I got the proofs back from the publisher yesterday! This is the fully designed, laid-out version of the book. In theory, this is exactly how the book will look when it’s published. In practice, though, I have a few corrections…

Fortunately, most of these corrections are easy fixes: italics missing here, a page or two shuffled into the wrong position there, and so on. But there are also a lot of places where photo placement needs to be switched around, and fixing page layout is more complicated than swapping pages. But I have faith in Schiffer Publishing’s design department; they’ve done a good job so far.

At this point it’s time to get serious about marketing efforts. At the moment, I’m looking for contacts with well-known people in the craft world – specifically, editors of major craft magazines: woodworking, jewelrymaking/metalworking, all the textile arts (quilting, surface design, knitting, tapestry, etc.), polymer clay, ceramics/pottery, and so forth. If any of you have have editorial contacts and would be willing to provide introductions, please let me know! (My contact form is in the sidebar of this post, near the bottom of the page. Or email me at tien@tienchiu.com.)

I’d also love to connect with professors who are teaching craft at universities or major craft schools – I think Master Your Craft would be a great addition to a syllabus, or for university bookstores. If you know any university professors or department heads who might be good to contact, please drop me a line.

Finally, I’m beginning to develop some online classes around the creative process. I’d love to hear from you about your creative challenges – what problems are you grappling with? What can I offer to help solve them? Please let me know.

Many thanks to all of you!

I am pleased to announce that my book, Master Your Craft: Strategies for Designing, Making, and Selling Artisan Work is (finally!) available for pre-order!

$29.99 + $6.50 s/h (w/in USA)[wp_cart_button name=”Master Your Craft” price=”36.49″]

Pre-order now!

Pre-order now and you will receive a signed copy via Priority Mail once the book is published!

(Please let me know what inscription you would like via the “Notes” field in PayPal checkout. Anticipated publication date is September 28, 2016.)

Here’s a description of the book:

There is a huge gap between making “recipe projects” from magazines and books and designing your own work, and an equally big gap between designing your own and creating well-designed pieces. Master Your Craft: Strategies for Designing, Creating, and Selling Artisanal Works is intended to fill that gap, enabling novice designers to grow beyond following project “recipes”and teaching more advanced designers strategies to produce masterpieces. It offers a creative process that facilitates exploring new ideas, translating those ideas into solid design, prototyping to solve design problems, and constructing the finished piece.  It provides a process tailored specifically to craft ““ addressing artistic concerns as well as fabrication considerations.

Master Your Craft fuses artistic principles with best practices drawn from interviews from established artisans and industrial product development processes. In addition to covering topics like visual and functional design, Master Your Craft offers insights from artisans across a wide cross-section of the craft world – tapestry weavers, glass workers, ceramicists, quilters, basket weavers, and woodworkers, to name just a few. It also offers the best of industrial development processes – brainstorming techniques used by professional designers, construction strategies from the automotive industry, and iterative development methods from software companies. These industrial methods, fused with more traditional craft approaches, provide a powerful new process for finding and exploring new ideas, for translating those ideas into solid design, for constructing the final piece, and for reflecting on the finished project.

In addition to offering a creative framework, Master Your Craft contains suggestions for growing as a designer – whether on the artist’s path, the businessperson’s path, or as a passionate amateur. It includes tips from established artists and successful craft businesspeople for developing your creative voice, networking to find opportunities for show and sale of your work, and ideas for pricing and promoting your work.

And (should you want to share with your friends), here’s the sales flyer. Please help me spread the word!!

I had fun at Schiffer’s Author Picnic! Because of a delayed flight, I only made it to half the seminars, but I did meet the Schiffer team, and got most of my numerous questions answered. And I got to meet Sandra, my editor! Here’s a picture of us:

I got to go on a tour of Schiffer’s warehouse and offices, and thought you might find it interesting.

Here’s the outside of Schiffer’s building, a large warehouse in rural Pennsylvania. I loved the sculptures scattered throughout the grounds and the smaller works of art decorating many of the offices – all from the collection of founders Peter and Nancy Schiffer. Here are one of the polar bears and a pair of elephants in front of the warehouse.

