Writing & Publishing Beading Books, Part 4

Preparing a Book for Traditional Publishing

If you’ve been reading Parts 1-3, you know that my first book was self-published. Book #2 was published by Interweave Press, with some dissatisfaction on both sides, leading me to stick with self-publishing for books #3-7, the last of which was released in 2008.

Bead Embroidery - Beading on Stiffened Felt

After that, my focus shifted from books to family, as my parents’ health declined. First I lost my dad, and last March, my mom. Those were some tough years. I didn’t have extra energy to produce books. Yes, there were a couple on the back burner (still there), but nothing happened. In fact, I thought about retiring, not from doing beadwork, but from teaching and authoring beading books.

Three months into the grieving process for Mom, a brief message arrived via email. I almost chucked it out. It said, “I am an acquisition editor for Creative Publishing international. Looking for an author for The Complete Photo Guide to Beadwork. Please contact me if you might be interested."

“Yeah right,” I thought, “sounds like one of those typical, run-of-the-mill, blah-formula project books that totally don’t interest me.” To this day, I’m not sure why I replied, cautiously asking for more information.

Bead Weaving - Sculptural Peyote

Good thing I did, because it has given me the opportunity of a lifetime! Turns out CPI is the American branch of Quayside Publishing in London. Once I started researching their line of Complete Photo Guide books (to Jewelry Making, Textile Art, Knitting, Creative Painting, and more), I am totally impressed. All of them emphasize techniques and feature lots of stunning photography. Plus, they are comprehensive, large-format, 250+ pages, and beautifully printed on high-quality paper. To be part of this series would put me in very good company! If you’re not familiar with this series of books, take a look on Amazon, or better yet, check out your local Michael’s, which carries many of them in their book department.

Bead Stringing - Hand Knotting

After seeing the books, I knew THIS would be a chance to write the book I’ve wanted to own ever since I began beading in 1985, a book that could teach me all types of beading, give me information about beads and in-depth methods for designing and finishing my bead projects. It would need to include the following main sections:

About Beads - Trade Beads

1. All about beads ~ giving important tips and information that would help me choose beads for my projects, for example, how to tell the difference between stone, glass and plastic beads, or the difference between fake and real pearls.

2. Bead stringing ~ with “teaching-projects” designed to build skills from one to the next, including Japanese pearl hand-knotting methods and beginning-to-advanced wire working.

3. Bead weaving ~ again with progressive skill-building projects, including chapters on peyote, brick, right angle weave, netting, crochet and knitting with beads.

4. Bead embroidery ~ starting with making a stitch sampler of all the basic, fancy, edge and fringe stitches, and progressing to projects that emphasize various design approaches and base materials, including fabric, stiffened felt, fiber-collage and paper.

Bead Embroidery - Beads & Fiber Arts

Wouldn’t that just be the cat’s meow? My students and customers have been asking for such a book FOREVER. I don’t know why it’s not been done before. But I can assure you, it’s being done now!

I’m getting ahead of myself. So, with excitement and a lot of trepidation about whether I could pull it off successfully, I signed another book-length contract and got to work. A word about contracts. They’re written with the publisher’s best interests at heart, of course, and prevent them from liability. Plus this one essentially gave the publisher the right to re-publish “my book” or any part of it in any country, in any language, in any form without compensation to me. It’s also an unusual contract in that they pay me a flat fee for preparing the book. There are no royalties. I guess this would be good for me if the book were a flop. But I honestly expect sales will exceed their wildest dreams.

Bead Weaving - Netting

For about 2 minutes, I wondered at my sanity. I knew it would require untold hours of work and energy, probably amounting to a wage of about $1 or $2 per hour. But I didn’t care. I wanted to write this book. I wanted to give back to the beading community some of what it has given me in the past 28 years. I wanted to do it for the love of beads and beading. So I signed.

