Category: Books

Introducing Home Grown, my new Kindle Single

by Craig Fehrman, posted in Books, Features, Music

[Amazon]

Some big news: today Amazon is publishing my Kindle Single Home Grown: Cage the Elephant and the Making of a Modern Music Scene. You can buy it here for $1.99, then read it on your smart phone, iPad, computer, or Kindle. (Find instructions on that here.)

Home Grown, in short, tells the story of Cage the Elephant, a group Rolling Stone has called “one of rock’s best young bands.” But it also tells the story of Bowling Green, Kentucky, the small town where Cage got its start. It turns out the town helped the band make it big — and now that they have made it big, the band has returned to invest in the town. Music fans will enjoy the in-depth original reporting on how a music scene works today. (And Bowling Green has grown into a full-blown music scene. Heard of Sleeper Agent or Morning Teleportation? They’re from there, too.) But the Single will also resonate with any reader who grew up in a place like Bowling Green.

I put a lot of work into Home Grown. (If you think the subtitle’s wordy, well, the Single stretches past 20,000 words.) You’ll get to meet everyone in Cage, along with a bunch of other bands and some amazing locals. Click here for an excerpt about one of those locals at Deadspin. Also check out a Tumblr I created, Way Down in Bowling Green — it includes a bunch of rare images and videos and songs related to Cage and the local scene.

I’ll update this post with any interviews or reviews (and there are already a couple lined up). In the meantime: the excerpt . . . the companion Tumblr . . . and the Single itself.

  • Interview with Bowling Green’s best DJ, Tommy Starr [mp3 download]. “It’s fantastic,” Tommy says of Home Grown. “You nailed it from beginning to end — it is the article on the local music scene, especially what’s happening right now.”
  • Interview with David Goldenberg at Gelf Magazine: “Many of these bands are starting to tour around the country, making names for themselves on a national level. How did this Southern town become a Mecca for hipster music? Fehrman trekked to the source to find out.”
  • Interview with Marr Sparr of Young Mary’s Record: “Whether you grew up and shared a babysitter or a blunt with Cage . . . [whether] you’re a Cage fan, or a ‘music’ reader—or just a reader . . . download Home Grown.”
  • Interview with Howard Polskin of the website Thin Reads. “Home Grown is one of the best e-book singles about rock and roll ever written. . . . Craig Fehrman hits all the right notes.”
  • Interview with Stephen Trageser of The Nashville Scene: “There’s plenty in the short volume for both Cage fans and those whose interest is more academic, documenting the conditions that made it possible for the scene to develop. . . . Icing on the cake: a chapter devoted to master horror director John Carpenter, Bowling Green’s most famous export.”
  • Long review from Galen Smith, Sr., the dad of Tony from Sleeper Agent. “I give Fehrman’s Kindle Single five stars. It’s an awesome read and spot on regarding the ins and out about Cage The Elephant and the Bowling Green Music Scene. . . . I was totally fascinated how this very talented writer had captured the essence and the current mood our fair city of 60,000.
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Blockbusters, blockbusters everywhere

by Craig Fehrman, posted in Books

[Boston Globe]

In today’s Ideas section, in the Boston Globe, I’ve got a profile of Anita Elberse, a professor at Harvard Business school and the author of a smart new book called Blockbusters. Elberse demonstrates quite persuasively that blockbusters — whether in Hollywood or music or publishing — aren’t collapsing under their own weight. Indeed, they’re actually thriving. Read the story for more on that.

Elberse also debunks Chris Anderson’s seductive theory of the “long tail” — the idea, which Anderson advanced in a book of the same name, that the online economy would free us to move toward smaller and smaller customized niches. One thing I couldn’t fit into the story — and I’m surprised, given how much attention Anderson’s received, that very few people have pointed this out — is the degree to which The Long Tail was itself a blockbuster. That doesn’t just mean it sold well. To be a true blockbuster, a creative property must be designed with big sales in mind. To wit:

  • Anderson first publicized his theory in a magazine article in the pages of Wired — that kind of pre-publicity publicity is essential to a blockbuster.
  • Anderson and his idea also benefited from his position as the editor of Wired — that kind of platform helps, too.
  • Anderson’s book went through an intense bidding war. The war drove up his advance to $500,000 — and that advance itself became news, in addition to an incentive for his publisher to market and distribute his book. It’s no surprise that Anderson  gave a big talk at the 2006 BookExpo America.
  • Anderson’s book provided plenty of juicy “comp” titles. The Wall Street Journal called it “the new The Tipping Point” months before it came out.
  • And finally Anderson’s book — based on its intriguing premise, of course, but also on all the factors just mentioned — got tons of media coverage in radio, TV, and print.

None of this is to say Anderson’s book was good or bad, right or wrong. (Well, I can’t help but note that Elberse’s data add up to a pretty strong rebuke.) Instead, it’s only to say that to become a huge hit — to become a blockbuster — it’s almost always necessary to have these factors working in the creator’s favor, long before the creative product is due to come out. We live in an age of blockbusters. And strangely enough, it’s hard to find a better example of that fact than The Long Tail.

A review of David Finkel’s Thank You For Your Service

by Craig Fehrman, posted in Books

[Christian Science Monitor]

Today on the Christian Science Monitor’s website I’ve got a review of David Finkel’s staggering new book, Thank You For Your Service. It’s probably the best nonfiction title I’ve read this year — either it or George Packer’s The Unwinding. As it happens, I also reviewed Packer for the Monitor. Read that review here. And then go read both of these books.