Twitter is the rising star of social media at the moment, and is a surprisingly good tool for artists.

From US President Barack Obama’s use of Twitter throughout his election campaign to the UK comedian Stephen Fry’s high-profile use of Twitter, it’s clear that it’s gaining a lot of ground and breaking into mainstream use.

As such, as well as using it myself (you can follow me & my art projects on Twitter!) I’m going to be embeding Twitter’s functionality into the open-source Artists Website Software that I’m currently developing – not only easily allowing an artist’s Twitter feed to be displayed on the website, but also mechanisms to easily post items to Twitter feeds.

If you’re new to Twitter then Squidoo has a very good Artist’s Guide to Twitter that explains everything from an easy to follow explanation of what Twitter is and how to use it, to arts marketing strategies using Twitter.

I’ve been looking for articles specifically about Artists using Twitter and have found a few good pages:

• 5 More Twitter-Specific Marketing Tips for Artists who Tweet
• Arts Organizations and Artists 2.0: Social Media for Arts People
• Twitter Search: How to Directly Market Your Art (or Anything Else) on Twitter
• Twitter – How to Use it?
• Twitter for Artists

I’d be very interested to hear how other artists have used this new tool.

Lauren Simonutti is a Baltimore-based artist/photographer. Having been told that her work didn’t “fit in” in the US (and having more positive experiences in European and Australian markets), she turned to the web—more precisely, to self-publishing her artwork in print-on-demand books through Lulu—in order to reach her audience.

I’ve been interested in using print-on-demand for some time, so I contacted Lauren who kindly agreed to answer my questions about her experiences (and for me to publish her answers here – thank you, Lauren).

Lauren, how did you go about promoting your books on Lulu?

“sorrow…and the end of sorrow” by Lauren Simonutti – available on Lulu.com”

Promotion is always difficult for me. I would rather work than spend time on marketing and I have very few outside resources so I have to find them myself.

Initially my promotion always begins with imagery/layouts that I create and post on deviantart and flickr. The majority of my sales have come via deviantart.

My work seems to hold much greater appeal in Europe and Australia than it does in the States, and in my home city of Baltimore I have been refused for every single thing for which I have applied and just this week was actually refused as a volunteer to work a photobooth at an arts festival (Artscape).

It’s become rather amusing but I have been told in no uncertain terms that here I simply do not fit in.

I mention all this because that is what brought me to the web in the first place. I make considerably more sales in prints or handmade artists books but Lulu.com does provide an alternative.

How easy was it publish your book with Lulu?  What did the process entail? Were there any problems?

Lulu is free which was its first appeal as I have no money.  The process of signing up was simple, it is best to give them a PayPal account for revenue payments as they are faster and require no minimum amount.  I had no problems.  I am adept at design so while it was time consuming that was because of my pickiness.

Now here’s the main issue.  When I signed on and for my two extant books there was the issue of starting with a blank slate – a simple white or black page.  Your picture placements were somewhat limited but not beyond reason and I opted to include the text into my JPEGs as opposed to using their text option.

They have since changed their options to themes – they have pre-ordained themes from which you can not alter page colour or even have a blank background.  This also leads sometimes to unwanted cropping.  I wrote them about this change (they do answer questions quite readily) and replied that the themes were greatly preferred by their clientelle.

Now keep in mind they keep good records, they pay revenues directly and without fuss and their Calendars which I make seasonally are really very nice.

After trying another option I have since gone back to Lulu and believe that using their ‘Portfolio’ book option I can get what I want, it will just take some tweaking and again the text will have to be incorporated in the JPEGs.  But I think it will work and there is the option of hardcover.

Important Note: I have noticed, not just with Lulu but with overnightprints.com and a few others that you should lighten your JPEG in levels about 15 to 20% lighter (using the midtone arrow) than you want them to look.  Digital printing tends a little towards the dark side.

So that has been my experience.  I am working on the new portfolio book selection at this time.  Again, there is no financial outlay and no obligation and if you use the themes it is very fast and easy.

You can see Lauren’s work on her deviantArt account, her Flickr account, and, of course, her Lulu account.

For those of you who haven’t come into contact with it before, OpenID is an open-source single-login that works on many websites. In their own words “OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.”. And it does.

Some time ago, I set up the main domain of this website as an OpenID delegate (I use MyOpenID as my OpenID server), which basically means that I can put my own website’s URL into any OpenID login on another OpenID-enabled website, enter my OpenID password when asked for it, and be logged into that website, enabling me to comment on a blog without having to create yet another login for a blog I was unlikely to ever comment on again.

Up until now, OpenID hasn’t had many big players apart from the teen-angst-fest that is LiveJournal – it’s been mainly geek sites such as 37signals and Six Apart (although it’s also available as a plug-in for WordPress and Drupal – I have an OpenID login for this blog, which is built with WordPress).

So yesterday’s announcement that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board of the OpenID Foundation is hugely important. To get a couple of those companies joining would have been big. To get all five of them is enormous.

So, if all five of these behemoths implemented OpenID then what would things be like? Well, the prospect of using the same ID (in my case, my personal website’s URL, which I can usually be relied on to remember!) to login to Google Analytics, Google Sitemaster Tools, YouTube, Yahoo! Instant Messenger and Flickr, would make my life much easier.

Admittedly both Google and Yahoo! had already made moves towards OpenID – last month Yahoo announced that YahooIDs would become OpenIDs (effectively tripling the number of OpenID accounts by adding the 248 million Yahoo! IDs to OpenID’s existing 120 million accounts).

Google swiftly followed suit a couple of days later by announcing that it’s blogging platform Blogger would allow users to use their blog’s URL as an OpenID URL (so long as it was hosted on BlogSpot).

This is stage one – now any BlogSpot-hosted blogger, Flickr-user or anyone with a Yahoo! login will be able to login to external sites that use OpenID. That’s a huge advancement.

But hopefully this latest announcement will take Google and yahoo one step further. At the moment the two search giants are still only providers of OpenID (they turn your existing account into an OpenID account), but they won’t accept OpenIDs as logins (although you can login to comment at Blogger using OpenID).

This hope of mine is strengthened by a comment yesterday by Yahoo!’s Jeremy Zawodny:

“Oh, and before anyone jumps on me about this not being “full” (meaning bi-directional) OpenID support, I’m quite aware of that. Consuming OpenID is a different beast that can’t happen overnight. Give it some time. I’m optimistic that we’ll get there.”