I’m sure there are writers who are great businessmen but I never met any. There’s something about the artist that’s antipathetic to making a profit, ‘cepting maybe on his own work but as a speculator it doesn’t work. And it’s because there’s an excess of imagination in writers they can foresee this thing being a massive success all over the world. When it has fatal flaws, it’ll never work, and the careful businessman of course would look at it and see that it ain’t gonna work.
~Arthur Miller
interview on “Mark Twain” (PBS documentary directed by Ken Burns)
I’m consistently amazed at the inconsistency that artists present in their lives. There is no profession with such potential for living a life so full of passion, abundance, and opportunity as that of being an artist.
While I have the utmost respect for Mr. Miller (I have his complete play collection sitting on the shelf next to me) it seems odd to me that someone who was made incredibly rich through his art would think that writers are bad businessmen. If a writer can become wealthy in an age before the internet was there, then it seems a writer (actor, singer, dancer, painter…) only has more opportunities to generate more wealth in the age where the Internet is the crux of successful business.
What do you think? Are artists fundamentally not cut out for business?
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