Show Your Work!
"You should be able to explain your work to a kindergartner, a senior citizen, and everybody in between."
— Austin Kleon, Show Your Work! (2014)
| Show Your Work! | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Full title | Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered |
| Author | Austin Kleon |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Creativity; Self-promotion; Personal development; Marketing |
| Genre | Nonfiction; Self-help |
| Publisher | Workman Publishing Company |
Publication date | 6 March 2014 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (paperback); e-book; audiobook |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | 978-0-7611-7897-2 |
| Goodreads rating | 4.1/5 (as of 8 November 2025) |
| Website | workman.com |
Introduction
Show Your Work! is a compact, illustrated guide to sharing creative work as an open process, organized into ten short chapters from “Share something small every day” to “Stick around.” [1] Positioned as the follow-up to Steal Like an Artist and pitched as “a book for people who hate the very idea of self-promotion,” it offers ways to be findable without the hard sell. [2] Published by Workman on 6 March 2014 in trade paperback (224 pages), it advances the line “generosity trumps genius” and mixes quotes, stories, and Kleon’s drawings. [1] The book frames audience-building as joining a collaborative “scenius” and teaches readers to document process, give credit, and avoid becoming “human spam” online. [3] Contemporary coverage and trade reviews were positive—Publishers Weekly called it “sassy and spot-on” with a “pocket-sized” design, Fast Company highlighted its “self-promote without being a jerkface” ethos—and the author lists it as a New York Times bestseller. [3][4][5]
Chapters
Chapter 1 – You don’t have to be a genius
🤝 Musician Brian Eno’s term “scenius” counters the lone-genius myth by placing creativity inside a supportive scene where people trade ideas, copy, remix, and push one another. Durable breakthroughs emerge from an “ecology of talent” made of artists, curators, thinkers, and attentive fans who share what they know and build on what they find. Join such a scene by contributing work-in-progress, crediting influences, and being the person who notices and supports others. The amateur is the enthusiast who learns in public and helps peers by sharing useful finds and hard-won lessons. Treat influence as a network rather than a pedestal: start before you feel “ready,” let feedback guide the next step, and let generosity make you visible. Viewed this way, audience-building becomes community service rather than self-promotion. This shift—from exceptionalism to participation—reduces perfectionism and fear while increasing reciprocity, and networks reward repeated helpful contributions with attention, trust, and opportunities no one can manufacture alone.
Chapter 2 – Think process, not product
⚙️ Picture a workbench or a screen filled with dated notes, rough sketches, step-by-step photos, and short clips—evidence of how something is made. Instead of hiding the messy middle, keep a simple work log, snap progress shots, and save small artifacts that show decisions and dead ends. Show your tools, drafts, and methods so people can follow along and understand how the result came to be. Treat this as documentation, not performance: share what’s helpful, keep boundaries, and credit the techniques you borrow. The aim is connection through transparency, not spectacle. Shared process supplies narrative and proof-of-work; it humanizes the maker and turns passive viewers into participants who root for the finish. Visibility of effort builds identification and trust, which compound into ongoing engagement that later carries the finished piece.
📅 End each day by picking one tiny, useful fragment to post: a line from a notebook, a photo of a step, a diagram, or a link that shaped your thinking. Early on, share influences; in the messy middle, show methods and rough cuts; after release, share outtakes and what you learned. Keep a lightweight routine—a daily dispatch that takes minutes, not hours—and apply a simple “so what?” test to avoid noise and oversharing. Over weeks, this stream becomes a searchable archive of breadcrumbs that lets others see your trajectory. Robin Sloan’s “stock and flow” model fits: the daily stream (flow) accumulates into durable pieces (stock) you can refine into articles, talks, or products. Small units lower friction, encourage practice, and invite steady feedback; many tiny touchpoints build familiarity and trust that accumulate into a visible body of work and a growing audience.
Chapter 4 – Open up your cabinet of curiosities
🗃️ Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s habit of keeping handwritten notebooks and a personal “cabinet of curiosities” models how a creator curates inputs—sketches, clippings, and odd objects—to feed future work. Treat the studio as an archive in progress, with shelves, folders, and bookmarks that make influences visible and retrievable. Share sources rather than hoard taste: the books you underline, the reference images you pin, the tools you rely on, and the makers who shaped your choices. Attribution is non-negotiable—link back, name names, and pass along context so others can trace the lineage. There’s no guilty pleasure; if it sparks you, log it and admit it, because honesty about influence helps others map their own. Keep a commonplace book or digital scrap file, tag everything, and publish a periodic selection with credits. Over time, your public collection becomes a signal of taste that attracts like-minded collaborators and shows newcomers how to look. Opening the research cabinet lets people see the ecosystem behind your work and discover adjacent makers, and consistent credited curation builds trust, strengthens networks, and makes your output more legible.
