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

by Amanda Palmer, Brené Brown (Foreword by)

Overview

Rock star, crowdfunding pioneer, and TED speaker Amanda Palmer knows all about asking. Performing as a living statue in a wedding dress, she wordlessly asked thousands of passersby for their dollars. When she became a singer, songwriter, and musician, she was not afraid to ask her audience to support her as she surfed the crowd (and slept on their couches while touring). And when she left her record label to strike out on her own, she asked her fans to support her in making an album, leading to the world's most successful music Kickstarter.

Even while Amanda is both celebrated and attacked for her fearlessness in asking for help, she finds that there are important things she cannot ask for-as a musician, as a friend, and as a wife. She learns that she isn't alone in this, that so many people are afraid to ask for help, and it paralyzes their lives and relationships. In this groundbreaking book, she explores these barriers in her own life and in the lives of those around her, and discovers the emotional, philosophical, and practical aspects of The Art of Asking.

Part manifesto, part revelation, this is the story of an artist struggling with the new rules of exchange in the twenty-first century, both on and off the Internet. The Art of Asking will inspire readers to rethink their own ideas about asking, giving, art, and love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455581092
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	10/20/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	238,661
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Amanda Palmer is a world-renowned singer, songwriter, activist, director, and blogger who first came to prominence as one half of the internationally acclaimed punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls.

She is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and has shown her underwear on Australian television. She currently avoids living in places including Boston, New York, and Melbourne with her husband, author Neil Gaiman, who is easily embarrassed.

Palmer's TED Talk, "The Art of Asking," which she presented at a 2013 TED conference, has been viewed at least 8 million times around the world. You can visit her website and blog at www.AmandaPalmer.net.

What People are Saying About This

author of LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED - Jenny Lawson

This is the kind of book that makes you want to call the author up at midnight to whisper, 'My God. I thought I was the only one.'

Seth Godin

Amanda Palmer's generous work of genius will change the way you think about connection, love and grace

author of EAT PRAY LOVE and THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS - Elizabeth Gilbert

To read Amanda Palmer's remarkable memoir about asking and giving is to tumble headlong into her world. Immediately, you notice that her world is really different from yours and mine. Amanda's world is more open, more vulnerable, more fearless, more messy, more surprising, more dangerous, more rich with human encounters and exchanges at every imaginable level. At first, you find yourself thinking, 'Goodness, what a crazy world that Amanda Palmer inhabits! How does she possibly endure it?' Then, gradually, as you read along, a doorway opens up in your heart, and you realize, 'I want to live in a world exactly like hers.' God willing, this book will show us all how to do it.

From the Publisher

"Amanda has a direct line with her audience—a lifeline for them and for her, the codependency all truly great performers surrender to…she's capable of anything, incapable of telling anything but the truth." -Bono

“Amanda Palmer joyfully shows a generation how to change their lives.” -Caitlin Moran, author of HOW TO BE A WOMAN and HOW TO BUILD A GIRL

"To read Amanda Palmer's remarkable memoir about asking and giving is to tumble headlong into her world. Immediately, you notice that her world is really different from yours and mine. Amanda's world is more open, more vulnerable, more fearless, more messy, more surprising, more dangerous, more rich with human encounters and exchanges at every imaginable level. At first, you find yourself thinking, 'Goodness, what a crazy world that Amanda Palmer inhabits! How does she possibly endure it?' Then, gradually, as you read along, a doorway opens up in your heart, and you realize, 'I want to live in a world exactly like hers.' God willing, this book will show us all how to do it." -Elizabeth Gilbert, author of EAT, PRAY, LOVE and THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS

“This is the kind of book that makes you want to call the author up at midnight to whisper, 'My God. I thought I was the only one.'" -Jenny Lawson, author of LET'S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED

“The Art of Asking is a book about cultivating trust and getting as close as possible to love, vulnerability, and connection. Uncomfortably close. Dangerously close. Beautifully close. And uncomfortably close is exactly where we need to be if we want to transform this culture of scarcity and fundamental distrust.” -Brené Brown, author of DARING GREATLY

"Amanda Palmer's generous work of genius will change the way you think about connection, love and grace." -Seth Godin

