Online publishing platforms - the numbers compared

This post focuses on the relative traffic, size and impact and reach of the different online publishing sites.   This is because many artists now like to be able to publish their artwork or sketches in books and some also publish art instruction online. 

Online publishing platforms

I'm focusing on three publishing platforms.  Their own descriptions of themselves are quoted below.

• Blurb

Make your own book with Blurb online. Create photo books, wedding books and more. Design and publish professional quality books to keep, give or sell

• Lulu

Lulu.com brings the world of online book publishing to you. Looking to self-publish? Lulu's print on demand (POD) solutions make it quick and easy. Create a book in minutes, publish with the click of a mouse, distribute, sell and print books to order. It's that simple.

• Issuu

Explore a world of publications by people and publishers alike. Collect, share and publish in a format designed to make your documents look their very best.

Below you can see what the unique monthly visitors are for the different sites when their website URLs are plugged into compete.com - a site which provides comparative site profiles.

Comparison of the USA traffic for three online publishing sites: issuu, lulu and blurb

Compete's data comes from a statistically representative cross-section of 2 million consumers across the United States who have given permission to have their internet clickstream behaviors and opt-in survey responses analyzed anonymously as a new source of marketing research.  compete.com

These stats came as a bit of a surprise to me.

1. I'm surprised that Lulu is about twice as big as blurb.  I knew it was bigger but not that much bigger
2. I'm amazed at how just how big Issuu is and will be seriously looking into this as a vehicle for publishing my work in future.  Capturing the corporate audience with repeat readers is obviously an excellent way to grow your business.  It remains to be seen whether it does the same for independent publishers.

Bear in mind that

• the above are predominantly statistics for an American Audience. 
• You only really begin to get an appreciation of the global audience for Issuu in the Quantcast pages (see below) - and that's because it's so big.  
• The US audience for Issuu is only around 25% of its global audience.

This is what each of the sites look like on Quantcast which is one of my favourite analysis sites in terms of a demographic analysis of visitors by sex, age group, earnings and college education status.  It appears to indicate that each of the publishing sites appears to attract the same sort of audience for their services.

Click the link in the title to see the full Quantcast page.

Blurb on Quantcast - ranks 7,096 in USA

Lulu on Quantcast - ranks 2,740 in USA


Issuu on Quantcast - ranks 158 in USA



In conclusion:

• Issuu is HUGE compared to the other two platforms - but only delivers online publications
• If you want to have your book or publication about your artwork found online by readers independently of your website or blog then you need to look very seriously at issuu
• If you want to produce a physical copy of your book for distribution to clients or galleries then you're better off looking at Blurb or Lulu.

This is a very much a first look at these three sites in comparison to one another.  I'll be revisiting them. 

What do you think?

In the meantime if you've got experience of any of the three sites and would like to share your experinces please leave a comment below.

New colours from new pigments

Winsow and Newton have published an article about the new pigments which they have introduced in recent years in Why are new pigments so important?.  This succinctly describes the origins, pigments used for and performance of the new colours.

By the 1990s there were so many new organic pigments available that Winsor and Newton embarked on some far reaching reviews to ensure artists would be able to enjoy everything from entirely new colours to greater brilliance and permanence. Almost 200 new colours were introduced over the following 15 years and this process is still continuing today.

1996 Winsor and Newton embarked on the most significant change to the Artists' Water Colour range in 164 years. The availability of so many new pigments meant that 35 new colours were introduced into the range, offering artists the widest and most balanced spectrum with the greatest permanence.

They key issue has always been about how to balance transparency with lightfastness.  Older pigments frequently had one but not the other and the challenge has been to develop new pigments which provide quality performance across the spectrum and over time.

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Chart 2010 - see Catalogue 2010

The new colours covered in the article (click the link at the top to read it) are listed below.  The new pigments which are most prominent in the ones listed below are the quinacridones and the perylenes.  I was pleased to note that there is now a permanent carmine based on Quinacridone pyrrolidone.  Apparently it's still so new that it does not have a colour index number as yet!

