Indie Band Survival Guide, now in book form!

Thomas sez,

Randy Chertkow and Jason Feehan just recently published through St. Martin's Griffin the print edition of their wonderful handbook for indie musicians, The Indie Band Survival Guide. They started the book as a CC-licensed PDF and quickly drew attention from the likes of Billboard magazine, the Associated Press and even Professor Lawrence Lessig (who blurbed the print edition). The dead tree version is considerably expanded and now has a wonderful companion site on which they guys work very hard to add new, free material and keep it up to date and relevant to their fellow indies.
I've talked to Randy and Jason repeatedly on my podcast. They are true do-it-yourselfers and truly grok how giving away their music, and now their book, helps them reach new fans and get their music heard. They strongly embody the same spirit for which musicians like Jonathan Coulton and Brad Sucks are know (both of whom the interviewed extensively for the new book). They've effectively produced a take-along, dog-earable handbook so anyone can follow in these well tread footsteps.

Indie Band Survival Guide (Thanks, Thomas!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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WarpedSpeed

This looks like a great resource for artists. I truly believe the best bands out there are playing in small bars, with small local fanbases just waiting to explode on the world scene. They just need the proper resources to get the exposure they need. This book could be helpful for them.

Also, a good resource for unsigned artists and indie bands is http://want-signed.com
jonathan_v

Just to mention… before the internet was widespread and ‘indie’ was tacked onto everything under the sun, a really neat record company called Simple Machines ( http://www.simplemachines.net ) was putting out “The Mechanics Guide to Putting Out Records, Tapes, and CDs”. There’s a copy archived at http://www.indiecentre.org/info/guide.cfm

Simple Machines closed its doors in 99, and the owners started the ambitious Future of Music Coalition ( http://www.futureofmusic.org ).