“I decided to model my self in the fashion of a Black aristocrat. Using a photograph of the well respected Duke Ellington I pressed and ironed and tilted my hat with our beloved community in mind. Yet I did not know what effect it would have on the minds of the people in our community. Mainly friends. I was seen as a have in a world where have-not meant brotherhood.”
That’s Livingroom Johnston, a novelist, street storyteller, artist and fledgling YouTube star writing about how he began to see himself as part of a community.
Livingroom just released his first book, and he’s built a strong reading community MySpace, blogs, YouTube, and the magazines.
Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
How did you build your unconventional community, without the help of a publicist or a publisher? How do you find your readers?
I hand made a book and put it in a briefcase and went to bars and sold the first twenty five books for ten dollars each and decided to keep doing it.
I put out five hand made books. A film producer by the name of Reuben Cobia caught wind of it and we made the deal. There will be a film titled “HARLEM REMEMBERS THE BRONX,” [at some point] which is the title of my first novel.
After that, the magazines caught wind of it and I handled things on my own terms ONLY. I wrote a lot of articles about my self in third person. The only magazine that interviewed my and I didn’t write it was COMPLEX magazine.
I post things on YouTube to keep people interested and to provide for my fans. People love it. I’ve been told by a lot of people that they love what I do because they can live vicariously through me.
It’s all based on give and take. And taking care of my self so I can take care of the people.
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