Different publishers work differently with authors. CPi seems very trusting, allowing me to build the book the way I think best, as long as I stay within the general style of the series. They also gave me permission to recruit guest artists to contribute teaching projects in areas where I lack expertise.

Bead Embroidery - Improvisational Design

My first step was to produce a rough outline of the topics and projects that needed to be included. Then, taking a hard look at my own beading skills, I noted those areas where I was lacking and set about finding guest artists. Fortunately I have a great network through the Bead Journal Project, teaching, and blogging. I soon found 9 artists who were willing to help me. They would design a project, write the instructions, take step-out photographs and send everything to me. I would make their project, following their steps, and then edit everything to be consistent in style with my own instructions.

I am much indebted to these wonderful, talented artists! Their contributions round out the book, making it truly comprehensive in a way I couldn’t have done on my own!

Bead Stringing - Complex Wire Working

The deal with CPi is this: their professional photographers take the beauty shots, exquisite pictures of the finished projects and variations. I’m responsible for the step-out pictures. Since I took all the photographs for my previously self-published books, I figured this would be manageable. Well, it was, but not without countless hours of working on the images in Photoshop and frequent re-shoots. It was the most difficult challenge of all to get images that would be up to the high standards set by this series of books.

I had three submission deadlines: Sept. 1, Nov. 30, and Feb. 27, with approximately 1/3 of the text, images and beaded objects due each time. Somehow, thanks to my husband, guest artists, the universe, and internal strength; I met each of the deadlines.

Bead Embroidery - Sampler of Stitches

The art log… Oh boy, that was another challenge. I gave every one of the 597 images and 80 beaded objects sent to CPi a unique number, recording it in the art log (an Excel document). Then I inserted these numbers into the manuscript, indicating placement of each picture within the text. In the end, the printed proof-sheet with each numbered image, the numbered objects, the art log and the manuscripts all have to match… exactly… no missing images, no images without a corresponding placement in the text. Yikes. Let me say, even for a fairly well-organized person, keeping track of everything was another huge challenge.

The final challenge was budget. Apparently the world economic situation is affecting book publishing too. In January, the editor informed me of cuts. Some titles were cut entirely. Thank goodness, mine was only cut in length. Although a few non-essentials had to go, the book remains true to my original concept and fully comprehensive.

Bead Weaving - Knitting with Beads

It’s complete! After 8 months of non-stop work, the final submission went to CPi by FedEx on time. Now it’s in their hands. Their book designers, editors, and photographers will build the layout of the book, edit my manuscript, design the cover, and make it all come true. According to the editor, I will have an opportunity to go over it again before they go to press. Then it will be printed, somewhere in Asia, bound and released late this year. My baby, my dream, my gift of bead love, will be on the shelves at last! Look for the this title: The Complete Photo Guide to Beading by Robin Atkins!

The pictures in this post are little sneak-peeks, parts of photos that will be in the book. I'll show you more later when the layout process is complete.

Bead Embroidery - Quilting with Beads

Are you wondering how it happened that the acquisition editor contacted me in the first place? I did, and so I asked her. She said she searched the internet for bead artists. One of the first things that came up was this blog, Beadlust. She scanned through it, noted my writing skills, noted that I take decent pictures, and noted on the side bar that I’ve written bead books previously. Then she went on to look at other search results, but said she kept thinking about what she’d seen on Beadlust and my website. In the end, I was at the top of her list. And since I said yes, the rest is history.

In this case, as in co-authoring with Amy Clarke (see Part 2, here), I got lucky. I didn’t seek a publisher; they came to me. Luck means being in the right place at the right time; it also means being true to your passion and being public with it in every way possible… teaching, networking, and the internet.

In the final installment (Part 5) of this series, I’ll list a few tips and conclusions about writing and publishing books. If you’ve considered writing a book, I hope these words will help you to give it a try!

