Reading about marketing, two brief reviews

I've recently read two books about marketing and I'm going to save myself some work and review them in one post. First is How to Market and Sell Your Art, Music, Photographs, & Handmade Crafts Online by Lee Rowley and the other is Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden Gems in Your Business by Lynda Resnick.

I picked up How to Market and Sell Your Art, Music, Photographs, & Handmade Crafts Online at the library a few weeks ago. Before checking it out I double checked the publication date, as anything about technology gets outdated so quickly that I didn't want to waste my time if it wasn't going to be helpful. This one was published in 2008 so it seemed like it would be fairly accurate. As it turned out, the book itself was really aimed at someone with a little less computer experience than I have and didn't really give me a lot of new ideas. I can see that there is a group of people who could really use the book, but I am not that person. The book it divided into chapters about buying a computer, creating a website, hiring help, and other similar topics. There is a chapter on social media as well, but it emphasized using MySpace with only a brief mention of Facebook and that's about it. I learned a tiny bit about keywords, but that's pretty much the only thing I got out of it. The plus side is that I "read" it in a couple of hours and was done.

Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden Gems in Your Business was sent to me directly by the author, or rather by her company POMWonderful, back in February. Resnick and her husband are (or were) owners of several well known companies, including POM, Teleflora, and Fiji water. I looked forward to discovering how she managed to turn the companies into a success. However, I quickly got the feeling that the book itself was nothing more than a giant ad for her various companies, and having received it directly from her just confirms this feeling. I read through the marvelous success of POM, and then that of Teleflora, and then her brilliance with the Franklin Mint before I got tired of hearing her pat herself on the back. Unfortunately, hearing her brag wasn't what I was looking for in a marketing book and I decided not to finish the book at all. I'm very glad that I did not pay for this one.

You can find more reviews at:
Savvy Verse & Wit,
Lost in Books,
book-a-rama

Did I miss yours?

What marketing book or advice do you like? Do you ever read business books? How do you feel about an author using his or her book as a giant advertisement for their product?

Craft Inc. by Meg Mateo Ilasco

As you are all fully aware, given how much I talk about it, I have a shop on Etsy. I'd love to turn it into something that will generate a little extra income for my family so that I could one day be debt free. (Yes, "one day" is a long long long long LONG time in the future. Do not crush my dreams.) To that end I bought (yes, bought!) this book- Craft, Inc.: Turn Your Creative Hobby into a Business. It's a short little book, only 160 pages, and while not everything in it will really apply to me, there was a lot of inspiration to be found.

Ilasco breaks the book down into chapters about marketing, inspiration, sales, and pricing, among others. The book covers in very general terms all the different aspects of owning your own shop AND creating your own brand. She's very clear that you have to brand yourself fully, you can't have a bunch of random stuff throw together and expect to be a rousing success. I think this is possibly the most useful thing I took out of the book and I expect it'll cause me to think more about my own shop and how I can pull it together more cohesively. One thing I took the time to do already was to create a Facebook fan page for the shop, please go become a fan!

Throughout the book there are short interview from various people who have managed to turn their hobbies into very successful brands. Each one was about two pages long, just long enough to keep me interested, without too many details. Some of them were very inspiring and make me think that this IS possible for me.

The one aspect of the book that wasn't so helpful for me was that a lot of the book does focus on things that can be mass produced. For example- pottery pots, or lip balm, or even knitted hats. Most of what I make tends to be one of the kind- custom team banners, messenger bags, and tote bags from t-shirts. It's a little harder to market something that is so unique- just how many sample banners do I need anyway, if the Twins fans don't bite?

Overall, a useful book, one that I'll add to my shelves. (The bright yellow spine will certainly look nice on them, don't you think?) It certainly does inspire me to work harder at my goal. If you're interesting in starting a creative business of your own, I think you could get a lot out of this book, otherwise probably not for you.

If you could turn any hobby into a business, what would it be? What do you love to do? You don't have to be great at it, I'm just interested in what your passion is... and don't say "I'd love to make a living reading books!" cause DUH.

Craft, Inc. by Meg Mateo Ilasco

Chronicle Books

2007

160 pages