Creative Business Handbook

If you've been thinking about making your creative desires a business, this is the place to start. Kat and Alicia have gone to great lengths to provide an ally inclusive tour of what starting your own business can be. They came from humble beginnings and want to share tools that they didn't have as they were getting started. This book is comprehensive, offering chapters devoted to deciding what you want to offer and the pros and cons of those decisions, resources for getting started, marketing, and finding your community. There is also a section devoted to helping you decide what is worth outsourcing and how much to pay yourself. Kat and Alicia also take time to acknowledge that starting your own business is hard and there will be successes as well as failures along your journey, but when you cultivate your passion it isn't a game of perfection, rather it is one of progress. The Creative Business Handbook also contains interviews with people who took the leap and want you to gain perspective on what success really looks like so you feel inspired and less judgemental over your ability to start your own business. It definitely filled me with a sense of purpose and drive to devote energy to starting my journey.

The Creative Business Handbook by Ekaterina Popova and Alicia Puig is a useful guide for anyone with a creative hobby or side-hustle that is thinking about turning it into a business. What does that even entail? 

This book will help you formulate a concept for your creative business (beyond "I love to make [whatever] and maybe people will pay for it"), and then walk you through how to launch your business, how to think about it like an executive, marketing, generating sales, and how to scale up once you experience success.

Each section includes interviews with successful creative entrepreneurs full of valuable advice from their experience. It's almost like a "business success bootcamp" aimed at creatives--lots of excellent mentorship packed into one book. 

I admit that by the time I finished this book, I was certain that launching my own creative business was NOT something I wanted to do, so be aware that once you learn about all that it would entail and read all the interviews with people who've succeeded, you might come out the other side of it deciding that it's not for you. Which honestly, is also enormously valuable and good to know.

Highly recommend if you've ever thought about turning your art/craft into a business, income stream, etc.

Very comprehensive book about taking your creative idea and making it a business. There are interviews with people who have started their creative business, pros and cons to starting the business, and dealing with the successes and failures along the way.

Thank you Netgalley and Chronicle Books for the ARC!

Wow! This book has so much valuable information. From selecting a product to building your business (legal formation to inventory) to hiring help and everything in between! If you are looking to start a creative business this book is a MUST!

Even if you have started a few business, this book holds so much information if you ever need a refresher this is a great book.

I especially loved the interviews from other business owners, it gives you a perspective from someone who has been where you’re going & has amazing tips to take into your own business.

I will definitely be adding this to my shelf & recommend to everyone that’s looking to start a business!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

This book is very basic. The authors do give suggestions for each step of the process from beginning to end. They approach it with a business model or business plan approach. They break it down into simple steps to follow. No matter what step you are at, you can find helpful suggestions and information. I did find some helpful information in the book. They also have interviews of business owners, but I found it hard to read, because the page was blue, and the words were yellow. I had a very difficult time seeing the words. They had tips for problems you may encounter, and suggestions on how to grow your business once it takes off. However, it was very elementary. It was very generic information that one could find on the internet. I was hoping for a more detailed book specifically laying out step-by-step what to do. I especially wanted information on advertising on social media. I wouldn't buy this book.

I was so happy to receive this book in exchange for an honest review because I'm always on the hunt for guidebooks that help navigate my Indie Author Business. And this book didn't disappoint. It wasn't narrowly tailored to an Indie Author business, but there were many important ideas on how to handle a creative business. I especially enjoyed the discussion on jealousy, which can be a huge obstacle in creating and putting forth a product to sell or teach others. The layout and colors are very eye-catching and well formatted for ease of reading and finding the content needed. This business book fits perfectly in any entrepreneur's library.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author's offer to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

As an older reader, I am enjoying the insights of these younger professionals. Yet, I am having to make adjustments to fonts and colors on Kindle to be able to read the book. Some things I already know, but there have been some new insights for me too.

Thank you to Chronicle Books and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own. May times when we think of starting a business, we don't allow ourselves to think about how our creative selves might have a business that could succeed. This book did a GREAT job of outlining the steps one would take to start your own business. I enjoyed this business so much that I'll order a hard copy for myself.

The best part of the book are the interviews and of course, Chronicle has done a great job with the design. Most of the information isn't anything new.

The Creative Business Handbook is full of great information. The authors have a background in the art world and use a lot of examples from this area of creativity, some of which does not apply to other areas of discipline. However, overall, the concepts are solid and worth working through if you are wanting to start a business selling something creative.

I always felt like the first few steps of a process were the hardest, and this book starts off with things to think about before you start offering your product. And a lot of it in greater detail than I ever thought through this process. But all steps are worth walking through with your own business idea. Then once you work through those beginning stages, there were other things I never really thought about (or through) and this book brought them to light. There is more to think about than you would first expect when offering your creative items for sale.

I recommend this book, especially, to those before starting a creative business. However, this is not the only good book out there on this topic. The key is to put into practice what the book is offering.

Everyone can benefit from reading this book. There is a lot of little nuggets here that can be implemented in a ways that will produce good results. I really enjoyed this and I'm now thinking of what to do next.

This book was great for me as someone who had been thinking about starting a small business selling the stuff I crochet. It gave invaluable information on all the aspects as well as interviews with business owners. Learning from their mistakes a bit. I have to admit though once I finished it I decided that now was not the best time for me to start my business. But, I know that in the future when I am at a place in my life where I'm ready to start my business I will use the information in this book to get off on the right foot.