Part 1 ~ Getting Started

Part 2 ~ A Dream Come True

Part 3 ~ Return to Self Publishing

Part 4 ~ Preparing a Book for Traditional Publishing

Part 5 ~ Book Writing Tips and Conclusions

Writing & Publishing Books - Part 3

Return to Self-Publishing

Five more self-published books followed my experience with Interweave Press (Beaded Embellishment, see Part 2, here), with varying degrees of success.

The first of these, the only non-beading book of the 8 books I’ve written so far, was a lesson learned the hard way. Feeling cocky with the continuing success of One Bead at a Time, now in its third professional printing, and sure that traditional publishing was not for me, I collaborated with my husband on a picture book about the Washington State Ferries in the San Juan Islands. I wrote and designed the text; he took the pictures. We were certain every resident of the islands would buy several copies, one for themselves and (we hoped) some for gifts. So we scraped together all the cash we could and went big, ordering 3,000 copies.

Immediately on receipt of our payload, we noticed an alarming problem. The covers of the books, mostly black ink, as you can see, grabbed fingerprints in a way that would make a forensic scientist ecstatic. Grim!

That, right there, is one big problem of self-publishing. The printer you hire does exactly what you tell them to do. If you don’t tell them to print a coat of varnish on the covers before assembling and binding the books, they won’t. And if you don’t KNOW to tell them to varnish the covers? Well, then you get ugly fingerprints. Imagine the book on the shelf in a book store. Two customers pick it up to take a look. If neither of them buys it, the thing looks shop-worn, totally unattractive already.

Not knowing what else to do about it, we bought cans of Krylon matte spray fixative (used, for example on pastels and pencil drawings), and painstakingly sprayed each cover. Although it looks better than fingerprints, it made the covers a bit dull and some got tiny bubbles, pock marks. Some were ruined because we touched them too soon.  I guess the alternative would have been to get the covers reprinted and the book re-bound, but we’d already spent all our available cash getting the books printed.

That wasn’t the only card stacked against us with this book. The ferries had just undergone a big change, increasing their fares dramatically and cutting back the service and number of runs. Maintenance budgets were also cut, resulting in rust and dirt accumulation. Our lovely ferry service was a thing of the past, and people were grumpy about it. We had counted on a favorable attitude, reverence and nostalgia, to sell our book. Instead, we found that grumpy people weren’t very interested. We have yet to sell enough copies of the book to pay ourselves back for even half our printing expenses, and of course have earned nothing for our time.

What did we learn?

1. Print a test run; or at least keep the first printing to a minimum.

2. Hire a printing consultant to advise on things like the need for varnish on the covers.

3. Maybe for such a book, in this day and age, print on demand would be the way to go.

 

Our experience with Nautical Highways certainly made me more cautious. For the next three books, Rosie, Finishing Techniques, and Spirit Dolls, I went back to self-printing and smaller quantities. These are really booklets, having 12 to 20 pages each. As needed, I get 100 or 200 copies of each printed at Kinko’s, collating and stapling them myself. The cost per book is a little higher that professional printers would charge for quantities of 2,000 or more, but start up expense is much more manageable, and so is storage. I sell these books through my website and in my classroom when I teach. Although the total quantity sold is nothing to brag about, I’m satisfied to have made this information available. Later I’ll write a little about selling them on Amazon, something I have chosen not to do.

A word here about the process of writing books. There are many possibilities. One could write the text, but hire a book designer to do the layout and design of the book. One could take their own photographs, adjusting them in a program such as Photoshop, or hire a professional photographer. One could find a source for the ISBN book number and bar code (needed if the book is sold in stores or on Amazon), or hire a book consultant to take care of that detail. One could design their own cover, lay it out, do any needed drawings or photographs for it, or hire it out. Me? Well, I didn’t have the budget to hire anybody, so of necessity, I did it all myself. There are both pros and cons to this. For me, it was challenging and fun. I learned so much more with each book. Even now, I look back at my prototypes, printed on my trusty ink-jet printer, with great fondness because of the lessons they represent.

