Filmmaker Dan Perez has some great comments about how damaging that one word can be to an artist’s career. I’ve included the LinkedIn discussion as well, because it continues the conversation.
In short, if you are any kind of creative person trying to make a living at your art – even just enjoying it as a hobby – you will at some point be asked to donate your time and skill for free. For ‘exposure’. The idea seems sound at first: if more people see your work, you might get more sales. Or at least, more ego-boosts.
Yes and no. The kinds of exposure matter, as Dan notes. How many people are these opportunities reaching, and are they buyers or browsers? How often does the artist cave to demands for free stuff? The more free stuff in circulation, the less the for-pay stuff is perceived to be worth.
A video for a large charity known to have contacts with major philanthropists? A worthy risk.
An unpaid, uncredited flyer design for a very small, very poor local arts community? Embark on this adventure at your own risk, and treat it as a labor of love.
Lower-priced small artwork (and some higher-priced big pieces) shown in a gallery in a resort town with lots of foot traffic and affluent visitors? Probably worth the risk.
Low-priced artwork and jewelry sold through a non-profit gift shop with extremely low foot traffic, and a clientele historically known for being penny-conscious? Probably not worth it unless you are selling in large volume.
On the writing side of things, I keep seeing advertisements for freelance editors and writers to work for pennies, with the promise of larger royalty payments should the book go on to be a best-seller. I’m amazed at how many people snap up these jobs – but not at the often low-quality of the resulting editing or writing.
Amazon Kindle and other digital services have proved the power of the free writing sample. I’m one of millions of readers who use the Amazon ‘Look Inside’ feature to preview a book I might buy. If the sample is good, I know the rest of it probably is, too.
Free samples can work indirectly, too. A popular blog dealing with interesting niche topics may have the slight possibility of catching a professional publisher’s notice, and getting the author a book deal as a result. That’s the core reason why many non-fiction publishers want their writers to have an established, online, and professional platform – to showcase author expertise as well as drive sales of the book. Fiction writers are in a more difficult place: large segments and whole stories uploaded for free viewing are considered ‘published’, and have lost the all-important First Rights desired by good publishers. Smaller samples can whet both reader and publisher interest.
I don’t post fiction on this blog, and I may never do so. But I have been uploading new, small fan fiction pieces to a couple of very large online communities. As I’ve said before, there is no possibility of direct profit off those works. But out of several thousand reader hits – often with valuable feedback – on the free fan fiction, I have made about a dozen sales of my original fiction. That I know of, because the readers wrote and told me so. More importantly for me, those readers are now on the lookout for my other work, and they are talking to other readers about my original fiction.
Vague ‘exposure’ is worth far less than capable and detailed feedback. Good or bad, outside skills assessment can only help an artist. Working in a vacuum? Not so much.
There’s a tendency even among professional artists and writers to downplay their worth, to accept less in the short-term need for any cash, and in the long-term hopes for new opportunities. Maybe only because we aren’t sure, anymore, what our efforts are truly worth. That’s where good feedback can give us a proper baseline, and help us avoid free or low-paying labor traps.
I’ve been just as credulous. Multiple times. Fortunately it happened in the art markets, not writing, and I never lost more than $3K total of work or labor. It still stung – but it was a great inoculation when I found the same incompetent/predatory/cheap practices in the publishing industry.
In closing: exposure comes in many flavors, from mediocre to life-changing. It’s up to you to decide how far you are willing to be exploited.