Chapter 5 – Tell good stories
📖 Kurt Vonnegut’s chalkboard “shapes of stories” diagram—rising and falling arcs that trace fortune over time—shows why raw facts need narrative form before anyone can care. Use that lens to turn process into plot by framing what you share as a sequence: before and after, obstacle and turning point, mistake and fix. Swap art-speak for plain talk; prefer concrete nouns and active verbs over abstract adjectives. A simple press-release outline—what it is, who it’s for, why it matters now—keeps you from rambling, while photos and captions anchor words in evidence. Parties and Q&As double as practice grounds: answer directly, avoid hedging, and tell the truth about constraints and trade-offs. Include stakes so progress feels earned rather than inevitable, and narrate decisions and dead ends to give people a reason to root for the next chapter. Pair the work with a human-scaled narrative that explains origin, struggle, and meaning; a clear arc reduces cognitive load, invites empathy, and deepens attention and perceived value.
Chapter 6 – Teach what you know
🧑🏫 A compact studio workshop offers the template: write the steps on a whiteboard, demonstrate once at real speed, again slowly with commentary, then hand out a short checklist so people can try it themselves. Tutorials, recipes, and annotated screenshots are generous artifacts that travel farther than self-promotion. Giving away methods does not exhaust your advantage; it expands the circle of people who understand your craft. Break complex techniques into small lessons, start with tool basics, and point to further reading so motivated learners can continue. Keep boundaries—share know-how, not private data or unsafe details—and always credit where a method came from. Teaching in public sharpens thinking; questions reveal gaps, and your explanations become a reusable reference. As your library of lessons grows, it doubles as proof of work and a path for newcomers to join the scene. Turning personal expertise into public instruction that others can apply immediately earns goodwill and steady feedback, which attracts the audience that sustains future work.
Chapter 7 – Don’t turn into human spam
🚫 Critic Susan Sontag’s reminder that attention is a form of vitality sets the tone: connection grows when you notice others, not when you blast your own links. On platforms where “Follow me back?” is common, the reliable path is to be a fan first—share what moved you, add context, and give credit. Treat replies and mentions as conversations, not billboards; show you’re listening by asking good questions and amplifying other people’s work. Watch the quality of your audience rather than the raw count, and resist tactics that feel grabby or transactional. Courtesy scales: don’t waste people’s time, don’t be creepy, and don’t ask for favors you haven’t earned. Over time, this civility becomes a recognizable pattern that separates contributors from spammers. Make your presence useful so people want you in their feeds even when you are not promoting anything. Shifting from extraction to participation builds durable trust and turns attention into a two-way street.
Chapter 8 – Learn to take a punch
🥊 Pop icon Cyndi Lauper’s line about coming “pre-hated” introduces a tougher truth: once work is public, you will meet praise, silence, and blunt criticism. As reach expands, the volume of feedback rises, and some of it will sting or miss the point entirely. The antidote is exposure and repetition—publish often enough to experience the full range of reactions and learn how to keep your footing. Separate useful critique from noise, fix what’s fixable, and refuse to wrestle with trolls who only want a fight. Redirect the energy into making the next thing so commentary competes with output, not attention. Over time, nerves dull, skin thickens, and the work improves because it is informed by reality rather than imagined response. Treat feedback as data, not destiny; frequent releases train resilience and keep momentum and the joy of making.
Chapter 9 – Sell out
💸 Singer-songwriter Bill Withers reframes the dreaded label with a storefront image: a “SOLD OUT” sign means people want what you make. The text pushes back against using sellout to shame any ambition—moving beyond a hometown, upgrading tools, or trying something new. Creative lives change; staying true often requires bigger stages, better gear, and new partners. Use a simple filter: say yes to opportunities that let you do more of the work you actually want to do, and say no to deals that pay more but shrink the part you love. Keep busy, expand your audience, and avoid self-sabotage disguised as purity. Let money be a tool for making better work, not the measure of worth. Put incentives in the right order—values lead and choices follow—so reputation and independence can compound.
