to mean to kinda just write out simply how to get started. Just a thought, but if it was them being lazy well I definitely agree, a lot of research should be done, we can’t expect things handed to us
Maria – I totally understand what you are saying and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt as well. However, the artist in question has been on my eNewsletter list for almost a year, listens to many of the free calls… so in my opinion, it was laziness. They are not brand new to this. 🙂
ah, I see Tara, gosh that is very lazy indeed. A year means that they have had a whole long while to do the reasearch and learn…I stayed up late and learned alot in about a week or two of intense research trying to get everything sorted out although there’s a few things I’m still learning but i still do the learning myself. If we want to get somewhere we got to put in the effort most definitely!