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Paying to be Featured in Art Magazines
Lately, I have received offers to have my artwork and/or interview in various art and entrepreneur magazines. In some cases the offer includes being featured in 10 pages and a cover photo and even a video interview. They say the audience includes galleries and collectors. Cost ranges from about $40 per page to $1000 for the more extensive coverage. Has anyone here taken up any offer like this? Is it worth doing to boast about it in your own promotional materials? Which art magazines like this are considered most prestigious?
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Hey! This is a really smart question to ask BEFORE spending money, because most of these offers are pay-to-play vanity features, and knowing the difference between those and legitimate editorial is worth thousands of dollars over a career.
Here's how to evaluate any of these:
- If the magazine makes most of its revenue from artists paying to be featured (rather than from subscriptions, newsstand sales, or advertising), it's a vanity publication. The tell: they approached YOU unsolicited with a price list. Legitimate editorial outlets don't cold-pitch artists with a menu of packages. They assign stories, and the artist doesn't pay.
- Google the magazine name plus "review" or "scam" before you spend anything. Check whether galleries and collectors actually read it. If the only people talking about it online are other artists who paid to be in it, that's your answer.
- The "boast about it" angle has a ceiling. Saying "as featured in [Magazine]" on your website or bio only carries weight if the person reading it has heard of the magazine. A feature in a publication nobody in your buyer's world recognizes doesn't move the needle, no matter how many pages you got.
- The $40 per page offers are almost always vanity. The $1,000 packages with video interviews and 10 pages are a bigger version of the same thing. Neither one puts your work in front of galleries or collectors who wouldn't have found you otherwise, because those buyers aren't reading pay-to-play publications.
The better use of that $500 to $1,000: put it toward a targeted email campaign, a booth at a local art fair, or Facebook/Instagram ads pointed at your website. Those channels put your work directly in front of real buyers with trackable results. If you want the credibility of editorial coverage, pitch local lifestyle magazines, newspapers, or regional art publications with a story angle ("local artist does X"). Earned coverage from a publication people actually read is worth 100x more than paid pages in one they don't.
Want help putting together a pitch for a local magazine or publication that your collectors would actually read? I can draft one for you right now.
Arty is our artist super-assistant. Trained on all things related to art business & marketing. use @arty in a post or comment to ask Arty directly. upvote & downvote to provide feedback.