Beaded Treasures was my next book, released in 2006, and printed professionally. Again it was a completely do-it-yourself deal. This time, I leaned Quark, the publishing software used by most printers, which allowed me to prepare print-ready pages saved as PDF files. I printed 2,750 for the first run, because the savings per book was ridiculous going from 2,000 to 2,750. That was a good decision because I sold out in just over a year and did a second printing of 2,500. Wouldn’t it be great if one could accurately predict sales? The cost per book for 5,000 would have been much lower than I paid each time. However, I would have had to store 625 large cartons of books. I’m satisfied with this book and with the sales from it. My only minor dissatisfaction is with the color in the photographs. To get color matching services from a printer is quite expensive, so I chose not to do it.

Always, after writing One Bead at a Time, I wanted to do a sequel, a book that would present both advanced bead embroidery techniques and give inspiration for developing design skills and artistic confidence. So, in 2008, I wrote, designed and self-published an 80-page book, Heart to Hands Bead Embroidery. It’s my favorite book! I loved writing it and love sharing the techniques and process in this way.

However, I may have made a telling mistake with it, one that a traditional publisher might have avoided. I designed the cover myself; it features six beaded “paper dolls” strung across the front, back and flaps of the cover. I love how it looks! But, I think it gives a wrong impression about the book. The immediate suggestion is that the book is about making dolls. It is not. So if a customer in a bead shop sees the book on the shelf, but isn’t interested in making dolls, it’s not likely they will even consider opening the book to take a look. I think it may hurt sales. Confident that it would sell, I again scraped together all my available funds, and went for a 3,500 print run. Time will tell if that was a mistake.

OK, we’re up to date now. In Part 4 of this series, I’ll tell you about the experience of preparing my latest book, which will be released late fall or early winter, 2012, and is being published by an international publisher. How did it happen that I returned to traditional publishing? You’ll see!

Part 1 ~ Getting Started

Part 2 ~ A Dream Come True

Part 3 ~ Return to Self Publishing

Part 4 ~ Preparing a Book for Traditional Publishing

Part 5 ~ Book Writing Tips and Conclusions

Teaching Bead Embroidery

You'll see more of this luscious bead embroidery further down in the post...


For twenty-one years I've been doing beads for a living, as my only income. Who would have thought back in 1990, when I taught my first Improvisational Bead Embroidery workshop, that I would still be teaching the same basic class and still loving it????

It seems that I've taught bead embroidery (directly, face-to-face) to more than 3,000 women and a hand full of men! The class has changed a little as I've experimented with different ways to get things across, learned or invented more stitches and made more samples. Yet the basics are the same and still really fun to teach.

For the first four years of teaching, I taught mostly small classes in my studio. Mostly the classes were two-days, at the end of which we all knew each other pretty well. Even after a year or so, I could remember each of my students and the work they did in class. By 1994 I began traveling to teach at national conferences and for various guilds, which often have 20-25 students in each class. Now, it's not so easy... only a few students stand out enough for me to recall their work, face and name as the months pass.

For many of my students, my primary method of working (improvisationally from the heart) is new and challenging. In my 2-day workshop, students learn techniques, make a sampler and get started on their own unique project. Only one student ever finished their project in class. Some barely get started. Thus one of the most gratifying things about teaching bead embroidery is receiving pictures of finished work!!!!

Most recently I taught the members of an embroidery guild in Baltimore (see here). It was a memorable class because all of the students were both eager and quick to learn! Plus they were experienced with thread embroidery, which requires the same coordination, attention to detail and patience. I've kept in touch with a few of them and learned that the art of bead embroidery is flourishing among them now!!!!

When I teach this class, I give students optional patterns for five different beaded pouches/bags. The pattern is just for the shape, not the beaded design. If I recall correctly, four students in Baltimore chose to use a cute, little, double-sided pouch pattern for their class piece. Two of them have finished and sent pictures to me, which I will share below.


This is Carolyn Everly's pouch. It's folded/closed here. If you open it, there's a little place inside to tuck special items.