The acronyms after their names are for Artists watercolours (AWC) Artists Oil Colours (AOC) and artists Acrylic Colours (AAC)

Yellows: 

• PY184 -  Bismuth Yellow (AWC*, AOC*, AAC*)
• PY150 -  Transparent Yellow (AWC), Indian Yellow Deep (AOC), Nickel Azo Yellow (AAC)  

Orange:

• P073 -  Winsor Orange (Red Shade) (AWC), Winsor Orange (AOC), Pyrrole Orange (AAC)

Reds:

• PR255 -  Scarlet Lake (AOC), Pyrrole Red Light (AAC)
• PR254 -  Winsor Red (AWC), Bright Red (AOC), Pyrrole Red (AAC)
• PR264 -  Winsor Red Deep (AWC)
• PR209 -  Quinacridone Red (AWC, AOC, AAC)
• Quinacridone pyrrolidone - Permanent Carmine (AWC, AOC)
• PR206 -  Brown Madder (AWC), Quinacridone Burnt Orange (AAC)
• PR233 -  Potter’s Pink (AWC, AAC)
• PR149 -  Winsor Red Deep (AOC), Perylene Red (AAC)
• PR179 -  Perylene Maroon (AWC, AAC)

Violets:

• PV29 -  Perylene Violet (AWC, AAC)
• PV15 -  Ultramarine Violet (AWC, AOC, AAC)
• PB74 -  Cobalt Blue Deep (AWC, AOC, AAC)
• PB60 -  Indanthrene Blue (AWC, AOC, AAC)

Greens:

• PG50 -  Cobalt Turquoise Light (AWC, AOC, AAC)
• PY129 -  Green Gold (AWC, AOC, AAC)

Earths:

• Mixture due to replacement -  Quinacridone Gold (AWC, AAC)
• PBr7 -  Brown Ochre (AWC, AOC)
• PR101 -  Caput Mortuum Violet (AWC), Mars Violet (AOC), Violet Iron Oxide(AAC)

Black:

• PBk31 -  Perylene Green (AWC, AAC), Perylene Black (AOC) - the first new permanent black for thousands of years!

Below are links to the various colour charts for artists colours which can be seen online

• Artists Oil Colour   
• Artists Acrylic Colour  
• Artists Water Colour    

More about Lightfastness

As manufacturers begin to appreciate that lightfastness does matter to artists, we're beginning to see more and more information published by those that make the art materials we buy

I just want to highlight today a couple of examples:

• the new Love Pencils - the Derwent blog created by the Cumberland Pencil Company has a post Lightfastness Testing Revealed!  about how they test for lightfastness
• Schminke - who make pastels I use - have a two page leaflet about the processes they use when creating art materials (see lightfastness.pdf available to download as a pdf file).  In it you can see an example of the blue wool cards used as a quality control by many companies manufacturing art materials.  This gives you a very good display of just how much fading happens in those actually graded 'lighfast' at levels 5 and 6 - and just how much disappears at the lower end of the scale.  

Seeing real blue wool cards like this - and how dramatic the fading can be - is what woke me up to the cause of lightfastness.  I now aim to use only pencils which meet levels 7 and 8 (ie 4 star and 5 star pastels and pencils).

Extract from Schminke Leaflet - Lightfastness – A Measure of the Durability of Artists’ Colours (pdf file)

I also learned something new from the Schminke leaflet and that is lightfastness levels MUST always tested on the finished product as the mediums which combine with some pigments can result in colours which darken.

You can read and learn more about lightfastness on two of my resources for artists sites:

• Coloured Pencils - Resources for Artists:  Coloured Pencils - Colours and Lighfastness

• Pastels - Resources for Artists: Pastels: Technical data about their composition and lightfastness / permanence

Which is the most helpful art business book?

Over on my "resources for artists information site - The Best Art Business Books - I'm running an opinion poll to try and get different artists' perspectives on which art business-related book you find the most helpful. 

Not that there can be any one book which suits all artists - because everybody has their own individual needs and preferences.  However, it is interesting to know which are the ones which people have found more helpful.

One of the reasons for doing the poll was to also highlight these books which I've found are so very often get buried in art bookshops and on Amazon. 