Schiffer is in Atglen, PA – population 1,402. It’s a rural area, about an hour from Philadephia and half an hour from Lancaster, Pennsylvania – the heart of Amish country. How rural? Ask the farmer next door:

And yes, it’s a working farm. Here’s the view from Schiffer’s patio. Cows!

I didn’t take many photos inside the offices, but here’s part of the library. The library contains a copy of each of  the 5,600+ books currently available from Schiffer Publishing – it’s there for reference, and for their occasional visitor to browse. Heaven!

You’ve probably noticed the fabulous table in the library. It’s the creation of the current president (Pete Schiffer, the son of founders Peter and Nancy Schiffer), who makes them himself from slabs of tree trunks. Here’s another gorgeous table:

I was fascinated by this rack of trays. Every book in process at Schiffer gets a tray. The tray holds all the physical materials related to a book. I wonder where the tray for Master Your Craft is?

And here are some pictures of the HUGE warehouse. This was the section of the warehouse next to the picnic – the volleyball court was put up just for the picnic, but it gives you a sense of scale:

But wait! That’s not all. On the left side of the warehouse is a corridor to…more books!

And how big is that next section? Big. Big enough to dwarf a car inexplicably parked inside the warehouse:

Here’s a picture of just one of those book sections (this book is about collectible horses):

And here, along a smaller set of shelves, are the books that are waiting to be bought and shipped to individual mail-order customers:

I was delighted to find a familiar book there – Masters of Craft, by Paul J. Smith, director emeritus of the American Craft Council and of another major craft museum. It consists of photographs of master craftspeople – a wonderful book which has inspired me to look up many of the artisans.

After seeing Schiffer’s approach to publishing, marketing, and selling books, I’m very happy I decided to publish with Schiffer. Schiffer has a commitment to keeping books in print as long as they have copies. This is HUGE – most publishers will remainder “extra” books within a year or so of publication, rendering it out of print and unavailable. Schiffer is also willing to pursue small sales channels – the local gift store, or a museum shop, for example, in addition to the traditional bookstores and major distributors. They’ve developed relationships throughout each of the niches where they publish – which makes them potentially a better choice for craft books than a larger publisher, because they’re more focused. And they have a reputation for producing quality books, which is important to me. The only downside is that they don’t pay as well as larger publishers, but I’d rather have my book sold effectively and kept in print for years – what’s important to me is that the content is available, not a few extra dollars. (Not that anyone is getting rich from the publishing business, anyway!)

Well, my plane is about to land in San Francisco, so I’d better tie this blog post off here. I’m really looking forward to seeing B., Tigress, and the utterly-without-feline-dignity Fritz again!

The manuscript is ready for the publisher! I’m delighted. 220 pages of manuscript have been reformatted per the publisher’s requirements, 136 images are numbered and organized and sitting neatly in a folder, and the captions are in a separate file, as requested. I’ve answered the marketing survey, written various lengths of author bio and book description, and I am ready to submit my package. And two weeks early! Not only am I ecstatic to have it done, I’m downright smug about getting it done far before the deadline. Another on-time delivery for this project manager!

Here’s a pic of the final draft:

You may have noticed a title change. I decided that Dream It, Make It! was a bit too light and fluffy for a serious book. Master Your Craft does a much better job of communicating what the book is about: taking your design and construction skills to the next level, and growing as an artisan. It’s still only a working title, and will probably change again before publication, but I like it a lot.

There is still a lot to be done on the book, but this is a huge step forward. The next steps are for the publisher to verify that all the pieces are there, it’s of publishable quality, and write the catalog entry. That will take 3-6 weeks. After that, it’s on to editing, revisions, layout, proofing, and all the other myriad tasks that need doing to create a physical book.

(I had no idea it was so complicated when I signed up for this!)

During this process, I’ll also be doing a lot of marketing legwork. The publisher has asked me to suggest magazines, bloggers, and other venues that might review or help publicize the book; organizations that might help with creating “buzz” about the book; and, of course bookstores, schools, and other places that might be interested in selling copies of the book. I haven’t started putting together all that information yet – but I don’t think it needs to be delivered with the rest of the book package. I’m hoping not, since I still have to catch up on my digital painting class.

And the cats? I have the feeling that Fritz will be very sad to see the book completed. After all, what could be more enjoyable than harassing the printer for half an hour, as it cranks out another copy of my manuscript?