The only marketing that lasts is word of mouth?

You can do advertisements and email blasts but these only last as long as you are paying for them, or as long as you have an active campaign pounding some list.

As the months become years, people telling other people is how art continues though.

What happens after you are gone?

Think about it.

Why are millions still reading Frankenstein, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Art of War?

It’s not because of some marketing agency.

No one has the steam or the resources to actively market something for more than a short period of time, so if a product is going to sell forever, it must have strong word of mouth. It must drive its own adoption. Over the long haul, this is the only thing that lasts.

-Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller

This topic of selling out is completely ridiculous.

You’re a “real” artist until people like you.

Right up until you get what you have been striving for your entire artistic life:

For people to actually care about what you make, or have to say.

Forget people’s judgment.

Van Gogh would have sold out in a flat second.

“Selling out” is the label that so many creatives are afraid of being branded with. That’s absurd—as though there were some single standard of what artistic credibility and audience should be. You alone are the judge of that.

-Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller