The Unstarving Musician’s Guide to Getting Paid Gigs was published in late October 2016, but the official launch is only just now about to happen. After clicking the publish button, I wrote to close friends that I thought writing the book would be the hard part. I quickly learned that the work was only beginning as I had to next go about the business of promoting the darn thing. Working on a book launch plan has only brought this reality into greater focus, and I have to admit; it’s overwhelming, scary, and exciting, all at the same time.
Projects like this are the exact moments when the voices in my head crank it up a notch. Here’s the kind of shit they say.
You’re a poser.
No one’s going to listen to what you have to say.
You have no clue as to what you’re doing.
This is also one of those moments when I need to pretend like I don’t know any better. A time when I need to come up with 20 ideas a day, so that I better my chances of having one really great idea. It’s a time when I need to kick “I” the hell out of “me,” “I” being the ego part of me that wants to beat me down once in a while. I’ve decided to in fact do all of this, which I’ll of course need to remind myself of tomorrow and the next day, the next day after that, and so on. I hear this is how the highly creative and productive of the world do what they do. I also hear that they’re no smarter than me. Apparently they just have all this shit figured out. But I digress (again).
An important part of promoting my story and The Unstarving Musician’s Guide to Getting Paid Gigs is literally getting back to performing. As I made the move from California to Central America, I knew I wanted to take a little time off of gigging. I ended up taking a little more time off than I’d originally planned, but that’s about to change. I’ve started networking with local musicians, and not surprisingly, gig opportunities are starting to emerge. Of equal significance is that I now have a vehicle. (See what happened the first time I tried to buy a car in Panama.) I see myself gigging very soon, and I can’t wait!
Oh, on a related side note, I do have a gig booked in the San Francisco South Bay area, which will reunite me and my former band mates of GenRx. Relationships helped me score this gig, and I couldn’t be more excited, because we’ll be performing at one of the South Bay area’s finest live music venues, Savannah Chanelle Vineyards.
Podcasts Forthcoming
There’s so much to look forward to in this whole book launch thing, as I’m also working on a serial podcast based on The Unstarving Musician’s Guide to Getting Paid Gigs. If you’ve been waiting for the audio book and enjoy podcasts, this podcast is being recorded for you. I’ll continue the podcasting with a second ongoing podcast for the bigger Unstarving Musician Project. This ongoing podcast will be an interview format, on which I plan to curate expertise to help musicians of all types and genres be better marketers, so that we can do more of what we love–make music. This ongoing podcast is going to be a very big part of the journey that is The Unstarving Musician Project.
I think this is all going to be fuel for not only the book, but for serving my fellow musicians, whether you want to get more gigs that pay, get your music on radio, make money as a session player, tour, license your music, or (fill in the blank) with your music. I’ll have a lot of good stuff for a lot of creative artists and players. It’s gonna be fun for sure.
Lastly, it’s worth mentioning that I’m going to be asking for a little help with spreading the word about The Unstarving Musician’s Guide to Getting Paid Gigs. In return, I’m putting together some incentives, which are really small tokens of my appreciation, including a complimentary one-hour coaching session on getting gigs, plus the e-book version of The Unstarving Musician’s Guide to Getting Paid Gigs, autographed by yours truly. If you’d like to help spread the word, I welcome you to be part of The Unstarving Musician’s Guide to Getting Paid Gigs book launch team. If you’d like to sign up, please enter your email below.
Spreading the Word Made Easy
How can you help spread the word as part of the book launch team? It’s pretty simple. I’ll just be asking you to share pre-written posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and/or by email.
What if you’re not on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? No problem. If you’re on any of these social networks, you can just share on your preferred network. If you’re not on social media at all, no problem again. You can share via email.
Bottom line is that I hope to make your participation in the Unstarving Musician’s Guide to Getting Paid Gigs book launch team easy. Your participation would mean the world to me! Again, if you’d like to sign up as a member of my book launch team, just enter your email below.
I’ll follow-up with everything you need to know.
In gratitude,
Robonzo