Memoir

The Art of Asking, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

Hachette, $29.99

In 2012 American indie musician Amanda Palmer had her turn as Most Hated Person on the internet. She had gone to Kickstarter to fund a new album and gathered $US1.2 million from her fans; she then made another appeal on Twitter to find musicians to play live with her band, offering to pay them in beer and hugs. Hugs don't pay the rent, the Seattle Musicians Union replied, and elsewhere much less polite things were said. It didn't help that she had a rich and famous husband, the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. What was this demi-star doing, begging for money and unpaid labour from her audience?

As she explains on her blog, in her much-viewed TED talk, and in this memoir/apologia/manifesto, Palmer wasn't asking for charity or trying to turn entitled neediness into a career strategy, but offering a transaction different from the usual one between audience, label and artist. She was on a major label that seemed bent on playing the stock role of music industry assholes, for instance telling her she looked too fat in the videos, so it was time to get rid of the middlemen. It was a business proposition like any other, in which she offered an investment and the return was a CD or a book; put in more and Palmer would come and play in your backyard.

Amanda Palmer in full voice. Credit:Dallas Kilponen

This doesn't quite quell the criticisms, at least not if you believe the music journalists who claim the books and CDs aren't good value for money. But even if that were true, Palmer would hardly be the sole offender.