Two Books on Indie Marketing and DIY Ethics
I’ve been on a non-fiction jag lately while I try to work extra-hard on writing fiction. I’m not sure if the two are related or not; it certainly wasn’t intentional.
After reading “Content” by Cory Doctorow, which I reviewed here, I dug into “The Indie Band Survival Guide” by Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan. These two guys are members of Beatnik Turtle, who I met at Dragon*Con in 2007 — so yes, I know and like the authors, and I’m reviewing their book. Disclaimer claimed.
“The Indie Band Survival Guide” covers nearly every angle of being an independent musician in the Information Age, including why your best bet is to be independent. This, as you can imagine, is a viewpoint I share and support. At over three hundred pages and supplemented by a website, the book is chock-full of good advice and pointers to same. Irritatingly, it doesn’t include an index, which is almost inexcusable in a book of this type. “The Indie band Survival Guide” should be the kind of book you refer back to again and again… but who wants to spend time fruitlessly flipping pages for something? If they get a second edition, I really, really hope they include an index.
Despite that shortcoming, I do recommend the book, even if I don’t agree with everything in it. The authors recommend performance rights organizations (with caveats) if an artist wants to take advantage of all possible revenue streams, and I have serious issues with these organizations’ aggressive support of overzealous copyright legislation and market-strangling licensing fees. There’s a tension between profit and innovation, and every musician must decide for themselves what they’re comfortable with.
Right on the heels of “The Indie Band Survival Guide,” I took in “Unmarketable” by Anne Elizabeth Moore. This book, by the founder of Punk Planet and the editor of two volumes of “The Best American Comics,”
I re-read “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson before I started my non-fiction run. Moore’s book is the real-world mirror of Gibson’s work of marketpunk. Many of the things in Gibson’s book that seemed so plausible to me… well, Moore’s book showed me that was because cutting-edge marketing agencies are already there, doing it all.
Moore details the struggle the independent artist has between maintaining integrity and artistic vision and putting food in their bellies. She also uses examples of campaigns that, to one degree or another, undermined the integrity of independent creative people.
In particular, it was fascinating to read an account of Nike’s unauthorized infringement of Dischord Records‘ iconic Minor Threat album artwork for their “Major Threat” skateboard tour campaign. I remember this debacle… in fact, I was one of thousands of people who wrote nasty letters to Nike and caused the company to withdraw the campaign. Back then, it was a clear-cut case of Big Bad Media running wild over the rights of a small record label with strong ideals and very limited resources. While Nike was, without question, in the wrong, the real story is much more nuanced and complicated.
This, along with examples of “mocketing,” “graffitads,” and “brandalism,” made for a compelling and disturbing read. Though a little dry at times, “Unmarketable” is essential reading.