However it's not had a lot of responses to date - so I thought I'd highlight it here too.  So here's the LINK to the opinion poll - Which is the most helpful art business book?

Which art business book have you found most helpful?

The books listed (alphabetically) in the poll are:

• Alyson Stanfield's "I'd Rather be in the Studio!"
• "Artist's & Graphic Designer's Market"
• Caroll Michell's "How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul"
• Cay Lang's "Taking the Leap: Building a Career as a Visual Artist"
• Constance Smith's "Art Marketing 101"
• Daniel Grant's "The Business of Being an Artist"
• "Graphic Artist Guild Handbook"
• "ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career" by Heather Darcy Bhandari, Jonathan Melber
• Heller and Arisman's "Inside the Business of Illustration"
• Jackie Battenfield's "The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love"
• Tad Crawford's "Business and Legal Forms for Artists"
• Tad Crawford's "Legal Guide for the Visual Artist"

Do please comment below if there is a book you'd like to particularly recommend.

Links:

• Making A Mark reviews..... The Best Art Business Books which introduces this information site and why I created it.

How to create a Lazy Susan Coloured Pencil Holder

Lesley Crawford's Lazy Susan Coloured Pencil Holder
courtesy of David Crawford, Janie Gildown and Barbara Newton
all photos copyright Lesley Crawford

This post describes yet another way coloured pencil artist Lesley Crawford has found to store her art materials.  Earlier this month this blog has a post about Storage for Unison pastels.  This post is about how to create a "Lazy Susan" pencil holder for coloured pencils.

How many times do we see great ideas for helping us sort out our studio in books?  But do we all put them into practice?

Like many coloured pencil artists, Lesley likes to have all her art materials and storage sorted while working in her studio.  She used to have problems with tins and boxes of coloured pencils all over her desk.  They took up too much space.  Plus she also didn't like the way she had to shuffle through pencils bunched together in jars, especially when the shorties fell to the bottom!

Then she saw the Lazy Susan Pencil Holder - as pictured in the Colored Pencil Solution Book by Janie Gildow and Barbara Benedetti Newton.  She asked her husband David if he could work out how to make the pencil holder from the picture!

This is her explanation of how it came about once David had studied the picture and worked out how to make it.  Thanks to Lesley and David for both the story and the pictures - and thanks to both Janie and Barbara for the inspiration!

Instructions for Making a Lazy Susan Pencil Holder

Here's the instructions for making a pencil holder.  It's very simple to make.

The starting Point - a wooden Lazy Susan

Materials:

• Lazy Susan (a circle of wood on a small circle of wood joined by ballbearings so that it spins round - available from kitchen shops).  The one we bought is 14 inches in diameter - see right.
• Timber 35mm x 14mm - from DIY stores, very cheap.  Usually comes in lengths of around 2 metres.
• Small hinges and screws

Tools:

• Saw
• Drill and bit
• Screwdriver

Instructions for how to make a Lazy Susan Pencil Holder

1. Cut the timber into 165mm lengths.  (Please note that this is what fitted my lazy susan.  If yours is a different size you need to adjust this measurement)

2. Choose a drill bit that is slightly larger than the diameter of your pencils.  Put a piece of tape around the bit 30mm from the tip - this will prevent you drilling through the bottom of the wood, and will make all the holes consistently deep.  Drill one hole and check that a pencil will fit, if it is tight then use a slightly larger bit.  Drill a line of holes along the narrow side of the wood, with a slight  space beween each one - I got 14 holes per strip.

3. Join two pieces together with a hinge as shown

4. Make as many units of two pieces of wood as you need.   

5. Sort your pencils out as you want them to be arranged, and write the names  on the wood with indelible ink - ballpoint pen fades over time.

Paired strip joined by hinge - open to show the names of the pencils

Paired strip folded and sitting on top of the Lazy Susan
- and the  Pencil Holder has started (repeat as required)

This then held all my original set of Derwent pencils.  However as my collection increased, it got a bit crowded, so I cut a piece of plywood into a circle of 18 inches in diameter, and screwed four small blocks on it so that it would sit tightly on top of the original lazy susan.

