Art Metropole

#16387

Publishing Now: GenderFail’s Working Class Guide to Making a Living Off Self-Publishing

Writer

Be Oakley

Date

2023

Publisher

GenderFail

Format

Monographs

Size

12.5 × 20.5 cm

Length

140 pp

Genre

Books on Books, Economics, Queer Art & Artists

“Publishing Now: GenderFails Working-Class Guide to Making a Living Off Small Publishing is an 18,000-word/35-chapter book about my journey running GenderFail.

We aren’t taught anything about finding ways to make a living as an artist from art school. It’s bullshit, especially when you think about the debt working class and low-income are getting into for the off chance of making their dreams a reality. I found a way to make a living off my publishing platform, GenderFail, and in this publication, I share how I think that happened. This is the professional practice or guide I wish I had when I first started.

With GenderFail, I didn’t have any funding when I started, and over the 7 years of the project, I have found a way to do the work I want while also paying my bills. Publishing Now: GenderFails Working-Class Guide to Making a Living Off Small Publishing is my attempt to have an honest account of advice, true stories, resources, and other information that can help other low-income and working-class people find ways of making a living as an artist. This book also acts as a crystallization of my interests and goals as an educator. The title, in part, Publishing Now, Is taken from a class I taught for 4 semesters at SMFA at Tufts. In this, I wanted to give an honest survey and account from the perspective of a working-class artist and publisher. In many ways, this book is the core of what that class intended to share.

Publishing Now: GenderFails Working-Class Guide to Making a Living Off Small Publishing is imperfect and is just one artist’s account. My hope is that this publication will inspire and motivate other working artists to share their journeys and help low-income and working-class people find ways to make money in the arts.”

- Be Oakley, GenderFail