Agent Spotlight – Lance Klass, Porterfield’s Fine Art

An Interview with Art Licensing Agent Lance Klass, by Annie Troe This interview is reproduced with the kind permission of the interviewer and internet publisher, Ann Troe. All content is (c) Ann Troe.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. You can reach Ann through her blog at http://annietroe.blogspot.com or via email at info@AnnGraphics.com  I first learned of Lance […]

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What Agents Look For in A New Artist

At our company, Porterfield’s Fine Art Licensing, we receive anywhere from 500 to 1,000 inquiries each and every year from artists who are looking for expert licensing representation for their artwork. Make your work suitable and compelling for retail products The vast majority of art submissions are, in our opinion, unsuitable for retail products and […]

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Harnessing the Power of Social Media in Art and Design Licensing

For all the talk these past few years about harnessing the power of social media to promote your business, your products or your art, when it comes down to it, many people don’t know much about social media at all. Of those who do, many if not most don’t understand how they can use social […]

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The Runaway License

    I know this title sounds like a John Grisham mystery, and while runaway licenses do have elements of mystery in them they’re anything but fiction. Unfortunately, they do exist, and they can be difficult to deal with, very difficult to control, but not always that difficult to extricate oneself from with some persistence. […]

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How and Where Do You License Art? An Interview

This Interview with Lance Klass, President of Porterfield’s Fine Art Licensing, was conducted by Alex Colombo and published in his The Moon From My Attic art blog: I’ve been working on my first licensing collection. So far I managed to not throw away anything…however, some concepts didn’t work that well after I placed them on mock-ups or […]

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Welcome a Bright New Addition to Art & Art Licensing Blogs

About a year ago, AdaPia d’Errico created a blog on Tumblr, the free and easy-to-use blog site, to promote the artistic works of her sister, Camilla, a talented Canadian artist, illustrator and cartoonist.  As the blog developed, AdaPia began to diverge from solely promoting the art of her sister and of other bold and creative […]

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Top 10 Checklist for How to Get Moving in Art Licensing, by Linda Mariano

When Lance and I spoke about me being a guest writer for his Business of Art Licensing Blog, I was on my way to ArtExpo in New York and excited about presenting several seminars there to the art industry.   Lance and I talked about my article and we thought it would be helpful to discuss […]

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What To Do When You See Artwork Being Copied Without Permission

Recently, I read a comment on Linked In from an artist who was shown a local church calendar that had been put together by people in her area using scans of work by different artists. None of the artists were mentioned by name, no source was mentioned for the artwork, and no copyright notices were […]

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Not Getting Anywhere With Art Submissions? Often the Answer Has Nothing to Do With You or Your Art

I’m always amazed when artists thank me effusively for responding to their art submissions, especially when I turn them down. They seem to be just so very glad that someone actually took the time to respond to them, because with most submissions they never ever hear back. Not a positive, not a negative, not a […]

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Why Bringing in Top Licensed Art Makes a Whole Lot of Sense for Companies Who Want to Increase Their Sales

A few years back, I was contacted by a very large American company that had seen an image by one of our artists, that they saw in an ad we had run in an art licensing publication. They were interested in seeing what else this artist had created, and in learning how they might go […]

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Good Licenses are Based on Good Agreements

I’ve been in art licensing for so long that I’ve heard a ton of “horror stories” from artists who’ve made mistakes that should have been completely avoidable. One of the worst comes from an inability to read and understand basic licensing contracts. Read It And Weep Here’s an example: one artist told me he was […]

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How to Format Artwork So It Looks Good on the Internet

Ever come across pages that seem to take forever to load, or you get on an artist’s page and you wait and wait and slowly but surely the images start to appear and fill out? Even though the United States has one of the slowest load times of any industrialized nation (I understand France’s internet […]

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4 Major Potholes on the Road to Success in Licensing Your Art, and How to Avoid Them

The great majority of artists know nothing, or next to nothing, about the business of art licensing. This is really not surprising because I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the B.F.A. programs and the art schools that teach anything significant to their students about how they can make money as an […]

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Now Publishing on ArtBistro!

Many people have read my article “10 Secrets to Success in Art Licensing” over the years. It’s been published in the Artist & Graphic Design Market, the noted annual directory which has helped so many artists, illustrators and graphic designers connect with licensees and publishers over the years. I thought it was time to take that article […]

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You Can Benefit from LIMA Without Having to Become a Member

LIMA is the influential International Licensing Industry Merchandiser’s Association.  Established in 1965, the organization’s members include “companies and individuals engaged in the marketing of licensed properties, both as agents and as property owners, manufacturers, consultants, publications, lawyers, accountants, retailers” and others in the licensing business. Chances are that the owners of the hottest television shows, […]

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The First Step in Building Your Art Licensing Brand

You may find this hard to believe, but most of the artwork that’s sent to me for review could have been painted by anyone. If the art hadn’t come in a package or attached to an email from a particular artist, I wouldn’t have a clue who the artist was who created the images that […]

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Why Mailed Art Submissions Just Don’t Work

Before the rise of the internet, if an artist wanted to submit artwork to a publisher, agent or manufacturer, the artist either had to do it personally in a face-to-face meeting or else send the art submission through the mail. Back then, artists were told that mailed submissions had to have a self-addressed stamped envelope […]

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And So We Begin!

This is the first posting on a blog site that I’m starting in order to continue a project that I began many  years ago. Abuse of Artists Was Rampant Back then, I came upon instance after instance of abuses of artists at the hands of unscrupulous companies, and so I began to realize how little […]

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