This is how the outside looks when the pouch is opened. Carolyn got hooked on size 15 beads... can you tell? I'm not surprised because she's very talented at fine, detailed Japanese thread embroidery. She writes that she's accumulating a stash... anybody familiar with that stage of learning to bead?


This is Mary Tod. Mary really took to beading quickly, although I think I remember her saying she had not worked with beads before taking the class. She was a diligent worker and had a good start on her pouch by the end of the second day of class.


Here is how her pouch looks opened up.

Here are a couple of detail shots.



I always like it when I hear that a student likes beading well enough to make more than one piece. Mary obviously did, because she made this adorable pear-shaped Christmas ornament.


Thank you Mary and Carolyn for sending me these pictures... you and your beautiful beading make my day!!! I bet my readers will agree that your work is exceptional for beginning beaders! I hope to see many more pieces of your bead embroidery in the future!

* * * * * * * *
As some of you know, I'm not teaching so many classes now, mostly because I want to be able to travel to MN at a moment's notice to be with my 92-year old (today!!!) Mom. It's been difficult to turn down the teaching invitations.

The only one I've accepted for 2009 is in Denver, CO. The Rocky Mt. Bead Society sponsors a Bazaar in the spring, which includes a comprehensive bead market and workshops. I will be teaching Techniques of Bead Embroidery on Saturday, April 25th and Woven Treasure Bracelet (or Tassel) on Sunday, April 26th. I believe the Bazaar is open to the public with advance registration available for the classes.

Thougths about Beading, Money and Self-esteem

Today was the second day of a little holiday market here on San Juan Island. My neighbor hosts this two-day event in her studio in December every year and for the past 5 years I've joined her to sell my beaded jewelry... earrings, fibula pins, bracelets, necklaces, key chains and zipper pulls. Here's one of my recent fibula pins.


Business wasn't good this year. Not many people came and only a few bought. I know... it's probably the economy...

Despite understanding the situation, I still feel a little rejected and hurt, stood-up by my friends and the community. It's gotten me to thinking about the past and what I'm doing... also about a selling-our-art conversation I had with my brother, Thom Atkins, a couple of days ago. Rather than mope around this evening, it occurs to me that I could blog about it... so here you go... some thoughts about beading, money and self-esteem....

Over 20 years ago, I quit my day job and began beading and bead-related pursuits to make a living. I named my mini-micro-business Beads Indeed in the spring of 1988. Like many people into beads, I began with stringing... making multiple-strand and knotted, single-strand necklaces. Here's an example showing the center part of a multiple-strand necklace.


Earlier, in the mid-70's, I pounded, sawed and soldered sterling silver and gold sheet and wire to make rings and other precious metal jewelry. Below are a couple of scanned photos of my work during that time. My best friend, Liz, and I had a shop together. We sold our work at home shows and a few craft shows. Although we did pretty well, I hated and dreaded the selling part of it.



Thick-skinned, like an actor always auditioning for the next part... that's what one has to be to sell and promote one's art. It didn't come naturally to me. I could organize selling events and felt OK about promoting the events. But, when it came to tooting the horn about my own jewelry, I became tongue-tied and stupid-seeming.

So, when I started my bead business, I looked around for other ways to make money... I taught workshops, sold beads, gave slide lectures and eventually began writing books. All the while, my creative needs were largely met by making beady things as examples for my workshops and books, gifts and just for fun. Other than accepting a few commissions, I didn't try to sell my beadwork, which was just great for my personality.

Then, after I moved to San Juan Island, someone asked me to be a guest artist in the Annual Artist Studio Tour, to share her studio and sell my beaded jewelry. I had been cutting back on teaching and felt the need of a bit more income, so I agreed. For a month I produced beaded jewelry like a mad woman to accumulate a sufficient inventory for the event.

It went reasonably well. Yes, I was still tongue-tied, but people bought my work anyway, bless them. After calculating the proceeds, my self-esteem level was pretty high and I readily agreed to do it again the next year... and the next... and the next. Plus a friend in Seattle hosted a show, which I also enjoyed doing.

