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Ruth Kaufman is the Amazon bestselling author of the Wars of the Roses Brides trilogy (At His Command, Follow Your Heart and The Bride Tournament) and My Once and Future Love. Accolades include 2016 Booksellers Best Award Best Historical and Best First Book winner and Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart® award winner.

An actor, storyteller and speaker with an M.S. and J.D, Ruth's credits include independent feature films, web series, pilots, national TV commercials and hundreds of voice-over projects.

Links

•  www.ruthtalks.com
• www.ruthkaufman.com
• http://rjkaufman.blogspot.com/

Show Notes We launch Working Class Creatives with an interview of author and actor Ruth Kaufman. I've had the pleasure of working with Ruth on several audiodrama projects, including the production of Synesthesia Theatre's Cold Reboot, where she put her excellent vocal skills to work recording the majority of artificial intelligence-delivered lines. It was a joy to have her as my first guest, and I look forward to working with her again in the future.

• Versatility brings creative professionals more work and more opportunity.  Ruth's career is 50% acting and 50% writing. The acting is split evenly between voice acting and live action.
• Ruth prefers live auditions to self taped audition; self-taping provides more scheduling freedom, but live auditions allow you build relationships and get feedback.
• She does not have a day job. A run of slow weeks makes it hard to sustain the process; you have to be self-driven to keep getting things done.
• Self confidence is important, but you need to have faith that other people will believe in your work. These are elements you do not control.
• Changes in Amazon's Select program have made marketing books more difficult. Reviews are also harder to come by.
• There are a lot of marketing choices that need to be made and evaluated every day. Self-driven creatives don't have anyone else to rely on, and ultimately are responsible for all these choices.
• Theatre experience is valued by casting directors, but does not itself bring in much money.
• Most people don't understand the nature of voiceover acting. There's more than commercials: e-learning, phone prompt work, etc.
• Vocal skill and quality is less important than personal discipline to find work and get clients, and being able to read the clients to deliver the copy they way they want.
• Cartoon voice acting is mostly done on-site in Los Angeles; very little is remote work.
• Before quitting your day job, use that job's money to prepare yourself taking classes and covering marketing costs. You will be competing with people who are already established.
• I have worked with her on several occasions; she voiced the main artificial intelligence in Synesthesia Theatre's second season story Cold Reboot and in the standalone Simple Harmonic Motion. She was cast in the unproduced web series Sleep Study.

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