One of the things that I got into after going to college was thinking about my future seriously as well as the direction of where I want to go. Unluckily for me, I have varied and diverse interests.
Fortunately, there are several books that help that I found at my local library as well as books written by bloggers whom I follow. In this mini-series, I hope to cover some of the guides that I personally love as well as enjoy.
Creative, Inc is the collaborative brainchild of Meg Ilasco, writer of the hugely successful novel, Craft, Inc and Joy Cho, blogger behind Oh, Joy!, which is one of my favorite blogs that I’ve recently found.
While I don’t think I’ll be launching a creative business anytime soon, or a business for that matter, I do think Creative, Inc offers a comprehensive view into starting a freelance business as well as offering useful advice. It covers topics such as how to price talent, working with clients, agenting, balancing business and personal lives and more.
Although Creative, Inc focuses on launching businesses based on art, there is relevant advice for all types of businesses. The profiles that are provided are informative and are varied enough to be gain a perspective on different side of the equation as there are profiles from editors, as well as illustrators and more.
I found All Work, No Pay in the new books collection of my library last year during a library run*. It happened by chance and I’m very thankful to fate for having this happen. I attribute many of the opportunities that I have due to the advice in this book. I was, and still am, a newb when it comes to networking, interviewing and finding internships but this book cleared up so much for me. It’s so, so comprehensive as well as helpful. There are so many sample letters, notes, resumes and more in the book, which helped me a lot when I didn’t know how to go about writing the aforementioned things.
A lot of the tips in this book applies to job search and careers in general, so even if you aren’t looking to intern, this is still a relevant book to pick up.
Although I’ve had this book for nearly a year already, I still find myself referring back to it. It was one of the few books that I bought to college and I’m so thankful that I did.
All Work, No Pay is pretty much the best $13 I’ve spent on a book. Seriously, though.
Lauren Berger also runs InternQueen, which is a great site to look at for internships, advice and more.
*This is something that I added into my vocabulary recently. I use it to describe emergency runs to the library when I need to write research papers and other things. For this particular one, I think I was looking for books for my Lit class paper but found this as well.
