In My Life – My Autobiography

Have you noticed how you can track your life with music? You hear a song and it takes you right back to a special time in your life?

In my last post, I mentioned that I have decided to write my autobiography. People have said I should because I have so many stories about things I have done, places I have been and life experiences, like in this photo, getting to spend time with Claudette, Robert Johnson’s granddaughter in Crystal Springs, MS. Maybe it’s that time in my life, but I have to tell you, I have a lot of living to do and more experiences to come.

The first question was how to do it. I really want to have a multi-media biography and from the earliest age, I have been about music. So I have decided to make it about the music that is the ever-changing fabric of my life. Hence the name “In My Life”.

Copyright restrictions won’t allow me to do what I wanted to do, which is to have the songs playing while people read the stories that tie in with them. But I will find a way that doesn’t infringe. For starters that will be with a link to Spotify where the songs have been selected to weave the stories about can be found.

It’s called In My Life – Luigi’s Top #500 Songs. I have drafted a few chapters already, but am not quite ready to share. Believe it or not, I’m also struggling with which songs to include in the 500. I need to cull some and add some.

Are there songs that resonate in your life, where they evoke memories for you? My song Another Stretch in Iraq did that for a group of retired marines who served in Desert Storm, when I performed it in Longwood, Fl. They came up to the stage in tears, and I was getting a bit worried that I had offended them. Quite the opposite, they adopted me for the night and said it took them right back to those intense times.

Anyway, watch this space for news on my work in progress. Comments are always welcome.

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Meresha – A Rising Star Enters the Dreamland

Have you heard of Meresha yet? Let me introduce you. It seems like many years since I first heard Meresha sing, but given her age it can’t be that long ago. I feel like I’ve watched her grow up from a young bubbly teenager (with a mature musical spirit) to a powerful multifaceted musician, singer/songwriting woman, and that we are friends even though we’ve never met in person.

I knew instantly, seeing her perform (online) that she was going to be a superstar. She has a voice to die for, passion and personality that you can’t help but get swept up in, energy to burn that seems endless, a vision for what she wants and humility that keeps her grounded despite amazing successes on Billboard, MTV and many other platforms.

On June 12th she is launching her latest EP called ‘Enter The Dreamland’ and I’ve had the privilege of listening to it pre-release. The title song opens the door to the rest of the EP with a wonderful hook and reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, except that she takes us with her. Listening without the great video it is the sort of song where you can put your own journey or story into it and think “this is about me” and then with the video, you have another adventure to enjoy.

I’ve been saying for a while that it’s time for the comeback of concept albums. When I saw Carlos Santana perform again a few weeks ago and he went from Black Magic Woman to Oye Como Va as people remembered off the Abraxas album, the crowd roared with approval. They collectively remembered and appreciated the sequence of songs, where today so often we listen to one artist, one track, and move on to the next artist, especially with services like Spotify, where a search will find some of Meresha’s songs. I’m personally completing the third song of a concept  album I am writing about my cancer journey, with my target audience being people with cancer and those close to them, but I digress other than welcoming the approach Meresha has taken with this EP.

Enter The Dreamland really feels like a concept album and that we are being taken on a journey. My favorite song at the moment is Jungle Potion. It shows off her range and has a rich fusion of Soul and Pop. I really like the brass, the bass and other instrumentals that support her vocals.

Violet Night starts and ends of with that vinyl sound many of us grew up with or are discovering with its re-emergence and is a track that has great rhythm and joy as a dance track superbly presented as a climax but isn’t the end of the album, which comes with Lights Out, a great way way to close, telling you to step outside your mind. The album may be over, but it still resonates.

I’m confident there are hit singles in this album and what is really cool is that it will have wide appeal to different audiences. I can’t wait to see the final cut of the video and perhaps more videos which really illustrates how much Meresha loves what she does.

So watch this space and sign up for updates and get a free download of Lemonade City and get ready for the latest EP from this great performer and recording artiste. I don’t normally right reviews of music, but I am really excited about this talent. I love to see the sort of commitment that she puts into her craft. Music is hard work and making it in this industry to a point where you don’t have to wait tables or do something else so that you can do what you love is not something many people get to enjoy.

Just as a footnote, while you are on her website, check out her videos and you will see what I saw, joy, passion and youth, combined with vocal control and skill. If you like what you see, please support her and buy the album.

