No internet back in the late Sixties and early Seventies. To get informed about exciting (or not so exciting) new music you had to hear it somewhere, and albums were not such a cheap sport, you had to be choosy. So the big record companies like Warner Brothers and CBS came up with an interesting concept - double album compilations selling for cheap. So WB came up with Loss Leaders series and CBS with its Rock series, the most popular one being Fill Your Head With Rock. Where else would you then get a chance to hear New York Rock & Roll Ensemble’s Fields of Joy, or Miriam Makeba’s version of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released”? Of course, nowadays anybody can make a mixtape/disc/file (refer to Nick Hornby and the art of making a mixtape, his best writing ever), but even then, it also spoke about the taste of the curator. The WB Loss Leaders were so good because ‘a certain’ Barry Hanson, also known as Dr. Demento curated them. And getting back to Hornby, and writers today in general, the question of making your own compilations, or should I say, newsletters, comes about. As a writer, you certainly spend a lot of your time on research and come up every day with tens, if not more interesting articles that are at least interesting as a good read. These days the number of services where such articles are collected based on your choices is growing by the day. Why not use them? Instead of writing tons of tedious pitches and promotional emails (tedious, both to you and the targeted readers), why not make your own curated newsletters? I’m sure everybody will include their own writing, bit in combination with other interesting (or not so interesting) reads, it makes more sense and is much more easy to make comparisons. It also gives a peek into your taste - not only all the interests you have, but what could be potentially expected from you as a writer. After all, this is all the stuff you read, like and have saved somewhere in one way or another. So why not use it? It could turn to your advantage. Oh, by the way, if you run into any of those old comps, be sure to grab them! |
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February 2020
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