So, finally, I have a podcast. And I’m talking about the thing that started with Philthy Art: online art marketing for artists. Ch-ch-check it out:
Also, I return to Philadelphia, after my year of exploring, in the beginning of October. Watch for more events here at Philthy Art and get in touch if you have any thoughts or ideas.
Yours,
Nina
Two of my poems “Mary, Mary” and “Nietzsche” can now be read at the online literary journal Contemporary Rhyme. Many thanks to them (especially because they’re a paying market)…So rare for poetry. But free to you, gentle reader.
Vive la rhyming poetry! I know some think it’s woefully old-fashioned, but I sure ain’t over it. It incorporates the musicality we look for in song and the sense of inevitability that we look for in art.
I also have a free-verse poem “bees” being published in the print journal Grasslimb. I will let you know when that issue comes out.
Behind the scenes at Philthy Art is a beautiful web of ideas that we are only one special part of. Here, I want to discuss a little bit of the philosophy behind Web 2.0 and how just by celebrating the work of others and/or offering your own work to world, you can promote it and actually sell more pieces (pay attention you artists with websites).
Beyond my freelance writing, editing and designing, I run two small publishing companies: Inconnue Press and Phantom City Press.
I’ve found in the last half-year that getting the word out about your product, book or piece of art or a consulting business can be done effectively and cheaply online…and lead you to more directly to like-minded people.
I’m an acquaintance and big fan of Imagination’s Bud Caddell, whose blog on Web 2.0 marketing combines wit and common sense to drive home the face that online marketing is all about “the conversation.”
I used to be the kind of person who shut off the second I heard the word “marketing.” I didn’t like the idea of pie charts or seeing people only as customers and customers only as numbers.
But one of the great lessons of running a small publishing company that I believe in has been this: no matter how great a piece of writing is, no one will read it unless they know about it. Pure and simple.
The common viral networks of ideas exchange; through meeting with friends, the rise and fall of trends and standards, the propagation of certain books, materials, ways of doing things, all happen in rapid succession online. There, you can’t just put up a storefront and expect people to buy your products. You need to develop, for lack of a better word, street cred.
This means doing some work beyond ordering your supply of whatever it is you’re selling. You must actually have something to bring people back to your site, and it’s best if you can create something like a youtube video…something that can be spread virally and is entertaining, thought-provoking, and possibly even beautiful. For example, see the video on the previous post.So, what does this mean? I’ll show you how I do it. You must connect to your audience with love, whether this means through:
My two presses reside at www.inconnuepress.com and www.phantomcitypress.com but I bring together my love of literature, art, buddhism, nonprofit work, and philosophy in all my other blogs and sort of cross-pollinate them.
It’s exciting to start a little sphere of expression, which then hopefully engages like-minded people who would also be interested in buying a book or a piece of art or hiring you to landscape their garden.
The key is: you have to believe in the ideas behind what you’re selling. And you have to care more about creating a online community than attracting customers.
Many thanks to:
Anders Hansen, Gregory Paul, and Rick Wright
“A Robe of White Roses” is published in 4×1 by Inconnue Press.
White Beard
Tonight I am the old man’s white beard
wizened and grizzled in deep lined cuts
resigned to the slope and bend of flesh
gravity pulled furrows over ashen dust
It was the clink of glasses that started this
taking small potent steps down the hall
inching closer to her hated breath
the weight of her, heavy, lurking,
creaking the same wood boards
Can one grow into a giant overnight
when the yearning stops and the
becoming is
knowing one’s art is revealed, suddenly
unearthed by one massive heave
of black earth
To know a person for so long
and see their face go colorless
foul scents utter unrecognizable clods
of rancid words and clouded tongue
Should I take on hatred and this dark
into me, onto me, held and sacred
like the vows now melted away by
the lightest heat from palest sun
Something disappears from me tonight
A piece I can never reclaim or repair
a note held deep in my heart
now scratched thin out of a rusty flute
aching for its rounded wonder
spitting tin and teeth and nails
It was the clink of glasses that started this
a dark celebration and bitter turn
a collapse and fold and deep line cut
of the old man’s white beard
-Rick Wright
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
-W. B. Yeats
Photography, drawing, and painting by Nina Alvarez
