ARTISTS' PROFESSIONAL TOOLBOX ::
Must Reads for Artists

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever, Steve Chandler
Helps you create an action plan for living your vision in business and in life. It features 100 proven methods to positively change the way you think and act. 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself will help you break through the negative barriers and banish the pessimistic thoughts that are preventing you from fulfilling your lifelong goals and dreams. Whether you're self-employed, a manager, or a high-level executive, it's still easy to get stuck in the daily routines of life, fantasizing about what could have been. Chandler helps you turn that way of thinking around and make what could have been into what can and will be.

187 Tips for Artists: How to Create a Successful Art Career - and Have Fun in the Process!, Kathy Gulrich
Award-winning artist and art coach Gulrich shares some of her most insightful, and helpful, artist tips. You'll learn how to:

• Finish your bio, artist statement, and resume once and for all.
• Get your artwork into galleries and shows.
• Keep your collectors coming back for more.
• Develop - and learn from - your artist community.
• Organize your studio - and yourself.
• Be even more creative!

All You Need to Know About the Music Business, Donald S. Passman
Universally regarded as the definitive and indispensable guide to the music industry, now in its fifth edition. In the music business, the key to success lies in knowing how to protect yourself. To do that, you need the best and most up-to-date advice available. Whether you are - or want to be - a performer, writer, or executive, Passman's exhaustive guide to the legal and financial aspects of the music world is an essential tool. You'll learn how to:

• Select and hire a winning team of advisors - personal and business managers, agents, and attorneys - and structure their commissions, percentages, and fees in a way that will protect you and maximize these relationships.
• Master the big picture and the finer points of record deals.
• Navigate the ins and outs of songwriting, music publishing, and copyrights.
• Maximize concert, touring, and merchandising deals. This latest edition also includes information on:
• Music downloads and streaming.
• How royalties are computed in the digital age.
• Why the record companies are hemorrhaging money.
• New laws of the electronic frontier, including copyright infringement, illegal downloads, and challenges to intellectual property rights.
• Industry strategies to combat piracy.
• The new model of record deals, in which the companies want to share in songwriting, touring, merchandising, etc. In addition, there are updates on traditional industry matters such as royalties, advances, video budgets, and copyright law.

Art & Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland
An artist's survival guide written by and for working artists. The authors explore the way art gets made, the reasons it doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way.

Audition : Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part, Michael Shurtleff
His legendary course on auditioning has launched hundreds of successful careers. In this book he tells the all-important HOW for all aspiring actors, from the beginning student of acting to the proven talent trying out for that chance-in-a-million role.

The Business of Being an Artist, Daniel Grant
Thoroughly updated and expanded, this classic handbook teaches emerging artists all the strategies they need to know for selling artwork on their own or through dealers. The book's new sections target today's vital issues: creating a Web site; obtaining copyright/trademark protection on the Internet; coping with censorship of controversial art; and dealing with the new realities of funding sources. Additional chapters tell how to find galleries, arrange exhibitions, apply for grants, land survival jobs doing custom decorative art or teaching, and other relevant topics.

The Complete Independent Movie Marketing Handbook, Mark S. Bosko
If you're an independent filmmaker looking for information on how to market, distribute, and find audiences for your movies and videos, you'll discover it here. This book - packed with street-smart savvy and real-world examples on how to promote and sell your productions - includes both traditional and guerilla marketing techniques that'll make your film stand out in an ever-increasingly crowded marketplace. From landing a distribution deal and getting free media coverage to staging a low-cost premiere and selling your movie to video rental chains and over the Internet, this book is a 'must-have" for any independent film or video maker looking to seriously launch and sustain a career in the entertainment industry.

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, Twyla Tharp
Perhaps the leading choreographer of her generation, Tharp offers a thesis on creativity that is more complex than its self-help title suggests. Tharp takes the lessons she has learned in her remarkable 35-year career and shares them with you, whatever creative impulses you follow - whether you are a painter, composer, writer, director, choreographer, or, for that matter, a businessperson working on a deal, a chef developing a new dish, a mother wanting her child to see the world anew. When Tharp is at a creative dead end, she relies on a lifetime of exercises to help her get out of the rut, and The Creative Habit contains more than 30 of them to ease the fears of anyone facing a blank beginning and to open the mind to new possibilities. Tharp's exercises are practical and immediately doable -- for the novice or expert.

Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life, Shakti Gawain
Teaches readers how to use their imaginations to manifest their deepest desires. Gawain explains how to use mental imagery and affirmations to produce positive changes in one's life. The book contains meditations and exercises that are aimed at helping the practitioner channel energies in positive directions, strengthen self-esteem, improve overall health, and experience deep relaxation.

A Dancer's Guide to Getting Work, Jenny Belingy & John Byrne
From finding the right training to getting an agent, from performing in music videos to working on the West End stage, this down-to-earth source book of tips will inspire and encourage beginners and help those already in the profession to take their careers to the next level. With sections on choosing a career path, handling auditions, self-promotion, and managing the business side of a career, the book contains everything the young dancer needs to achieve his or her goals. (UK focus)

Getting Your 15 Minutes of Fame and More!: A Guide to Guaranteeing Your Business Success, Edward Segal
With this book, public relations guru Segal does for you what he has done for more than 500 high-profile clients nationwide: achieve and manage the fame you crave and deserve. In lively, bite-sized chapters-peppered with revealing anecdotes about and quotes from notables in the worlds of business, high technology, entertainment, sports, and more-Segal arms you with proven tools and techniques for getting your company, organization, or self squarely in the public spotlight, and staying there. Throughout the book, you'll also find instructive, often hilarious "Hall of Fame/Hall of Shame" accounts of some of the most successful and disastrous uses of these techniques.

How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist, 5th ed.: Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul, Caroll Michels
The preeminent guide to taking control of your career and making a good living in the art world. Drawing on over two decades of experience, Michels walks artists through the complicated process of balancing grants, gallery representation, private dealer sales, and a personal studio to ensure a public profile and a steady income. Included is a wealth of insider's information on getting into a gallery, being your own PR agent, and negotiating prices, as well as innovative marketing, exhibition, and sales opportunities for various art disciplines, with new and expanded resources for succeeding in the burgeoning Internet art market.

Self-Management for Actors: Getting Down to (Show) Business, Bonnie Gillespie
Guides you through the process of taking control of your career from the business side of things. This is a simple, self-management concept that allows you to handle the business of your acting career without losing the ability to be a creative artist. Balance is key, and the tips will put you well on your way to having the best manager you deserve: yourself.

Steps to Songwriting Success: The Comprehensive Guide to Writing and Marketing Hit Songs, Jason Blume
An easy-to-understand and lively format; includes exercises for you to practice and hone your songwriting skills, as well as checklists to help you objectively assess your strengths and weaknesses. It is filled with quotes, anecdotes, and inspiring stories from songwriting professionals and also includes an appendix with a list of hundreds of resources for songwriters.

Taking the Leap: Building a Career As a Visual Artist, Cay Lang
Based on artist and teacher Lang's popular seminars, it teaches artists how to succeed in today's complex and competitive art world. Offers inside information on how to show at galleries, nonprofit spaces and museums, as well as a host of nontraditional venues. This behind-the-scenes look at the art world reveals how decisions are made and what artists can expect and how they can create their own art scene on their own terms.

Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want, Barbara Sher & Annie Gottlieb
Effective strategies for making real changes in your life. This human, practical program puts your vague yearnings and dreams to work for you-with concrete results. You'll learn how to

• Discover your strengths and skills.
• Turn your fears and negative feelings into positive tools.
• Diagram the path to your goal-and map out target dates for meeting it.
• Chart your progress-day by day.
• Create a support network of contacts and sources.
• Use a buddy system to keep you on track.

The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler
Explores the powerful relationship between mythology and storytelling in a clear, concise style that's made it required reading for movie executives, screenwriters, scholars, and lovers of pop culture all over the world. Writers of both fiction and non-fiction will discover a set of useful myth-inspired storytelling paradigms (ie. "The Hero's Journey") and step-by-step guidelines to plot and character development. Based on the work of Joseph Campbell, "The Writer's Journey" is a must for writers of all kinds interested in further developing their craft.