Artist Freedom Formula by Lloyd Coenen Review

Those that can’t do, teach.

As part of an ongoing series, on Department 45.eu, we’ve been reading, analyzing, and reviewing some of the most commonly recommended Art Business books. We identified five that appeared on several lists and so far, have reviewed, great and good versions. Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon was simple yet deep, full of affirming ideas and speaking to the souls and challenges of artist. The Art Inc by Lisa Congdon was a very detailed if dated book that provided a good outline of topics to consider when setting on the art business journey.  The next book in our series, The Art Freedom Formula, (ISBN: 979-8-35-522403-5) by Lloyd Coenen, is neither of these.  It represents a great contradiction to the previous two books. Let’s explore how.

The warning in the format.

I don’t normally want to judge books by their cover but I’m going to-do that today, not just the cover but the whole thing. Normally I have not had to give any consideration to the actual book format. I’ve sought to focus on the content and message. I’m going to get to the message of the Artist Freedom Formula, but first I need to address the actual product I got. I bought this on Amazon, and should have taken from that a hint, in that’s it’s a Print on Demand book. Not 100 pages of poorly edited and frankly annoying text formatting and messaging.  The book has issues, with a missing photo (pg 44) and has a hyperlink called out in it as well. The way the book is written is clearly slapdash and immediate, and the quality of the print is almost enough to know this is something to be avoided. Now let’s get to the message, which will be another reason to avoid this.

Message and meaning.  

I won’t bury the lead on this, don’t buy this book, or eBook or follow its message. It’s garbage and provides not value to artists.

Now why do I say that, because the whole content is this book is a directed at a specific click bait scheme that the author tells you continually that he has used to sell many prints and made money. He’s happy to sell you the means to do the same. The reality is that this whole book pushes a person, to create some art, push it through a specific online sales scheme that he goes into a great degree of detail over, and then push for upselling the product.  It’s a classic gets rich doing what I did sales pitch. It’s nothing more.  You’re not getting insight or suggestions or even ideas, this is a step-by-step guide to push prints that he seems to have slapped together, through a dodgy website format and try to get you to buy prints with expensive upsells.

It says in the very beginning that you should create things people want to buy, and sell it cheap, cause many cheap sales are better than one big sale. 

There are many references of money and sales figures, nothing of which can be confirmed and oddly enough are different values on different pages? The focus on money, the disregard of actual creativity and blatant push for the specific click bait sales process, leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and reminds me of any number of MLM, get rich schemes or similar processes.  

I can’t recommend this in any shape or format.

Eyes open

The final area I want to address on this review is where this book has value, as a reminder that when we ask questions of the world and internet.  “How do I create an Art business?” we must be careful of who we listen to and what their ultimate goals are.  I don’t know if the author here a genuine interest has in seeing people succeed or if he’s merely trying to sell his book and upsell readers to his course giving more details for more money for him.   This represents the other side of the books we’ve so far reviewed both previously having nuance and thoughts, respect for the process and a clearly love and understanding of the difficulties of being an artist. This book is frankly just telling you to sell stuff the guy wants to buy for cheap and sell a lot.

For all things we need to judge the source of information, that includes the opinions that I put here, and anything else we seek answers for.

We’re not going to find the answer to how to run an art business in this book.

If you are finding yourself looking for support in your business development or are stuggling with questions, please reach out to us at Department45.eu on Instagram or email us at timh@department45.eu . Otherwise please follow us on Instagram to see more reviews and articles in support of small businesses in the creative space.

Thank you for your time.