General

John Florian has published the results of the VoiceOverXtra survey of your peers regarding volume of work and income. This survey was conducted online in October of 2008 and is based on responses from 204 voice actors, with no correlation kept between the answers and the respondents.

A couple of things I thought were interesting. Just about exactly half of the voice actors responding have been at their craft for 10 years or more, more than half work at voice acting full-time and 60% are non-union with another 8% who are dues-paying non-members (Financial Core).

Bill Oxley contributes a guest blog over at Vox Daily today and it’s a home run. It’s all about the importance of making friends in the voice acting business. Bill’s excellent blog reminds me of a conversational exchange I had with someone recently, an invidual who make the comment to me about how important it is to “network” all the time. My reply? I’m not so much on “networking.” I’d rather just make friends.

Are you ever astonished by the number of people hoping to find some magic formula that will guarantee success? I sure am. While I suppose it might be possible to create a formula that goes something like “effort + persistence + patience = success” even that is no guarantee, because so much depends on what kind of effort in what direction and so forth.

However, Tom Asacker has developed a very interesting formulation to map business direction for 2009. It goes like this.

EF = A/S + I/P

You’ll need to look at Tom’s A Clear Eye blog to get the explanation. I think you’ll find it well worth your time.

If you are a member of an online voice casting service, you might find this video of interest.

If you live in the USA, I hope you’re enjoying a very Happy Thanksgiving holiday with those you love. If you’re outside the USA, I certainly hope you’re having a lovely day, too.
On this traditional start of “the holidays” in the States, how appropriate that an email should arrive in my inbox today from Scott Brick and his clan announcing the release of Scott’s audiobook version of A Christmas Carol, the Charles Dicken’s classic. Scott also has blog post up about his life-long relationship with the story that is well worth a few minutes of your time.

My friend Steve Stone emails this morning with the admonition, “read this story.” So I did. Now, I’m passing that admonition along to you. What a great story. Seriously.

My friend Tom Dheere has written part 3 of his series on the Art and Science of Self-promotion for VoiceOverXtra. My thanks to Erik Sheppard for the link that lead me there.

My friend Anthony Mendez is one of the most talented and inspiring voice actors I know. He emails this evening with news that he’s just started a blog he’s calling The Lazy Voice-Over. When you read, you’ll see he’s defining lazy a little differently that you might think at first. I know this is going on my reading list immediately. Welcome to the blogosphere, Anthony.