I now have 11 units of paired strips, holding a total of 308 pencils - all in a footprint of 18 square inches.  I have my complete sets of Derwent Artists, Faber Castell Polychromos and Prismacolor Verithins, plus a few odds and ends from other sets.

In the centre is a tub which holds tools, erasers, blenders etc. 

You can keep the whole thing on the desk, or lift off as a unit off to use separately.  The pencils are always in the same order so you soon get to know where they are, and it is easy to put your hand on exactly the one you need.

If you've got a good solution for storage 

or anything which is a cost-effective solution for anything to do with art 

DO let me know by leaving a comment and a link or contacting me (see right hand column). 

Zest-it Blending Sponge

Many coloured pencil artists will be familiar with the use of Zest-It as a solvent for getting speedy coverage of paper as an underpainting for artwork

Recently I was looking at the Zest-It site and spotted something that's new to me - and I guess a few other coloured pencils artists too.

It's called a Zest-It Blending Sponge.  It immediately put me in mind of one of those sponges that a lot of people use to apply "stuff" to their faces - and I was guessing it probably worked in pretty much the same way.

Zest-It Blending Sponge

For blending Coloured Pencils and Pastel for Parchment and other work on vellum or paper. An easy, clean and convenient way of using Zest-it to moisten paper stumps, tortillions and shapers.
Pre-impregnated with 15 ml of Zest-it and ready for use. Re-moisten when necessary with 5 ml of Zest-it Brush Cleaner, Pencil or Parchment Blend.

Then I took a look at the website page which pictures the product.

So - the bit I'm puzzled about - given the photo on the website page - is where is the sponge!?

What it looks like is a tub of transparent shoe cleaner.  So is there a sponge in there and does it lift out?  Or do you use it like shoe cleaner and wipe it onto surfaces using a tool - such as a paper stump or tortillon?  If the latter - why call it a sponge?  [Anyway, I've written to Zest-It to ask and am awaiting a reply]

Has anybody got theis product already - and if so, how do you find it.  More particularly, have you written a review of it which I can link to?

Storage for Unison pastels

Lesley Crawford's Unison Pastels - open boxes

Those who own Unison Pastels know that their size and shape means that they don't always fit easily into conventional pastel boxes with slots - and some pastel storage boxes can be very expensive.

Plus the nice bit about Unisons is that you can buy sets relating to a colour and it's nice to be able to keep them all together.  I've still got mine in their original boxes with the foam inserts!

Lesley Crawford wrote to tell me about she stores her brand new Unison Pastels. 

I was researching storage boxes, and found these when I googled plastic boxes. They were called boxes for peel-off stickers - something to do with card making I think.

I picked up twelve plastic boxes on eBay for £13, including postage and packing  I made a corrugated tray, and each box will take 60 Unison pastels,   They arrange neatly in two rows of 15, 30 to a tray, so 60 in a box

They all fit neatly onto a table when opened, and stack with a very small footprint if I need to put them away, and being so light and small are ideal to transport.

It's as if they were made for Unison pastels. I won't tell you how many boxes are filled yet!!

Above and below are photographs of Lesley's pastel boxes.

Pastel boxes open on Lesley's desk

The boxes seem to be something called Peel Off boxes by Weston Boxes.  They sell for £4.60 for a pack of 5.  There's also a range of transparent boxes in lots of different sizes.

Lesley's taken a look at the link now and agrees they look very like them.  We compared prices.  She got 10 boxes from eBay for £13 and I priced them with Weston Boxes as being

• 2 packs of 5 boxes @ £4.60 per pack = £9.20
• postage = £4.25 (missing from the website bit I asked them!)
• total =  £13.45

An alternative storage solution can be seen in Product Review: Really Useful Boxes (for art media and crafts)

For more information about Unison Pastels (which are the most popular pastel in the poll I run) see Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists

Plastic boxes full of Unison Pastels - and stacked

You can see Lesley's pastel art on her website http://gaia-art.co.uk

If you've got a good solution for storage 

or anything which is a cost-effective solution for anything to do with art 

DO let me know by leaving a comment and a link or contacting me (see right hand column).