Fans, Friends And Followers: Building An Audience And A Creative Career In The Digital Age (Paperback)

~ Scott Kirsner (Author)
Key Phrases: New York, Random House, Scott Kirsner (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

An essential guide for filmmakers, musicians, writers, artists, and other creative types. "Fans, Friends & Followers" explores the strategies for cultivating an online fan base that can support your creative career, enabling you to do the work you want to do and make a living at it. Based on dozens of interviews with the artists pioneering new approaches to production, marketing, promotion, collaboration, and distribution, it presents strategies that work - in a straightforward, jargon-free way. Featured artists include YouTube star Michael Buckley; the animators behind JibJab, Homestar Runner, and Red vs. Blue; video artist Ze Frank ("theshow"); comedian Eugene Mirman; singer-songwriters Jill Sobule and Jonathan Coulton; OK Go frontman Damian Kulash; filmmakers M dot Strange ("We Are the Strange") and Curt Ellis ("King Corn"); writers Brunonia Barry ("The Lace Reader") and Lisa Genova ("Still Alice"); and artists Tracy White, Natasha Wescoat, and Dave Kellett.

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (March 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1442100745
• ISBN-13: 978-1442100749
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #207,950 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great overview of DIY culture, March 29, 2009

By	Charles E. Tryon Jr. (Fayetteville, NC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Scott Kirsner's Fans, Friends, and Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age uses interviews with a number of prominent artists who have been able to forge careers and gain widespread popularity primarily through promotional and distribution tools available online. For those of us doing research on digital cinema, Kirsner's book is a valuable resource, one that illustrates the ways in which content creators are navigating, and sometimes profiting from, what Chris Anderson has described as the "long tail" of digital distribution and what others have described as do-it-yourself (DIY) distribution. While my own research, in Reinventing Cinema (Amazon) , focuses exclusively on filmmakers, Kirsner assembles a number of key figures from what he calls the "era of digital creativity," including musicians, comics artists, visual artists, and novelists, in order to establish or explore how a set of practices have emerged that allow artists to escape the "gatekeepers" of traditional distribution and market themselves. While Kirsner's book is generally optimistic about the potentials of DIY, a number of significant themes surfaced throughout the interviews.

Kirsner knows DIY culture as well as anyone, and he is well-positioned to document what is happening in a variety of digital media, to provide that crucial snapshot of digital DIY practices. He is also aware that what he is providing is just that, a snapshot, pointing out that these practices are far from static and subject to alteration as new artists find new techniques for having their voices heard (and hopefully making a living from it). The book also provides at least some statistics about what opportunities are actually available financially to even the most successful digital artists, making the book a useful guide to all of us interested in the ongoing practices of indie filmmakers, musicians, and artists alike.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Ideas and Ideas for the New and Coming Age of DIY, June 16, 2009

By	Jacquelyn E. Turner (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I really really enjoyed this book. It is interesting on so many levels--you don't even have to be an independent artist. I have no doubt that "fans," "friends," and "followers" would also find this book very interesting. Within the pages, dozens of artists recount their journeys and trial-and-error experiences with their audiences and the distribution of their art. There are a lot of excellent stories and opinions.

Scott Kirsner has done a great job gathering and inteviewing a well-balanced group of musicians, filmmakers, songwriters, comedians, and visual artists who have used DIY (Do-It-Yourself) methods to engage and inspire their audiences, as well as make a little money. His main argument is that it is possible for an independent artist to earn a living from his or her art, but that it requires a very special and involved relationship with one's audience.

With today's rapidly growing and already overcrowded media industry, it is important that the independent artist understand how to promote and sell their work on the internet. The artists all come from different backgrounds but it is amazing how they all seem to say similar things: there is the obvious point that every artist should have a website and should use social networking sites in some capacity--and then there is advice about how to get fans more involved so that they feel more committed to your work. I recommend this book to anyone who has even the slightest interest in how films, music, video, and art will be distributed in the future because this is it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars REALLY inspiring! Gives you hope for yourself as an artist!, June 16, 2009

By	Ms. Stephanie Bousley "sjbousley" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a film student (about to graduate with my MFA); the future has recently been looking pretty bleak. I don't really want to enter the studio system and put all my energy into making the seventeenth Terminator movie; but it is so unlikely that any studio would want to buy my script or my film, being a somewhat "non-commerical" AND first time director. That was how I felt BEFORE reading FF&F. But afterwards, I realized: The world is changing; the rules for being an artist are changing. Maybe I can do more with my career than I thought? If anything, on the most basic level, FF&F gives you hope that you actually CAN make a living at whatever you love.

One of the main reasons I like it is because it's SPECIFIC and uses real-life examples. I feel as though there are so many similar books about starting your music, art, or film career that just tell you to do "x" and "y" and you really wonder, "Yeah, but who has this actually worked for?" Well, in FF&F you know exactly who it worked for; you read their interviews and look at their pictures, and you hear EXACTLY what bands like OK Go and others did, from their mouths. This book is not limited to one type of work either, and discusses self-marketing with all of the following: filmmakers, bands, djs, visual arts, novelists, and comedians. There is nothing general about their advice. Every chapter is told like a story - "We started out doing this, and then that happened so we did this other thing, we paid this much to pursue this marketing avenue, and then we made that much back."

Because of this very personal advice, one realizes while reading that there are SO MANY options for achieving your goals and going after the life you really want. So many websites, online avenues, tools, and methods for reaching your soon-to-be fans. The world has changed and I feel like most people don't know just how much until they read this book; how much CAN be controlled by you and how much power you can maintain over your future as an artist or artistic-minded person. In this economy, I think a book like FF&F is more important than ever and would highly encourage anyone who wants to make a living in any creative field to read it.