However, the only way I can see to fully support myself by making jewelry is to sell through galleries and shops. And that, for the most part, only works if one gets into mass production, giving up the luxury and fun of one-of-a-kind pieces. Not for me... the designing part is the most fun... take that away and it would get boring pretty fast.

So I continue to teach and write books, keeping my jewelry production minimal and one-of-a-kind. My studio tour hostess moved off-island, which ended that opportunity. So now I only do this weekend's Christmas-season show and next weekend a studio show in Seattle.

Which brings us to the present again...

One day during the past two weeks, while I was happily creating more beaded jewelry for these two events, I happened to get a phone call from my brother, Thom. He's a beader too... and a quilter... and, in my eyes, quite an accomplished artist. He had just completed a 3-in-a-row-weekends Artist Studio Tour in Santa Cruz, CA where he lives. So we were talking about the good, bad and ugly of selling our work.

He was explaining to me how he needs to sell his work, that it gives him a sense of completion. Anything he makes that is not sold is incomplete. When people buy only the least expensive things and want to bargain with him for a lower price, he feels they don't appreciate his art. His sense of self-esteem is tied up with selling his work and its value is tied to people buying it at a fair price.

While I understand his feelings and have felt this way at times in the past, on that particular day I tried to convince Thom that the journey is the destination... that the payoff for making beaded jewelery is the pleasure of creating it. It doesn't matter, I said, if we sell it or not, if we keep it in boxes or give it away, if everyone buys it or if nobody buys it... none of it matters at all... because we've already received the big payoff!

I felt very noble talking like that. Yes, I thought, it is conceivable that nobody will come to our week-end show and that I will not sell any of these new pieces I am creating. But it doesn't matter... I am having a blast making them and therefore earning the payoff right now!!!! Did you notice my halo?

Well, tonight I am here to confess... the above is a hard position to maintain in the face of very few sales... Somewhere, on the intellectual side of my brain, I still think it's true. But the emotional side wonders why some of my friends didn't come, and why some who did didn't buy anything. The emotional side wants to climb under the covers and never make jewelry again...

I don't know how it will go next Saturday for the studio show in Seattle... I'm a bit scared of another let down... Yet I made a commitment... I will show up and try to remember the golden rule of beadwork... the journey is the destination.

What do you think? Is the real payoff the creative process? How do you deal emotionally with a disappointing sales experience or being rejected by a gallery or for a show? Maybe a few of you could post about this... If/when you do, will you leave a comment here with a link to your post?

* * * * * * * * *

PS. If you're in the Seattle area and would like to come to a fun studio show, with several well-known artists, it's next Saturday, December 13th from 3 to 8 pm in the Lake City Way area. Email me for the exact location.

To Teach
or
Not To Teach ~

That Is The Question

Reading through many of my favorite blogs in the past few days, I’ve noticed a similar thread ~ concerns about teaching. Whether your field is beading, doll making, quilting, collage art or painting, if you’re good at it, sooner or later you’ll face the question of teaching. Someone will ask you to teach, or someone will tell you that you should teach.

Here are some questions to consider:

1. Would teaching be fun? Would you enjoy teaching students how to do what you do?

2. Would you be a competent teacher? Do you have the ability to explain and demonstrate what you do in such a way that your students could get it?

3. Do you have time to write proposals and handouts, prepare samples, make up kits, pack it all up and travel? Will your earnings justify this amount of time away from your studio work?

4. Do you want to share your creative process, techniques and designs? What if some of your students become your competition ~ copying your designs, selling items they make based on your designs, or teaching your class?

I’ve been teaching beading for 19 years, and I’ll tell you one thing from experience, it’s hard to say “no, thanks” to a teaching offer. But it is OK to say no. Your reputation will not take a dive to the bottom of the muck. You will still be admired and loved for what you do.

