This Ain't a Scene, It's a Submarine Race
Robbie Gomez
Issue date: 9/22/08 Section: News
Back in April, I got my collection of short stories called Book in Black published. But with very little support from the publisher, when it came to getting the word out on my book I felt just like a leaf on a tree in a Michigan December: alone and all shriveled up - "I was in the pool!"
The first thing I did to let people know about my book's upcoming release was to simply tell them about it. Since people like to talk, gossip, chit-chat, whatever, the buzz was spread around in a snap. Now I had people intrigued. Next, I decided to dig my hands into online communication techniques and I set up a website, e-mailed everyone in my address book, and lastly, I put it on Facebook. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Facebook was by far my best tool. I made around 2/3 of my sales because of the social networking site. The final step in my advertising campaign was to get into the press game, and I had three local newspapers write a feature about me and my book.
Writing Book in Black was fun and so was marketing it. But what always intrigued me was how local bands get themselves recognized. With the abundance of talented musicians out there today, there is so much more competition; how does one band possibly stick out over the others? I wasn't created with enough fingers to count how many people I know who were a part of a band at one point or another.
The Greniers, some family friends, have a son who played bass in a band called Long Black Sedan (who has since broken up). They gigged it up numerous times in metro Detroit bars and even had one of their songs played a few times on 89X. I was told that they got on the radio by just being heard so many times that eventually the right person heard them and voila - airplay.
My uncle has been in various bands since his own college days. Now he doubles as an accountant and a "rock star," playing for the Lansing-based cover band, Any World. While he has a solid career and a family, he is settled enough to let not making it big get to him. Playing local gigs on the weekends, being in a band is purely for joy. And let me tell you, they can certainly do a mean Bowie. But when he was in college, a "rival" band known as The Verve Pipe was able to become commercially successful. They built their strong following by playing in college towns around Michigan, eventually cracking into the mainstream music scene in the mid-1990s.
The first thing I did to let people know about my book's upcoming release was to simply tell them about it. Since people like to talk, gossip, chit-chat, whatever, the buzz was spread around in a snap. Now I had people intrigued. Next, I decided to dig my hands into online communication techniques and I set up a website, e-mailed everyone in my address book, and lastly, I put it on Facebook. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Facebook was by far my best tool. I made around 2/3 of my sales because of the social networking site. The final step in my advertising campaign was to get into the press game, and I had three local newspapers write a feature about me and my book.
Writing Book in Black was fun and so was marketing it. But what always intrigued me was how local bands get themselves recognized. With the abundance of talented musicians out there today, there is so much more competition; how does one band possibly stick out over the others? I wasn't created with enough fingers to count how many people I know who were a part of a band at one point or another.
The Greniers, some family friends, have a son who played bass in a band called Long Black Sedan (who has since broken up). They gigged it up numerous times in metro Detroit bars and even had one of their songs played a few times on 89X. I was told that they got on the radio by just being heard so many times that eventually the right person heard them and voila - airplay.
My uncle has been in various bands since his own college days. Now he doubles as an accountant and a "rock star," playing for the Lansing-based cover band, Any World. While he has a solid career and a family, he is settled enough to let not making it big get to him. Playing local gigs on the weekends, being in a band is purely for joy. And let me tell you, they can certainly do a mean Bowie. But when he was in college, a "rival" band known as The Verve Pipe was able to become commercially successful. They built their strong following by playing in college towns around Michigan, eventually cracking into the mainstream music scene in the mid-1990s.
Be the first to comment on this story