Book Update #2

Let us first say thanks to all of you that support the upcoming book. Whether you are in the book, want to purchase a copy or just like the idea. Without the support, the book would have never happened in the first place.

When we conducted our survey on the book earlier, we had a lot of support of the concept, but less than 200 people that said they would want to be in it (around 150). Because of this, we came up with the idea of having a book that would feature these 150 artists, each one getting a full page to tell about themselves. We even said that they could have multiple pages, as long as they were in one of the other two sections of the book.

As it turned out, once we opened the gate for entries, we had over 150 people that wanted to be in the book within the first week. The response was very shocking (in a good way), but now we had a new problem... How do you fit 700 artists in a 200 page book, when we already said each artist would get a full page? The answer, you can't. We either had to go back to everyone and say they will no longer get a full page, or have to turn down a lot of people that wanted to be in the book. Rock and a hard place, right. We decided to honor our promise and give each artist a full page. This would mean that many great artists would not be included, but there would be a chance for other books in the future.

The book committee was originally formed to just make sure that there were no 'doodles' in the book. We only planned on cutting 1-5 artists, but with the huge amount of people that wanted to be in it, it would now be hundreds that would have to be cut. Most of them would be very talented artists and we were sure some feelings would be hurt. We felt bad about this, but didn't really have a choice.

Each member of this committee and our staff voted on every portfolio whether it should stay or go. They could also 'skip' a portfolio if they were undecided and let the others make the call. In the end, each artist had a score that we would use to determine who got into the book. There was no indication if a member was a Premium member or a committee member in the portfolio judging to keep things fair.

Based off the numbers received in the first week of committee voting, we set a minimum 'score' that the artist had to have to make it into the book. We estimated that if the same number of artists requested portfolio reviews each week, we would end up with around 200-250 artists.

Using the formula, we were able to come up with a way to accept people into the book, before the deadline cut off, and know that our book would still be under 300 pages. If for some reason the formula didn't work and we only ended up with 100 artists, we could have gone back to some that were not accepted, and allow them to submit.

Because of this method, the book has never really 'been full'. This is how we were able to accept portfolio review requests up until the last day of the deadline. The book is only full once it goes to the printer to be printed.

The formula we used was pretty accurate, but we still accepted more people than we anticipated in the beginning. We expect that some people will not be able to go through the entire submission process before the Oct. 15th deadline, so we still should be ok. However, if everyone does end up submitting, then we will just have a thicker book with more artists than originally planned. I don't think we will get too many complaints on this. ;-)

Less than 2% of our members can actually fit into this book, so there are thousands of artists that are on ArtWanted.com that are not in the book. Many of them are very talented and some of the top artists on our site. We talked to many great artists that would not be able to meet the deadlines or that didn't have original artwork for high-resolution scanning. Because of this, we don't want everyone to think that this book is the 'best of ArtWanted'. 'Best' is a relative term anyway, but there are some extremely talented people that didn't make it into the book. On the other hand, there are a ton of excellent artists that ARE featured in the book and we look forward to seeing their works in print.

As we have mentioned, we hope that this is the first of many ArtWanted.com books. We love the idea of a book that features multiple artists on a page, so that more people can be included. We would also love to create 'theme' books that are for a specific medium or genre of artwork. The list can go on and on, and we will print books and long as they are successful. We would love to have a whole department of our company that is dedicated to printing & distribution of ArtWanted.com books. The bottom line, as long as there is a demand for them, we will keep printing. We are not asking to become rich off the books, just to break even. If we can at least do this, then we believe that they are a good cause and will continue to make them.

We wanted to make one little mention of distribution. Some artists have e-mailed us wanting to know of all the distribution channels the book will be in and what type of exposure they will get if they submit. We will be selling the book on our website and hope to get it into other sales channels as well. If more people buy the book, then we have additional money to dedicate to distribution. Distribution costs money, a lot of it. This is why most artist showcase books of this nature cost $2-4 thousand dollars per page for the artist. The more you pay, the more people that will see your book.

Although there might be some people on our site willing to pay this type of money, we know that this does not represent the feelings of most artists on our site. Because of this, the cost was kept to a bare minimum just to pay for our expenses of designing the pages. Future books may have a different fee to submit, depending on the size of the book and the audience. We always hope that a rich publisher swoops down and pays for the whole expense of printing & distribution for us, that would be great! Until this happens, we will have to be realistic.

Hopefully we have answered some questions with this post and everyone feels a little better about the book. We are sure excited about it and hope that you are too. Remember that the deadline for all artwork & copy is Oct. 15th for those that are submitting and everyone can look forward to seeing the book at the first of December.

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