Co-published with the North Shoreian Magazine, February 2010.

By Judah Mahay

The popular craze of technology these days has driven forward a demand for products never dreamed of a couple of years ago. With the advent of the iPhone and its newly birthed competitors, namely Android based phones, artists have been blessed with an array of previously unimaginable tools. This article will begin the series “Best iPhone Apps for Artists” exploring this topic. Furthermore, “The Writer’s Spotlight” will focus on the iPhone apps for masters fiction. Writers have seen applications dedicated to them pop into existence on what seems like a daily basis. Let’s take a look at what is available at the moment.

Story Tracker | Submission Tracking Tool

I always like to start with my favorites. The submission process can be overwhelming, especially if you are dealing with simultaneous submissions and sending out multiple stories at the same time. You’re asking yourself if you should contact a magazine, but can’t remember when you sent the story. You finally get a story published and have to make phone calls to the other markets, but can’t find the piece of paper you wrote the list of magazines on. This nifty application helps you deal with just that and it does an excellent job at it. The tool lets you input stories and markets, at which point it lets you link them up with probable response dates. Beyond the basics it allows for a depth of information for each market and it tracks statistics such as work published, rejected, earnings, trunked stories, and more. A great tool and well worth the $9.99. Frankly, I would buy it even if it cost $20.

Price: $9.99 Read more…

The hard part is knowing how to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers.

By Charles H. Bush

They say “write about what you know.” Unfortunately, if you’re like me and don’t know much, you have to find a way know what you need to know. The method I use is “research.”

For years, before advent of the internet, I found research to be a daunting task, certainly not for the homebound or for the lazy like me. But now most needed research is rather easy. The hard part is knowing how to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers. I’ll give you several case studies a bit later to demonstrate what I do. There are several tools I now use to do my research, so I’ll just jump right in. Read more…

Subscribe to Artcast on iTunes

Well Judah Mahay and John Sleek have come out with their second Artcast episode on Art Interruptions asking questions such as the following:

“With our attention-span shrinking due to modern marketing practices and fifteen seconds of fame shrinking to one second, does this have a negative effect on art? Is our art getting shorter and less complicated more flash? Is more complicated art being separated by elitism? Can the average world viewer handle long complicated art?:

“What is the use of a professional artist website if no one goes to it?”

To submit your own questions send an email to artinterruptions@beyourart.com.

Subscribe to Artcast on iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:25 — 21.1MB)

Subscribe to Artcast on iTunes

BeYourArt.com has gone live with a podcast entitled Artcast. It is a video and audio podcast, which merge business and art for every kind of artist, so they may live their art without compromise.

We divide our podcast into the following categories:

Art Interruptions
- Dialogue on living as an artist, based on listener submitted questions. Send questions to artinterruptions@beyourart.com.

Art Notes
- Discussions about articles published on BeYourArt.com and elsewhere, dealing with the business aspects of living as an artist. Send your suggestions to artnotes@beyourart.com. Read more…