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

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.

Scott Kirsner is a journalist and blogger who writes about new ideas and their impact on the world. He edits the blog CinemaTech (http: //cinematech.blogspot.com), which explores the way technology is changing the entertainment industry. He is the author of "Inventing the Movies," a technological history of Hollywood published in 2008, and "The Future of Web Video: New Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers," first published in 2006. He writes regularly for Variety and the Boston Globe. Scott's writing has also appeared in the New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, Fast Company, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek, and Newsweek, among other publications. Scott is one of the founders of the Nantucket Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation, held each May. He also speaks and moderates regularly at entertainment industry events, including the Sundance Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the South by Southwest Film Festival. Scott is a graduate of Boston University's College of Communications and the New World School of the Arts, in Miami. He can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com.