How Artists Make Money and How Money Makes Artists

David Berry

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English

Coach House Books
27 November 2025

Art: financial aspects; History of Art & Design Styles; Economic history

How artists make a living and how money changes art.

It may not be the worst time in history to get paid to make art, but it certainly is the strangest. The institutions and markets that have been supporting the arts are undergoing massive changes, some even disappearing. Meanwhile the tools to make art and find audiences have never been more accessible, and there are more people than ever making art.

How Artists Make Money and How Money Makes Artists is an attempt to reckon with the history of money in the arts

from Titian to Taylor Swift

and how that complicated relationship is changing. David Berry analyses past and present financial dynamics in the arts to show the practicalities of how artists make a living and how that, in turn, affects the reception and perception of artists and their work: the impacts art has on wider society, how economic realities affect aesthetic judgements of art, what kind of people are able to work as artists, and how political and cultural ideas about the nature of art affect what kind of resources are made available to it.

David Berry explores how art has become central to our understanding of humanity by tying art to what makes the world go round: money. Along the way, he challenges popular ideas of what constitutes a successful artistic career and considers what our treatment of artists says about us.

By: David Berry
Imprint: Coach House Books
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions: Height: 215mm, Width: 139mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 498g
ISBN: 9781552455067
ISBN 10: 1552455068
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 27 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Berry is a writer, editor and critic. He spent the first two decades of his professional career profiling and critiquing the book, film, music and theatre scenes for an Edmonton-based alt-weekly, and then did the same nationally for the National Post. He has contributed essays, criticism and features to the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, CBC, Hazlitt, and many other places, some of which still exist. His first book, On Nostalgia, was published in summer 2020 by Coach House Books, just in time for everyone to suddenly become incredibly nostalgic for a time when they could actually see people and maybe even buy books in person. He lives in Edmonton with his partner and their two children, one of whom is both old enough to read and quite insistent on being referenced in this biography.

Reviews for How Artists Make Money and How Money Makes Artists

Praise for On Nostalgia: ""Berry's subject is a wide-ranging one, but he pulls off the impressive feat of covering plenty of ground in a concise and compelling manner. "" - Tobias Carroll, Literary Hub ""If nostalgia was a disease in the Good Old Days, then David Berry's cogently argued, intelligent, and witty book should be prescribed reading for anyone wishing to understand what sometimes feels like a peculiarly virulent epidemic of our current times."" - Travis Elborough, Atlas of Improbable Places ""We're so lucky to have a writer as thoughtful, funny, smart, and cutting as David Berry. Nostalgia dictates so much of our world, and there isn't a better cataloger, critic, and guide through it than Berry."" - Scaachi Koul, Sucker Punch