Chapter 10 – Stick around
⏳ Poet Paul Valéry’s maxim that work is never finished, only abandoned sits beside Orson Welles’s reminder that happy endings depend on where you stop the story. Careers lurch; in the middle of one, it is hard to tell up from down or what turn comes next. The most reliable edge is endurance—keep showing up through dull stretches, plateaus, and false starts. Leave room for luck by continuing to ship, and be ready to jump when a door opens. Writer Isak Dinesen’s daily-work mantra sets the tempo: steady effort without manic hope or despair. Momentum accumulates in small, unfancy steps that make you present when timing aligns. Stamina is strategy: by staying in the game longer than most, you increase the odds that something breaks your way. Persistence preserves optionality and keeps possibilities alive until one clicks into place.
—Note: The above summary follows the Workman paperback edition (2014; ISBN 978-0-7611-7897-2).[1]
Background & reception
🖋️ Author & writing. Kleon—“a writer who draws”—developed Show Your Work! as the follow-up to Steal Like an Artist, directing it to readers who dislike self-promotion. [2] He presents ten rules for making process visible and building an audience through generosity and transparency. [2] Publishers Weekly described the volume as a “creatively designed pocket-sized book,” urging readers to join a “scenius,” share small, frequent updates, and avoid “human spam.” [3] The publisher characterizes the approach as “generosity trumps genius” and notes that the book is filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, giving it a conversational, visual voice across one-idea chapters. [1]
📈 Commercial reception. Workman lists the title on sale on 6 March 2014 in trade paperback at 224 pages (ISBN 978-0-7611-7897-2), and WorldCat catalogs the 2014 Workman edition. [1][6] Kleon’s site describes the book as a New York Times bestseller. [5] The publisher situates it within a trilogy whose combined sales exceed one million copies and translations span dozens of languages. [1] Mainstream business media covered the launch and method in March 2014. [4]
👍 Praise. Publishers Weekly called the book “an incredibly useful and compulsively readable short book” and summed up its advice as “sassy and spot-on.” [3] School Library Journal judged it “valuable” for young people seriously pursuing creative fields. [7] Fast Company highlighted its “How to self-promote without being a jerkface” framing and interviewed Kleon about sharing process and setting boundaries. [4]
👎 Criticism. School Library Journal noted that the follow-up “has less to offer teens than Steal Like an Artist” and found the tone “a bit strident” in parts. [7] Marketing scholars have cautioned that building a brand on social platforms is a “vexing challenge,” complicating assumptions that daily posting alone will create reach. [8] More recent guidance urges values-driven personal branding rather than constant broadcasting, a nuance not foregrounded in Kleon’s brief rules. [9] Cultural commentary has also flagged a backlash against online oversharing and the need for clearer boundaries, suggesting readers apply the book’s “share every day” advice with discretion. [10]
🌍 Impact & adoption. The book appears on university reading lists for creative-practice courses—for example, San José State University’s PHOT 197 (Fall 2020). [11] It is also listed in Tompkins Cortland Community College’s ART 109 (2024–25) and in College of the Desert’s DDP 195 (Fall 2021), which cites the Workman ISBN. [12][13] Media coverage at launch amplified its “share your process” ideas beyond art schools into broader creative and business communities. [4]
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References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "Show Your Work!". Workman Publishing Company. Workman Publishing Company. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "10 Ways To Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered". Austin Kleon. 19 February 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered". Publishers Weekly. 13 January 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Grose, Jessica (17 March 2014). "The Art Of Self-Promotion: 6 Tips For Getting Your Work Discovered". Fast Company. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Show Your Work!". Austin Kleon. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ "Show your work! : 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered". WorldCat. OCLC. 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Carstensen, Angela (28 March 2014). "Show Your Work!". School Library Journal. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ Holt, Douglas (March 2016). "Branding in the Age of Social Media". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ Avery, Jill; Rachel Greenwald (May–June 2023). "A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ Waters, Michael (2 November 2022). "The Decline of Etiquette and the Rise of 'Boundaries'". The Atlantic. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ "Senior Photography Project, PHOT 197 (Fall 2020)" (PDF). San José State University. 2020. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ "ART 109 Syllabus (2024–25)" (PDF). Tompkins Cortland Community College. 2024. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
- ↑ "DDP 195: Business Practices and Portfolio Preparation for Creatives (Fall 2021)" (PDF). College of the Desert. 2021. Retrieved 8 November 2025.