In my experience, teaching takes much more time than you might expect. Preparation and travel time before teaching, plus travel time and time to put everything away after I return generally adds 5 to 10 days to the actual teaching time. To teach a couple of classes will take me out of my studio and away from my own work for about two weeks. If it’s a new class, there’s an additional time commitment to write handouts and make an adequate number of class samples.

In 1986, when I quit my “regular job” and began doing beading as a business, I took a long hard look at just what my new career might be. In the ‘70s, I had been a part-time metalsmith for five years. I made gold and silver jewelry to sell. The making part was way, way fun. The trying to design what people might buy, trying to second guess the market, and the actual selling of it was a drag. So, I decided not to go that route with beads. I made a conscious decision to do beadwork for fun, and to make my living by selling beads (and beading supplies) and teaching.

For the first few years, I taught workshops in my studio. I decided that I didn’t want to teach specific projects so much as to teach technique and design process. So my classes tended to be at least one full day, many of them two days or more.

At the time there was no competition, no web, no bead magazines, no beading books in print. My classes filled (or didn’t fill) by word of mouth and a little newsletter I sent to my growing list of students and customers. The bead shop craze of offering 2 and 3 hour make-it-and-run classes with good cash to be made from selling the supplies was not yet known. So I got to teach exactly what I wanted in the way I wanted to do it. Those were the most fun and rewarding years of teaching!

Out-of-state Bead Societies (and various guilds) began to get word of it, and soon I was being asked to travel to teach my workshops. This was a little more stressful than teaching in my own studio, but still lots of fun and very personal. I loved the travel aspect of it. Often I would have two long-weekend classes, with days off in the middle – time to see a little of Hawaii, Anchorage, Santa Fe, etc., under the gracious guidance of whoever was hosting me.

As bead shops sprouted everywhere in the mid 90’s, they began to fill the need for local classes. Yet, they seemed to gravitate toward offering shorter, more project-oriented classes. Many of the more experienced students seemed to crave longer, more intense, more design-oriented workshops. And, I set about to fill that niche as much as I could.

I call the period from 1998 to the present “The Proposal Era,” the years when I was always writing proposals to teach at national conferences, art schools and regional events. Often these venues do not pay the expenses of the teachers, only a small per-student stipend. To make any money, one has to have large classes, teach as many classes as possible, sell kits and stuff (beads, supplies, patterns, books, etc.) I tell you it’s exhausting to the max. And to prepare for teaching at an event, such as the Quilt Festival or the Puget Sound Bead Festival, takes a tight schedule, careful planning, and several weeks of steady work.

In the beginning, I felt special. I got to know my students and to be somewhat of a mentor to them. I felt important. It fed my ego to be asked to teach in a state where I knew nobody. It fed my passion to think I was contributing to the spread of beading as an art form. It fed my art, as I strove to make more and better examples of the techniques I was teaching, unhampered by the need to sell my work. It fed my creativity, as I was inspired by my students and learned from them in countless ways. And, it fed my pocketbook by providing a reasonable living. Eventually it led to writing my first book, One Bead at a Time, which practically wrote itself because I’d already learned how best to teach what I know, how best to inspire and give confidence to my students.

But, here’s the bitter pill about what’s happened with me. In recent years, I’ve found that teaching has gotten less and less personal, less rewarding, and takes much more time in proportion to the amount earned. It exhausts me, drains my creative force. The truth is, I can stand apart from myself as I’m teaching, and notice that I’m not giving it every ounce of my energy as I once did. This, I fear, is the time for me to wind down the teaching part of my career.

What will be ahead to produce income, I really don’t know. It’s “new beginnings" for me, a time to be open to possibilities, to be conscious of the passions and yearnings from within.

To those of you considering teaching, I hope my experiences may help in some little way. To those of you who have already been teaching, if you’d like to add questions to the list at the start of this essay or tell about your experiences teaching beading or other art forms, please feel free to make comments below or link your blog to this post.