I posted this up as a reply in "Breaking The Straving Artist Paradigm" Tribe but thought it would be a good topic here as well.
I've been reading this thread on Spec Work, and to be honest, it basically it show why so many artists are "starving" in the first place. I wanted to reply in a way that covers some of the ideas I've seen posted and why I think they are WRONG!
"whenever you are trying to break into a new market, one of the strategies available is to donate work, or to give something away for free. for example, some companies give away free samples in an effort to gain new customers."
Yeah I see a lot of this at Costco too. This isn't "Spec Work" but advertising. What they are giving away in inventory already made and the cost of doing so is so small as to make it worth while. For a Multi-Million dollar food company, the costs of opening a box of cereal and giving away small cups of it for people to taste is dirt cheap.
Spec Work for artists on the other hand, means we are expected to create a product and then give it away, in hopes that people will want to buy more, at a fair market price, later. No-one would make a whole product line of cereal, and then give it away to customers in hopes of making a market. They would set a price for the product first. Then advertise it to people. Then the value of the product will create the market for it.
"I have a buddy who has an idea he calls a "judo economy". If you are pushing your work, you can give it away. If someone is pulling (requesting) your art, you sell it."
For any business to survive it must be able to establish a fair market price for it's product. If you are giving away your work, then your established price is FREE. If you are just waiting for someone to request to buy your product, then the established price is whatever they offer (which most likely would be less than the fair market value). In any case, you are giving away any leverage you have in getting a fair price.
And by the way, I studied Judo when I was younger. It is all about leverage!
"If a commercial location asks me to do a mural for free and is willing to pay for materials, I'm all over it. I add an advertisement for my work in plain sight in the mural and tend to get numerous new contacts as a result."
But if you charged them for the job, then they would be paying for all the materials anyway PLUS your time doing it. In this case, you are exchanging your time and effort for advertising space. Now I don't know what the job cost would be for a mural? It might be a good deal or it might not. It would depend on what the actual dollar value of your time as an artist is worth, compared to what the dollar value of the advertising would be? If you didn't get at least 4 FULL paying jobs, at a rate equal or above what you would have gotten for the one free one, then it wasn't worth it.
"Just wondering - why do you say that working "on spec" is unethical? If I like a project, I'll work on spec, because even if they don't want to buy the work in the end, I'll still have a new portfolio piece."
Rule #1 of business: Time Is Money.
If you have put any amount of time in a project and the customer doesn't pay you for it, then they have taken your money just as much as if they reached into your bank account and yanked it out! ( And last I heard, ripping people off is still considered unethical.) I can do as many "portfolio pieces" as I want for free. Why do I need to do one for some cheap S.O.B. instead?
"You have to get 'noticed' first, before you can obtain the trust of the customer."
But that is why God created advertising. Using Spec Work to do this is sort of like saying women need to put out to a guy in order for them to be interested in you. Unfortunately for guys like me, most women I know have more self-esteem than that. (Darn it!) But I'm amazed at the number of artists who still hold on to the idea.
Actually, customers will "trust" you far more if you are professional, than if you are cheap. In fact for many, price is not an issue at all but dependability is. In the illustration field, art directors will go with an artist they know can make their deadlines rather than someone cheaper and better but who may not.
If you have a fair price though, then it shouldn't be an issue. If it is then maybe this isn't a customer you can trust? In most businesses, you have what is called the 80/20 rule, 80% of your income will come from only 20% of your customers. So it is not how many customers you can get but how many you can get that are worth keeping.
The exception that proves the rule on Spec work is writers. Most authors actually work on a novel before they have a publisher. So in a way, they are working on spec. But even among published authors, only a few are making enough to make their sole living from it. Only the most desperate would write a book on assignment for a publisher unless they had a contact for it and none would give a book away for free to someone just on the hope that they will buy the second novel. There is too much investment of time for them to be cavalier about it. Most comic book blogs I have followed are filled with tales of woe from comic book creators that have signed bad contracts with publishers just to see their work in print.
When you give work away for free, the person paying for it is you.
I've been reading this thread on Spec Work, and to be honest, it basically it show why so many artists are "starving" in the first place. I wanted to reply in a way that covers some of the ideas I've seen posted and why I think they are WRONG!
"whenever you are trying to break into a new market, one of the strategies available is to donate work, or to give something away for free. for example, some companies give away free samples in an effort to gain new customers."
