YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts by Alan Lastufka

YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts Reviews

• 
  Willow Redd

  While this book was released in 2008, making all the detailed information about creating and managing a YouTube channel out of date, Alan Lastufka and Michael Dean have created a bit of timelessness as well. Some of the more serious advice; what to do, what not to do, how to engage your viewers, how to expand outside of YouTube; remains as solid and poignant as the day it was written. What really makes this a must-read book for any YouTuber is the focus on community and art, which is what made YouTube what it is, even if the site itself seems to continuously make moves away from both in favor of more corporate pursuits (sadly, a side-effect of doing business).
  
  Both Alan and Michael approach this book, and all their pursuits, from the perspective of "Make Good Art." Here, they give you some sound advice on how to do that within YouTube, not so much as a step-by-step how-to, but just some general ways to approach any artistic endeavor. In this particular case, they just focus on online video, since that is YouTube's function.
  
  It's been a while since I first read this one, so I figured, with all the recent YouTubers going to print, it was time to read it again. Personally, I see it as a welcome addition to my books on filmmaking and writing, and just as important.
• 
  Lanevids Fournerat

  A great book on the basics of youtube, and it starts to get more in depth with different strategies that you can use to gain a following. A great and easy read.
• 
  Sara

  Basically, I should have totally picked a different youtube name. Haha. Best for people just starting out who are interested in how to do it right.
• 
  Chelsea

  Though some of the information is out of date, the basics, like what makes a good video and the techniques you should use, are still relevant.
• 
  Lcaracappa

  1) What stood out most for you in the book? Use a quoted passage if possible. Why did this passage stand out for you? What implications do you think this will have on students and learning?
  
  I think the section that stood out to me the most in this book would have to be the section on "Rebroadcasting: Commercial Content," or in other words copyright infringement. Being a Social Studies teacher I preach the right to freedom of speech and the protection of it, so this stands out the most to me personally. Basically they break down for you what copyright means and who it protects. Recommended by the book,(
  www.copyright.gov, will give anyone a more through understanding of copyright laws. Copyright protects your intellectual work. It establishes that it is important to make sure that you properly site your work with the copyright content symbols.
  Ex: Copyright 2008 Alan Lastufka or use the copyright symbol and the corporation that sponsors your publishing. However, Fair-use policy has been established to allow limited use of copyrighted material. Creative commons is also away to use material within the laws of copyrighting. Here you choose 1 of the creative common liscenses to apply to your work to stay within copyright laws. This means your work may spread faster around the world. There was no real qouted section that stood out to me it was more or less the entire section, except for this sentence, "Basically, fair use involves creating a new and useful work by combining bits of other people's original work with your own original work."(pg. 109 Lastufka and Dean 2009) To me this is a way of teaching to my students how to properly use material of someone else and giving credit to that person. As for how the students will learn from this I would have to say the best way for them to express themselves or subjects and ideas of learning that maybe they want to create a video on they can learn how to properly make the videos and share them without infringing on someone else's work. What is nice about the book is that for this purpose in this section they give websites to creative commons areas for free material.
  
  2- Discuss- Discuss the theme of the book. Give us some background on what the book addressess. Try to highlight the main idea and supporting details of the book.
  
  The theme of this book is to discuss how you can become a succssful youtube video maker and make people want to subscribe to your "Channel." (A channel is the account you create and the videos you put onto that channel for sharing, whether videos you created or videos you like to watch.) The book begins with how to properly navigate through youtube and then gives advice on how to make your own movies, so you can go "Viral."( this is a type of video that catches on and people want to watch it and share it.) The book goes step by step into detail about how to make a proper movie. From scripts, plots, and actors to actually telling you detailed information about the best type of equipment to use and what not to use. For example a good handheld known as the mini-DV is expensive but is good quality, whereas your cell phone cam is used for breaking news, but maybe fuzzy. The book also discusses the ideas of promoting your videos, making money from your videos, copyright laws, gaining fans, what comment trolls are, and how to expand beyond youtube. The book is very through in breaking down all the said mentioned sections above and gives step by step procedures and gives examples through links and actual youtubes videos on how you tube works.
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssfmT07SZg is a link that explains the inner workings of youtube right from their own website.
  
  3- React-- Write your response to the book and be specific about why and how you agree or disagree with the author's point of view.
  
  To me the book was a very easy read. Except for the copyright laws, my students would be able to read this and understand how to become perfect moviemakers on youtube. The examples of viral videos are all videos my students have listened to and seen before that I am familiar with, so that is a key point in this book that I think stands out. It relates to all people of all ages. This is not a book, in my opinion, that you sit and read throught the entire thing and then go and do everything it says. This book is a good reference book for proper youtue video making procedures. I agree with the author about mny things in this book that relate to getting people to watch you videos. One thing that he says is a, "powerful way to gain inbound links on youtube is to have a friend mention you in a video." Promoting the video is the only way to get your ideas seen and heard and everyone wants their "15 minutes." I agree with him in the sense that proper video editing will get many hits and intersting topics as well.
  
  4) Connect- Make connections between the book and current educational issues.
  
  Like I mentioned aboved, the biggest current educational issue is the severity of stealing people's copyrighted work. I have so many students who tell me they download so much music from LimeWire that I spent last week teaching about ethical use of copyrighted material when I had to teach them about the word, "infringement." So many of our students do not know that they are stealing when they rip this music or download it. The book disputes the idea of what percentage of material is allowed to be used, but it does state that full use of someone else's work without permission can have your youtube account deleted. It also goes into detail about the fair use act, which students who are making videos for class like biographies or other classroom reasons, need to be aware of what rights they do have to use of someone else material. It also states in the book, which could e an educational issue, the ethical use of what type of video's should be posted and used. Also, personal material is to be avoided which also is an educational lesson in itself.
  
  5- Conclude- Give the book a rating and recommendation for wat audiences might benefit from reading this book.
  
  I give the book about 4 stars as a reference book. This is not an easy read to just read and then you are an expert. You need to keep this book handy for making videos if you plan on posting them in a public domain like Youtube. There is definetly a lot of information I didn't know about youtube that I found interesting. Probably about the word "Troll" Which refers to people who make comments on your video but are negative on purpose to make an argument. I like how the book has "Pro tips" throughout the entire book which give advice as you go along theough the sections. This is a great book for making taking notes on all the aspects mentioned above in my earlier posting. I woud recommend this book to people who are willing to want to learn proper procedure for posting any video.
• 
  WallofText

  I mostly started to read this book as a joke since I didn’t expect it to have much useful information 10+ years after publication. Beyond about 60-70% of the book being too outdated, it is also really verbosely written and confusing in its target audience. Some of the information is so basic an 8th grader should be familiar with it before reading this book, while other parts sound rather mature (references to porn etc.) I also found the main author’s narrative voice to be that of a boomer for lack of a better way of putting it. I was not familiar with him beforehand and I wish it stayed that way. The only thing I appreciated were the interviews with popular Youtubers of the time, the only still relevant ones of which are Hank and John Green, as well as the nostalgic feeling of seeing old Youtube.
• 
  Irene

  Will be trying out some of the ideas
• 
  Felix

  Much of the information is outdated because of when this book was released, but the core information itself is still very valuable for creating a successful channel. You just need to adapt other information to 2014.