Book Review-"Show Your Work!"...10 Ways to Share Your Creativity & Get Discovered

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this short but informative book. I put it in my cart at Amazon.com and I'm sure I got it for under $11.95, the list price. Austin Kleon is the author. His work is featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and it is also on NPR and PBS. He has also written "Steal Like an Artist" which I have not read, but also looks interesting.

When I read a non fiction book I like to use a yellow highlighter to underline the key parts of the book, unless of course the whole book is the key, which in this case someone could make a good argument for tossing the yellow highlighter aside. Austin Kleon does not spend a lot of time getting to the point...my kind of guy. He's pretty direct about what he wants you to know about his ideas. Austen's Table of Contents details what he wants creative people to understand and how they can get a piece of the marketing pie.

• You don't have to be a genius
• Think process, not product
• Share something small every day
• Open up your cabinet of curiosities
• Tell good stories
• Teach what you know
• Don't turn into human spam
• Learn to take a punch
• Sell out
• Stick around

Austin writes about a new way of operating. His followers ask "How do I get my stuff out there? How do I get noticed? How do I find an audience? and How did you do it?" His not so secret idea is to Share. Put yourself and your work out there and share it. Share your ideas and your knowledge. Your audience will build and follow you. Simply said, Austin believes you should "influence others by letting them steal from you."

Personally, I'm a big believer in the group think approach to big projects. Getting a manageable group together of creative thinkers who love generating ideas off of each other is very exciting and I think the group can come up with some dynamite ideas that are accomplishable.

On a smaller scale if I'm stuck trying to figure out what ravishing food item my husband and I are going to take to a party or a function, I will start bouncing ideas off of Steve. From there we go back and forth. What's in the cupboard, what do we need to buy, how easy is it to make if we don't have a lot of time, and what do our taste buds want to eat! For the most part it is a fun process to generate ideas, then put the shopping list together after checking the pantry.

I see the same concept applying to joint creative ventures. As Austin says, ...it just acknowledges that good work isn't created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds."

The book is a fun read and I plan to put it on the nightstand and re read the short chapters before I fall asleep, letting my mind play with that night's reading. Who knows what I will come up with! And if the book doesn't sound appealing to you, you might know someone who will get a lot out of Austin Kleon's 215 pages in his 6 inch by 6 inch book!

The following is the link to the book on Amazon.com. The book today costs $7.56 in papterback and $7.16 in Kindle. http://www.amazon.com/Show-Your-Work-Creativity-Discovered-ebook/dp/B00GU2RGGI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405986676&sr=1-1&keywords=austin+kleon

Happy Reading!

Chris