Last week,
as I was putting the finishing touches on the August issue of The Poetic Pinup Revue (which, by the
way, is now available for pre-order here), I noticed the continuation of what I
consider a rather disturbing trend. One
of the things we list in our index of contributors is the URL of each artist’s website
so that our readers, when overwhelmed as they so often are by the magnificence
of the talent contained in our humble publication, can find more of each
contributor’s work and be even more
overwhelmed by their magnificence.
And for the
third issue in a row, roughly half of the contributors had either left blank or
written “N/A” in the section of the release form where they were to provide a
URL.
There’s a
saying in the data backup business; “If it isn’t in three places, it doesn’t
exist.” To all artists, the aspiring,
the well-established and the everywhere in between, the same applies. You need to be in three places. There is you, live and in person, at whatever
events you choose to appear. There is
your work, on paper or canvas or in clay or an 8-foot tower of cleverly
sculpted dryer lint. And there is your
presence on the Internet.
In this day
and age, you can’t NOT have one. It’s as
simple as that. And your personal social
networking profile doesn’t count. You
don’t want people who really liked your last poem stopping by and leaving
bizarre comments on photos from your mom’s birthday party. You need a professional presence solely for
your creative endeavors.
So, to
everyone who left blank or “N/A”’d the Artist
Website field on their release form, I really truly deeply urgently wish
you would go establish a professional Internet presence. A Facebook page is free, and relatively easy
to set up. Same with a Google blog, or a
basic Wordpress site. Even if the
content consists of nothing but a stock photo banner and a bunch of links to
other places on the Internet where your work can be found, you need at least
that.
And to the
artists who did complete the website field, but with “www.facebook.com/MyAwesomePage874398572048750824705827458738057”,
you really need to go rename your
pages. For online publications where
that URL can be embedded, not a problem, but print is not so dead a medium that
you can start ignoring it completely, and NO
ONE flipping through a magazine is going to type all of that out just for
the sake of learning more about you.
People who
like your work will want to like more of your work. You need to make that as easy for them as
possible.
