The business side can sometimes eclipse the creative side (what we love producing). My first experience was like running a gauntlet, exciting but left bruises. I write and perform poem parable stories for children and youth (preparing for the challenges of adulthood and independence). A toy company was given some of my writings by a friend of mine who used to work for them as a secretary (the who you know aspect of getting a foot in the door). They liked my stuff and flew me from California to Minnesota to meet they President and get started on a contract. Being a toy company, they wanted to make a toy of each of the animal characters in my stories and sell each separately with a small book in a nice package. When I arrived at the company the reception area was a museum of toy and book ideas that got started and fizzled. I have eight children and they would have loved to have any of these jewels of creativity. I bet my prototype we did together is on a shelf there now. Doing a book, especially with illustrations is an enormous up-front investment (the dollars and cents part of the business known as thorns and nettles). The toys were the cheapest part of the project. After struggling to get a prototype that anyone could afford, we had the idea of recording the stories and providing cassettes with the toys. I rewrote the stories as scripts to be performed like a radio show in the recording studio. We presented the prototypes at a toy buyers convention (not creative people and are between you and your audience. They want what they think will sell and reject all others). Everyone who heard the tape wanted it, but not the toys. The toy company then let me out of the contract (they are, after all, a toy company) and I was awarded the master of the recording to use as a demo to find another producer. That took years to finally come to pass, with money spent to travel to interviews and paying to have good copies of the cassettes produced to seed half of the US. The costs of production, marketing, distribution etc. turn the products of creativity into products on the market, with the wrong kinds of people making decisions the misdirect your jewels far from your intended audience and make money only for the producers and middlemen, not for the writer or performer. The internet has broken down the barriers between creator and audience and continues to evolve in our favor. The laws that ensure compensation royalties for the creators and performers are yet to be updated for this century, but we will get there. In order to maximize the amount of those returns require us all to become well educated on the business part in a way that enables our self reliance and independence, no longer eclipsing our creations, but fueling them to success.