What should I do if my art doesn't sell even at basement sale prices?

If work doesn’t sell at fire-sale prices or even at the cost of the canvas, you have one of two problems. First, you might not have had enough attention—not enough people saw the sale. In that case, rinse and repeat, do it again, keep building more attention. This isn’t a one-and-done scenario; you can run these sales as often as needed. Second, if you’ve run multiple sales with sufficient attention and work still doesn’t sell even at very low prices, the market is telling you that you don’t have a product people want to buy. This isn’t about being a bad artist—it’s valuable feedback that you need to pivot your artistic direction rather than spending years trying to market work the market doesn’t want.

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Asked by general teaching point · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2021-02-20