In my life, the two women I’ve spent the most time around are my mom and my wife.

They both love to cook. They both own sewing machines.

They both love Martha Stewart.

They love Martha Stewart because they’ve learned from her. They trust her. They buy her books and her products because they feel loyal to her.

They love Martha Stewart kind of like I love Lynda Barry.

* * *

A year ago I was sitting in a craft store here in Austin. I sat and doodled and ate cupcakes and watched my wife and all these women crafting, teaching each other, helping each other. There was such a sense of inclusiveness. It was as if everyone was saying to each other, “Yes! You can do this! We can do this! Join the club!”

Not long after that, I was watching a profile of Rachel Ray on TV. The folks who knew Rachel seemed to suggest that her success was not necessarily attributed to her abilities as a cook, but rather to her attitude and energy she projected to her viewers. The number one thing she was giving them was encouragement. She wasn’t just teaching them, she was saying, “You can do this!”

I started surfing some of the craft blogs my wife loves to read. It was a total revelation: by sharing and teaching, these women gained readers and loyal fans, and then sold their wares on Etsy and in books to those loyal fans.

And I realized: if artists want to learn a good business model, they should look to the craft community.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one thinking this way. Jason Fried, the founder of the software company 37 Signals (they have a terrific blog), when he gives a talk, he often claims that chefs are the best business entrepreneurs, because they know that sharing leads to more sales. He suggests that businesses emulate famous chefs. My friend Tim Walker summarized this bit in his notes on Fried’s 2008 SXSW session:

Fried notes that the famous big-name chefs (Emeril Lagasse, Mario Batali, et al.) SHARE a lot. Here are these big experts who are authorities in their field, and yet they’re sharing everything they know. Along the way they collect money from willing customers/users who buy their cookbooks, eat at their restaurants, buy their sauces at the grocery store, etc. Fried says you should figure out what it is YOU do that you can share with everybody else.

(I saw the same idea pop up in my friend Mike Rohde‘s sketchnotes of a Fried talk.)

What Fried said in a recent talk was: Figure out your what’s cooking show. Figure out what’s your cookbook.

Figure out how to be your own Martha Stewart!

I’m good at keeping my posts on the tumblelog tagged, and the other day I was clicking around and thought, “Hey, you could make a pretty decent bio out of those tags…”

My name is Austin Kleon and I am a writer and a cartoonist and a web designer. I make these things called newspaper blackout poems, which some call poetry.

I grew up in a small town in southern Ohio, and still have family there. I think you are where you were, and so place, worldbuilding and maps are obsessions of mine.

Writing, storytelling, songwriting, cartooning, and drawing are all ways that I play so I can feel alive and happy.

I’m fascinated by how we see and process the world around us, which involves vision, memory, and neuroscience.

I believe that visual thinking is one of the best tools we humans have to solve problems and that we should, like the cavemen, practice drawing on the walls. Sometimes a picture is better than words, and so we have Isotype and wordless stories. Most of the time a picture is better with words, and so we have comics, information design and infographics.

I love pure black and white, but I’m trying to learn color.

For artists, I think that sometimes you don’t have to go to college, you should keep your day job, and write the book you want to read. I also wonder, what if we give it away?

Like most people, I like music and movies. Sometimes I talk politics and religion.

These are just a few of the folks who blow my mind: Lynda Barry, Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Schulz, Edward Tufte, Anders Nilsen, Kevin Huizenga, Tom Gauld, Saul Steinberg, Otto Soglow, Bill Callahan, and Joann Sfar.

I believe life is a story and often that story is just a collage or remix of who/what came before us.

I’m married to a wonderful woman and I live in Austin, Texas.

Forgive me if this is really f***ing cheesy.

What a nutty year. The pages of my paper 2008 diary are full—right up until the end of June, when things got crazy, and I lost six months of my life to writing a book, buying a house, and watching Obama get elected. Phew! About the same happened with this blog: July came around…and poof! I blogged about half as much for the second half of the year. (Check out the infographic above and the 2008 Visual Archive.)

So what now, 2009? The only thing I have planned is the book release in September. I’m going to take a break in January and February, curl up on my office couch, and read some really big books. Hopefully start blogging some more. Around March, I’m going to try to start on another book. Maybe a graphic novel. I’ll be posting whatever I come up with here, along with a bunch of blackout poems that didn’t make the book.

Thanks for reading. It was a great year for me, and everybody who visited the site, left comments, linked to the poems…y’all made it so.

My very best to you. Warm wishes for a great 2009!

How to blog teach, write, make art:

1. Wonder at something.
2. Invite others to wonder with you.

Yes or no?

For those of you reading via RSS, pop over to my homepage real quick and check out the new front page and updated portfolio.

Why the change? I’m hoping that the front page will now be a more friendly portal to newcomers.

For those long-time readers, if you want to skip the frontpage and go straight to the blog, update your bookmarks:

http://www.austinkleon.com/blog/

I should also point out that there’s a new subscription options page. If the blog feed isn’t enough for you, you could always upgrade to the Blog + Tumblelog Superfeed!

And for those of you with eagle eyes, you’ll have noticed a (gasp!) shopping cart. Yeah, it’s just a teaser for now, but one of our projects this summer is trying to get some merchandise up for sale. We want to start small with maybe just some mini-poster prints, and then move on to bigger and better things.

A couple questions:

• What’s the most successful way to sell products online? Paypal? Etsy? Ebay?
• What would you like to see sold in my store? Prints of poems? Mini-comics? T-shirts?

If anybody has any advice or comments, please let me hear them!