Yeah I see a lot of this at Costco too. This isn't "Spec Work" but advertising. What they are giving away in inventory already made and the cost of doing so is so small as to make it worth while. For a Multi-Million dollar food company, the costs of opening a box of cereal and giving away small cups of it for people to taste is dirt cheap.
Spec Work for artists on the other hand, means we are expected to create a product and then give it away, in hopes that people will want to buy more, at a fair market price, later. No-one would make a whole product line of cereal, and then give it away to customers in hopes of making a market. They would set a price for the product first. Then advertise it to people. Then the value of the product will create the market for it.
"I have a buddy who has an idea he calls a "judo economy". If you are pushing your work, you can give it away. If someone is pulling (requesting) your art, you sell it."
For any business to survive it must be able to establish a fair market price for it's product. If you are giving away your work, then your established price is FREE. If you are just waiting for someone to request to buy your product, then the established price is whatever they offer (which most likely would be less than the fair market value). In any case, you are giving away any leverage you have in getting a fair price.
And by the way, I studied Judo when I was younger. It is all about leverage!
"If a commercial location asks me to do a mural for free and is willing to pay for materials, I'm all over it. I add an advertisement for my work in plain sight in the mural and tend to get numerous new contacts as a result."
But if you charged them for the job, then they would be paying for all the materials anyway PLUS your time doing it. In this case, you are exchanging your time and effort for advertising space. Now I don't know what the job cost would be for a mural? It might be a good deal or it might not. It would depend on what the actual dollar value of your time as an artist is worth, compared to what the dollar value of the advertising would be? If you didn't get at least 4 FULL paying jobs, at a rate equal or above what you would have gotten for the one free one, then it wasn't worth it.
"Just wondering - why do you say that working "on spec" is unethical? If I like a project, I'll work on spec, because even if they don't want to buy the work in the end, I'll still have a new portfolio piece."
Rule #1 of business: Time Is Money.
If you have put any amount of time in a project and the customer doesn't pay you for it, then they have taken your money just as much as if they reached into your bank account and yanked it out! ( And last I heard, ripping people off is still considered unethical.) I can do as many "portfolio pieces" as I want for free. Why do I need to do one for some cheap S.O.B. instead?
"You have to get 'noticed' first, before you can obtain the trust of the customer."
But that is why God created advertising. Using Spec Work to do this is sort of like saying women need to put out to a guy in order for them to be interested in you. Unfortunately for guys like me, most women I know have more self-esteem than that. (Darn it!) But I'm amazed at the number of artists who still hold on to the idea.
Actually, customers will "trust" you far more if you are professional, than if you are cheap. In fact for many, price is not an issue at all but dependability is. In the illustration field, art directors will go with an artist they know can make their deadlines rather than someone cheaper and better but who may not.
If you have a fair price though, then it shouldn't be an issue. If it is then maybe this isn't a customer you can trust? In most businesses, you have what is called the 80/20 rule, 80% of your income will come from only 20% of your customers. So it is not how many customers you can get but how many you can get that are worth keeping.
The exception that proves the rule on Spec work is writers. Most authors actually work on a novel before they have a publisher. So in a way, they are working on spec. But even among published authors, only a few are making enough to make their sole living from it. Only the most desperate would write a book on assignment for a publisher unless they had a contact for it and none would give a book away for free to someone just on the hope that they will buy the second novel. There is too much investment of time for them to be cavalier about it. Most comic book blogs I have followed are filled with tales of woe from comic book creators that have signed bad contracts with publishers just to see their work in print.
When you give work away for free, the person paying for it is you.
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Why Spec Work is EVIL!
Sun, July 6, 2008 - 12:51 PMJames, I agree with all you say here. (Tho I do give away work as gifts to family and friends)
I have to add something to what you've mentioned in passing: fair price. I come across artists who are putting their work out to sell for the first time and have set their prices far too high; prices that say "hey I've been selling for years and I do get $6,000 for a piece," (a complete fabrication)....and then they wonder why no one buys their work.
Emerging artists should find out what emerging art prices are. They are lower than one wants them to be, that is for sure! My advice to artists that have a masterpiece that stuns everyone who views it: Keep that piece held back, NFS, until you've sold enuff work to warrant that higher asking price. It may take a few years.
