Comments | musicintime: Scottish Guitar

musicintime

Scottish Guitar

May 21, 2006 08:23

After reading advice here and elsewhere, I've decided to put my new book online for free. I wrote and recorded it two years ago, and it has been sitting on a publisher's In-Tray since then. And I just can't be bothered trying to sell it myself (the world's worst businessman, I know ( Read more... )

Comments 32

masaccio May 21 2006, 08:58:58 UTC

Put it in
http://community.livejournal.com/earlymusic/profile
and
http://community.livejournal.com/guitarclassical/profile

masaccio May 21 2006, 12:59:10 UTC

There have to be russian celtophile communities too....

musicintime May 21 2006, 14:16:23 UTC

I'm setting up a PayPal Donation button - a friend is helping me - so I'll hold back for a couple of days until that is set up. I don't want to restrict distribution by selling, but I am happy to take donations!
Rob

masaccio May 21 2006, 14:28:54 UTC

PAypal won't deal with Russia, or any former Soviet country.

Thread 15

d2a0v0i5d May 21 2006, 15:12:07 UTC

Very impressive work, Rob. Thank you for your time and effort in preparing this.

DN

anonymous May 21 2006, 15:38:11 UTC

I love the mp3s. who made the guitar?

Nate

musicintime May 21 2006, 17:06:36 UTC

Hi Nate,

I borrowed a guitar for the recording session as I only have a cheap Sigma steel-string. I can't recall exactly what it was - a Taylor, maybe? If you listen really closely, it has a buzz on the second string - something I never noticed when playing it, but the mics picked up and amplified.

I have a steel-string on order from http://www.brookguitars.com/ - the model called 'lyn'. Should be ready in November.

Rob

matanya May 21 2006, 16:32:41 UTC

One suggestion: in my experience, links from other sites do not generate as much traffic as the proper inclusion of relevant keywords in the title section of your HTML document. Yours only contains the title of the book. Another way of going about it is to include in the head of the document a KEYWORDS meta name line. This is what I have in my home page (delete the spaces after "<" and before ">" when you put the line into your document):

< meta name="KEYWORDS" content="classical guitar, lute, LP records, Richard Pick, Shostakovich, Matanya Ophee, Russian guitar, facsimiles" >

Put as many keywords into this line, all separated by commas. This is what search engines such as Google are looking at when they search, not the title of the page.

musicintime May 21 2006, 17:13:35 UTC

Thanks, Matanya, appreciated. I'll get around to it.

Regarding publishers - I have two books with Mel Bay, but I've never once seen them in shops in Scotland. Considering they both had the word 'Scottish' in the title, this is somewhat unfortunate. So I decided to go with a Scottish publisher. One wanted to charge me 700 pounds (over 1,000 US dollars) for the rights to record my own arrangements! The other one seemed more reasonable, but sat on it for over two years.

With this particular book, I just wanted to get it out there, and offering it for free means more people will experience the music. Sometimes that matters more. I'm sure you have published music you believed in, yet also knew that it would be difficult to recoup your outlay.

Rob

matanya May 21 2006, 17:50:50 UTC

Shops, in Scotland and in all other countries, only stock what customers are asking for, and what they can reasonably move in a short time. So even if a Scottish music shop will be on the distribution network of Mel Bay and/or his UK distributors, they are not likely to stock anything that is not requested by customers. And when a customer does request it, then they have to make a special order of it, which takes forever, if at all. And that is the reason why, in spite of the fact that I have very good distribution arrangements in the UK, I still get direct orders from Scottish customers who cannot wait to order from a shop ( ... )

matanya May 21 2006, 18:10:02 UTC

One wanted to charge me 700 pounds (over 1,000 US dollars) for the rights to record my own arrangements! The other one seemed more reasonable, but sat on it for over two years. 700 pounds does seem rather exorbitant, though I am not familiar with the precise rules of the UK PRS, the entity that governs such things. In the US, the rate is governed by law and administered by the Harry Fox Agency. So if, for example, I wanted to publish a CD of live performances of music to which I do not own the copyright, I would have to pay the statutory licence, or negotiate with the owner for a lower rate. But if I own the copyrights myself, then I do not have to pay licence fees to anyone, and charging them to the editor/performer is completely out of the question. As a matter of fact, I am right in the middle of such a deal with one of my forthcoming editions. The way I see it, I will have to pay the performer for his work, not the other way around ( ... )

musicintime May 21 2006, 21:10:48 UTC

The Donation button is now on the same page. I have been amazed by the number of emails I have received from people saying they wanted to pay me for the book! Human beings, well, guitarists aren't such a bad bunch after all!

Rob