Art Can't Hurt You...

But prostituting art hurts everyone.

I try not to overthink the scrapbooking thing. Overthinking it always makes my head hurt almost as much as my heart. What I really want is for all scrapbook artists and writers and suppliers and manufacturers to come together in perfect harmony, spread the money and the joy around, and introduce the remaining 8 dozen stragglers (who haven't glommed onto the croppin' bandwagon) to the craft.

Did you ever wonder why scrapbooking is the fastest growing craft in the history of the organized crafting industry? It's a no-brainer, y'all. Everyone has snapshots. Everyone loves looking at their snapshots. And everyone -- absolutely everyone on this continent -- has played with paper and scissors and glue at one time or another.

The basic components of scrapbooking are not a vast mystery. Therefore, even the most unartful and least crafty people look at the craft and think, "I can do this. I must do this! Think of the wee bairns!"

But if you get a group of people together, all interested in this one craft, it becomes immediately apparent that some people want to get their artwork published. And some people think that publishing is, in and of itself, prostitution.

I've written about this before. No big surprise.

So to cut through the muck, here's the latest scandal in Happy No-Crappy Scrapbooky Land: Some members of some "design teams" are compensated more generously than other members of the same teams.

Shock! Horror! I can hear the cries of outrage filling up the land!

While some people -- who, like me, love all artists -- are quick to reassure the wounded, under-compensated, less-published scrapbookers, still quite a few justifiably point out that, gosh darn it, those wealthier team members get more goodies because, well, they get more stuff published. And after all, these "design teams" exist merely to advertise the products made by the manufacturers who sponsor those teams.

It just makes solid economic sense to send four times as much cardstock and ink to Publisher's Darling Polly. Little Lonely Loulou only gets one tenth of her layouts picked up. Polly is a guaranteed box-office draw, the scrapbooking equivalent to Julia Roberts, while Loulou is another Kathy Bates. Of course Loulou's work is sublime. But no one is going to pay Loulou/Kathy as much as they will pay Polly/Julia.

By now you've gleaned my position on the matter. I am afraid that as much as I empathize with Loulou, I understand why the money men save the biggest rewards for Polly. Polly's a star, and she brings in the customers. In truckloads.

But -- and this is a big but -- I must offer a third viewpoint.

The fact is that the scrapbooking manufacturers are taking horrible advantage of even Polly. They are not paying her the same amount that they should pay a qualified, educated, experienced, reliable, professional graphic designer.

I did a quick search at PayScale.com, and pretended I was an educated graphic designer seeking employment in the Chicago area. The payscale that this website kicked back to me -- with at least three viable job offers currently on the market -- was from $36K to $56K per year.

Oooo, those are big numbers. For the writers in the group, allow me to write those babies out for you. Thirty-six thousand dollars per year, and up to fifty-six thousand dollars per year. And that's just for doing what we published scrapbookers already do -- we use products to create art that makes readers say, "I must buy that paper!"

Forget Loulou's outrage at her measly reward package of about $500 worth of product per year. (That's retail, folks, not wholesale.) Forget that Polly gets to travel five or six times a year plus, let's just guess, $1300 of yummy new product per year. Neither of them are earning fair wages for the oodles of free advertising that the sponsoring manufacturer enjoys when both of those talented scrapbookers get that XYZ Scrappin' Widgets product sourced and listed in the big trade magazines every other month.

I propose, dear fellow scrapbookers in search of publishing glory and recompense commensurate with our talents, that we are nearly all being ripped off. I can count on one hand the number of "average" scrapbookers who went on to buy their dream home and build the perfect craft room solely in thanks to their ability to create artwork that sells a product to the average scrapbooking consumer.

A few years ago, I told a small group of friends that it was my opinion that the only way to earn a decent living in this industry was to start your own manufacturing business. Or to publish a magazine. Since the trade is already burdened with too many periodicals (as proven by the recent bankruptcy of one fine, established magazine), and the loathed Mega-Conglomerates are gobbling up all the small manufacturers and boutique producers in all directions, I think it's safe to say that the time to actually, individually profit from this craft has passed.

The only course of action which will help the individual artists now is to demand fair pay for our creations, whether they're the artwork that sell the papers, stamps, inks, stickers, rub-ons, and minutiae of the scrapbook craft, or the articles that tell the consumer how to use them.

And to be honest, there is no reason to think that we can begin to compete with the established, trained, educated, and experienced artists and writers who already existed in the world of advertising agencies that have actively worked to hone their product-selling skills. We have only one advantage: We Are Already Here. And they aren't.

Here is my cry, to both Publishers' Darling Polly and Little Lonely Loulou: Stop working for a pittance. If we stand together, we have a chance to actually earn a living doing what we love to do -- a tiny, minute, little, puny chance, but a chance nonetheless.

If we prostitute together, we all fail.