Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts

Following in a long tradition in the self-help genre, Holiday (The Obstacle Is the Way) brings a contemporary sensibility to the subject of making and marketing creative work. In clean, inspiring prose he lays out a process of setting goals, being diligent, making the product sell, and building a career out of what you love. Throughout the book, Holiday presents a playfully varied slate of examples of success: Seneca, Winston Churchill, Iron Maiden, and Kanye West, to name a few. Seeing Holiday’s ideas presented in a logical, step-by-step fashion is tremendously helpful. His injunctions include the following: be clear about what you are doing and what need it meets; think long-term, not short-term; pay attention to detail; be open to criticism; and test ideas. Creating is only the beginning and taking charge of marketing is just as important, he insists. The key here is building a “platform” for reaching an audience, which can mean anything from performing in small clubs to doing an author tour to compiling an email list. Holiday has a tendency to be repetitive and drift into buzzwords and cliché—“be your own CEO,” “an unaimed arrow rarely hits a target”—but he builds a compelling road map to sustainable creativity. (July)