Fans, Friends & 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"), Robert Greenwald ("Iraq for Sale"), 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. "Fans, Friends & Followers" author Scott Kirsner has written about new technologies and the entertainment industry for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, Newsweek, Wired, and Fast Company, and he edits the blog CinemaTech. Kirsner has also spoken at the Sundance Film Festival, South by Southwest, and the Harvard Business School Media & Entertainment Conference.