Publishing Talks: Interview with Jeremy Facknitz

Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology. Mostly we’ve talked with people in the book industry about the history and the evolution of publishing and books.

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with editors, publishers, technologists, innovators, and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling past and present.

These conversations have been inspirational to me. I’ve learned a great deal from people who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture, as well as many interesting friends and colleagues in the book business.

Today’s Publishing Talks conversation is very different. Jeremy Facknitz is not in the book business. He is an independent songwriter and musician. Of course there are obvious differences between books and music—you can listen to music while you do other things, and people pay real money to hear singers and bands play live for them; whereas books require your full attention and reading is only rarely a shared public experience. But there are many similarities when you look at the actual business structures of book publishing and music distribution, especially for writers and musicians.

This is especially important now when technology has opened the floodgates of human creativity and enabled the creation and circulation of many more books and songs than was ever possible in the past. This outpouring has upended the economies of both the book business and the music business and inalterably changed how books and music are discovered by readers and listeners. And at the same time, this ocean of books and music has created massive challenges for creators (and their publishers and music labels) to reach audiences.

Jeremy stands out as someone who has found a meaningful path to creating a livelihood as a singer/songwriter, and that’s what got my attention.

Jeremy has been active as singer/songwriter for a long time (see his bio below). While he started out in a band, like many other musicians, he worked in many different non-music jobs for a long time, but finally in his thirties decided to make a living as a performer. He discovered that doing house concerts could be his primary form of revenue. He does his own booking and has created his own unique form of audience building. He now performs over 100 concerts a year in people’s homes.

When I first learned about Jeremy’s work, I thought he would be perfect for this series. Even though