At lunch a few days ago, I finished This Business Of Artist Management. A book firmly aimed at being a primer into the roles and responsibilities of a manager in the music industry, it touches on many of the basics without delving too deeply into them.

Written in 1997, a good bit of the data in this text is rather out of date (when the author talks about sending in demo cassettes to a label, that should probably be a clue). The work of a manager is discussed in very broad strokes, most of which will seem to be common sense once read, but maybe not immediately obvious without the pointers. Still, the text can be useful to a band and/or musician who is wondering what a manager should be doing and why a good manager earns 10-15% of the gross pay.

As with the other music book I've read recently, you're probably better off going with a more comprehensive work that covers the music business in more detail, then extrapolating to figure out what is needed to manage an artist.