CinemaTech
[ Digital cinema, democratization, and other trends remaking the movies ]

AD: Fans, Friends & Followers

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Just Published: 'Fans, Friends & Followers'


I'm really happy to report that my new book, Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, is now available in paperback and e-book form (both PDF and Kindle).

Here's how I encapsulate the book's focus:

    The tools to produce films, music, books, and art have been democratized: they’re accessible and inexpensive.

    And the channels to distribute all sorts of creative products have also been blown wide open: today, anyone can distribute a video or a song or an image to a global audience, for free.

    The result is the noisiest, most chaotic marketplace that creative artists have ever known.

    That noise and chaos creates the two biggest challenges facing artists today: how do you cultivate a big audience for your work, and how do you leverage that audience to support your career financially?

    I wrote Fans, Friends & Followers to address those challenges with useful strategies, examples, explanations, and first-person success stories.

Here's an earlier CinemaTech post listing the 30 artists I feature in the book.

On the book's site, there's a free 35-page PDF preview that you can download to get a taste of the book.

There has been some very kind coverage of the book online:

I'm *extremely* grateful to the readers of CinemaTech for all your ideas, feedback and guidance over the years... which have been really helpful in keeping me on the right track. And I thank you on the book's "Acknowledgments" page, too -- so it's official!

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posted by Scott Kirsner at 1:52 PM

7 Comments:

  • Look forward to reading your book! (And FYI, the first link in this post seems to be broken.)

    By Blogger Matthew Gordon, at 2:56 PM  

  • Thanks, MP. Just fixed, and also added a few more coverage links that I'd forgotten about.

    By Blogger Scott Kirsner, at 4:54 PM  

  • congrats!

    By Blogger deepstructure, at 6:12 PM  

  • Scott, in the Jonathan Coulton section, you mention the "Demand It" system. This is actually a service called "Eventful Demand", available from Eventful, Inc. The main URL for Demand is http://eventful.com/demand.

    The label of the button inside the Eventful Demand widget says, "Demand it!" Typically the message on a Demand widget is, "Do you want [performer-name] to come to [your city name]?" followed by a "Demand it!" button. When a user clicks a "Demand it!" button, they can indicate what zip code (or city and country) they want the performer to perform in.

    Eventful Demand has been widely used by tens of thousands of performers, and has caused thousands of events to be scheduled around the world.

    As of April 2009, the Eventful service has more than 9 million registered users and is growing very quickly.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 7:33 PM  

  • Hi BDTest -

    Thanks for clearing up the official product name. I think a lot of people, Coulton included, refer to it as Demand It... and we mention a couple times in the book that it is run by Eventful, so I don't think there's any confusion.

    Scott

    By Blogger Scott Kirsner, at 9:18 PM  

  • I caught the interview posted on The Workbook Project about "Fans, Friends...." It's just the sort of information I've been looking for as a producer of traditional media beginning to work in digital media. You validated some things I'd been pondering and inspired many ideas. I particuarly appreciate that your book is an advocate for content creators and their need to make a living. In any medium, being independent can be draining, and your interview was most encouraging. I'll definitely be getting a copy of the book. Good luck to you!

    By Blogger Internal Compass, at 3:56 PM  

  • Scott,
    Look forward to reading the new book. Congratulations.

    By Blogger Andy, at 9:13 AM  

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