DIY GUIDE - BOOKING SHOWS 101 - STEP 3: PROMOTION & PREPARATION

This is, admittedly, the easiest step of booking shows. All you have to do is spread the word.

First things first though—make sure everything is confirmed. Touch base with the touring band(s), venue and locals to make sure everyone is on the same page. Once that’s all taken care of start yelling from the rooftops if you have to.

Since the Internet is prevalent in the lives of pretty much everyone, some people have decided that good old-fashioned fliers are a thing of the past. Those people are very, very wrong. Even though it seems like everyone has a Myspace account or a Facebook page, there are those that don’t, and maybe those people still want to come to your show.

You don’t have to overdo it, but printing up a couple hundred quarter sheet fliers will cost maybe eight bucks and go a long way. Give them out to everyone you know, plaster school campuses, bus stops, record stores, coffee shops and anywhere else you can think of. It’ll take a little time to get all those places, but the end result will be well worth it.

If you have no idea how to make a flier, don’t worry. Photoshop can do wonderful things, but if you aren’t that tech savvy there are a number of other options. First, you could ask/beg one of your friends that know how to do that kind of thing. Or second, you could go old school. Print out the names of everything you need (i.e. all bands, venue, address, date, time and price) cut them up and glue them to a photocopied picture. Then photocopy that. Boom. You’ve just done it the same way people made fliers in the 80s and early 90s when only rich yuppies owned a computer.

Now, just start posting it everywhere you can—both in real life and on the Internet. The better job you do of spreading the word, the more people will show up and the more fun everyone will have.

If the venue doesn’t have sound equipment, you may have to rent some. Performance Audio or somewhere similar usually has everything you need for a reasonable price. You’ll have to pick it up, set up and return it, but it’s better than trying to find a professional sound guy to bring his own equipment. That usually costs three or four times as much. Securing sound is really the second hardest thing to do after finding a place to let you set everything up.

Once you have those and a good jump on promotion, you’re pretty much set and ready to go.

Tomorrow, it's all about what to do the day of the show and how to pull everything together.