Authors Complain About Amazon Kindle Unlimited Service

Authors are complaining that the new ‘all you can eat’ service that people can subscribe to for $9.99 a month, gaining access to over 700,000 books on your Kindle device or app according to this article in the NY Times.

I think the article is very thorough and recommend it if you are interested in ePublishing, an author or just interested in changing business models.

I’m a Kindle author myself and have also written White Papers and articles about eBooks for many years. I therefore have an interest except that I am more interested in people benefiting from my knowledge than making money out of it. My most recent book is about the use of Location Based Services in Buying a House.

There are a lot of changes in the way people are writing and publishing. Some people are churning out series of books, targeting a youth audience around SciFi, Zombies and Vampires and doing formula writing. They put a lot of energy into the first book, which is often given away for free, finishing like a TV series with a cliff hanger at the end. If you liked the story, you will possibly pay for ongoing series.

Kindle also offers the ability to make offers like Countdown Deals where you can run promotional deals. I’m running one for a week on the above book starting on 30 December when you can buy it for only $0.99, it then goes up by a dollar a day back to full price on the 6th of January 2015. You might like to grab a copy for yourself or someone you know who is thinking about buying a house in the near future. It could save them hundreds of thousands of dollars or a lot of grief.

Anyway, the reason for this blog was to get people thinking about how they market their books and themselves and how they make money. The article compared the royalties from the Kindle all you can eat service to music services like Spotify (which I also subscribe to) and the fact that the songwriters and artists get minute royalties from these services. I doubt that authors get much from libraries either. I didn’t. I listen to eBooks from my local library whenever I’m in the car alone, many are best sellers and I enjoy them for free.

Smart bands and gigging artists today use any tools they can to get their music heard, whether its downloads, radio, streaming, services like Spotify, iTunes, CD’s or whatever method so that their music gets heard. They build up a fan base. The real money comes from selling merchandise and from live performances. Look at the money even old bands like the Eagles or the Rolling Stones can make from concerts. It’s BIG money!

There are some smart writers like Scott Sigler who exemplify how this is done. He is on every social media you can think of. He does book signings, you can order autographed copies of books. He has merch including shirts, hats, artwork in an online shop. He offers his books for free in episodes as podcasts and hopes that if you enjoy them, you will buy the audio book so that you don’t have to wait a week for the next episode. He goes to conventions, networks and engages with his readers. Despite giving away product, he is a New York Times best seller. He understands that he is competing on a world market and it is not just a matter of write it and they will buy.

The article implies that writers think they can just write and sit back and watch the money roll in, give up their day jobs and if they don’t get rich, its someone else’s fault. The reality is that the business is tough and always has been, but today making good money through self publishing is possible if you are prepared to do the hard yards, but you need to innovate.

It certainly helps to be a consistently good writer and to provide the form that your audience wants to read. But even a great writer still needs to market themselves and recognise that their fans are individual people. Stephen King is another great example. He totally understands that he is writing to his ‘Dear Reader’ and constantly reinvents the way he publishes his books. He also does merchandise, if you liked his latest novel Revival, you can go to his merch store and buy a I Climbed Skytop T-Shirt. He even has an online forum on his site. He even runs competitions from his site (I wasn’t impressed that it was for US residents only though, that was pretty stingy). The point being, he is one of the great big sellers of the last 20 years, but he works as hard above the line as he does on his writing. It’s a case of the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Having just written all this, I’ve just convinced myself that the $9.99 is great value and I’m probably going to sign up once I’ve read all the Kindle books I have already bought. I paid US$15 for Revival so that’s a month and a half’s subscription on its own. Oh and don’t worry Stephen, I will buy a hardcover for my collection as well, because despite being an eBook evangelist from way back (Fictionwise on my Palm Pilot), I also collect books of particular authors that I like. I’ve given over half of my books away, but still have around 2,000 in my music room.

So if you are an author, wanting to make a living from your craft, my suggestion is to allow as much time for marketing as you do for actual writing. If you don’t know what to do, ask someone, ask everyone, look at what people like Scott Sigler and Stephen King do. Don’t just copy them though, think of other ways you can sell your books. Look at creative things that bands do. There are so many cool things you can do, I can think of dozens of merch ideas that people would buy.

Don’t complain. Do something.