“From this beautiful, heart wrenching story of art comes an incredible account of the nature and future of commerce - or one part, certainly the most important part, of that bit that's new. Here's a truth that someday the economists might begin to grok, but which meanwhile will define everything that's interesting about how art and culture will thrive.” -Lawrence Lessig, author of FREE CULTURE
“A story about a life in one dollar bills, from statue to icon, where media doesn't matter, crowds do. Mandatory reading in the digital age, for aspiring artists and their doubtful parents.” -Nicholas Negroponte, Founder, MIT Media Lab

author of DARING GREATLY - Brené Brown

The Art of Asking is a book about cultivating trust and getting as close as possible to love, vulnerability, and connection. Uncomfortably close. Dangerously close. Beautifully close. And uncomfortably close is exactly where we need to be if we want to transform this culture of scarcity and fundamental distrust.

Editorial Reviews

09/15/2014
Performance artist and Dresden Dolls singer Palmer reflects on her career and shares insight into the economy of shared resources in this sometimes insightful but overly self-indulgent memoir. Beginning in Harvard Square performing as a human statue, Palmer first observed a “subterranean financial ecosystem” of sharing. She found a similar environment at the “Cloud Club,” an artists’ commune where her band performed its first gigs and shot a music video to which residents loaned their various talents. As a touring musician, Palmer became familiar with asking fans for “crash space” and meals, as when a Honduran family in Miami offered the crew their beds and treated them to “tortilla lessons” in the morning. Palmer delivers a master class on harnessing technology for artistic purposes, explaining how to turn crowdfunding, Twitter, and digital music downloads to your advantage. She makes valid points about the controversial Kickstarter that raised 1 million dollars for her solo album, but remains utterly obtuse regarding the poor reception of a poem written in the voice of one of the Boston Marathon bombers she posted to her blog. Palmer’s worthy message that “asking is an act of intimacy and trust” is often obscured by an overly confessional, borderline narcissistic tone unlikely to placate her critics. Agent: Merrilee Heifetz, Writers House. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"A book unlike any other I've ever read. . . a book I'd have no problem recommending to everyone I know. My mother, my best friend, my work friends, my Facebook friends, my LinkedIn contacts, even the people I meet on the street or see on the subway when I commute to and from work. It's that important and that groundbreaking. This book is not just someone's brave and personal journey from childhood to her life as an artist, but it also addresses why and how it's so hard to look into someone else's eyes and be real, and ask for help when we need it. . . . Palmer has, not to put too fine a point on it, ripped open her chest and exposed her heart for all to see. She's written her truth - and it's at once brutal and gloriously, importantly beautiful."—The Huffington Post

"'The Art of Asking' is a compelling read, easily the most universal work she has ever done."—The Boston Globe

"Much as Anne Lamott offered 'instructions on writing and life' in Bird by Bird, Amanda Palmer will be instructive to anyone who struggles with fear of the 'no.'"—Shelf Awareness

"This is the kind of book that makes you want to call the author up at midnight to whisper, 'My God. I thought I was the only one.'"—Jenny Lawson, the Bloggess and author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened

"To read Amanda Palmer's remarkable memoir about asking and giving is to tumble headlong into her world. At first, you find yourself thinking, 'Goodness, what a crazy world that Amanda Palmer inhabits! How does she possibly endure it?' Then, gradually, as you read along, a doorway opens up in your heart, and you realize, 'I want to live in a world exactly like hers.' God willing, this book will show us all how to do it."—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things

"Amanda has a direct line with her audience-a lifeline for them and for her, the codependency all truly great performers surrender to . . . She's capable of anything, incapable of telling anything but the truth."
—Bono

"A story about a life in one dollar bills, from statue to icon, where media doesn't matter, crowds do. Mandatory reading in the digital age, for aspiring artists and their doubtful parents."
—Nicholas Negroponte, founder, MIT Media Lab

"Amanda Palmer joyfully shows a generation how to change their lives."—Caitlin Moran, author of How to Be a Woman and How to Build a Girl

"Amanda Palmer's generous work of genius will change the way you think about connection, love, and grace."
—Seth Godin, author of Tribes

"From this beautiful, heart-wrenching story of art comes an incredible account of the nature and future of commerce."
—Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture

From the Publisher