Band Booking Horror Show

It's a combination of things that are going on here. Let me first remind you that, among the other things I'm doing, I also book bands for a place. When it's good, it's good. When it's bad, it's terrible. Last night was pretty fucking bad.

For one, it was St. Patty's day and most of Dallas had gotten its drink on since eleven in the morning. I explain a lot of this in a previous post. So, what I'm saying is that there's good reason for concern. For instance, I got a private message from a friend of mine who is part of a local band.

I told him some time back that I was going to recommend him to the bar management so they could be put on rotation as they seem to be a better fit with some of the other bands they generally book here.

The problem is that I can't get a response from management as to what dates are available. Well, I got one response saying that they would only be booking two dates but I haven't heard anything else.

Booking shows is a hard thing to pull off. There are all sorts of angles and executive decisions one has to do in order to stay afloat. I've had to learn this the hard way and then I'm still learning. I mean, right now, I'm learning that I might not be doing any more shows here if the shit doesn't pick up.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

I have to make posters. I have to make them all the time and that has to be budgeted as well. I've been cutting costs with sticking to digital marketing, so I've been making my own ads online, haunting twitter and pushing my Facebook page.

I can't leave the podcast out of course. That's another way I'm doing that and it's pretty stressful to try and manage all of that in a timely fashion. Just thinking about it makes me want to sleep and sleep deeply. Like, my eyeballs are getting heavy.

I mean lately, I've been sleeping like a dead man and I can only hope that I will before the next show as I'm taking one hell of a hit in my pocketbook. What the hell am I going to do?

I think I might have to make some more hardcore executive decisions, is what I'm thinking. While this is definitely scary, it's also exciting all the same.

Getting Around The Publisher

Last year I wanted to publish my eBook of fiction. I put it off because I didn't know enough about the process of what I was getting into. I mean everything, more specifically, about the formatting.

Because when I first went to Amazon's CreateSpace, I was somewhat confused with how to create the contents and the chapters. So last week, I finally decided it was time to get to it and over an exhaustive two-day period I finally got it. From the formatting to converting into a EPUB file.

As of this writing, this is what my stats look like:

Since this blog is about uphill battles, let me tell you a little bit about this one... in a later post. Right now however, I want to give you the details on what I did past the formatting and creating of the file.

Not only did I get around the formatting tools but the publisher too. Because I wanted to find the best way to set up a cart through my blog without coming across as fraudulent or risky, which plays a big part in why people don't buy (my) eBooks.

PayHip

Yeah, these guys are not getting as much attention as they deserve. Look. I didn't already know that they were trustworthy because I take risks that I don't expect others to take. That's kind of the reason why these things are an uphill battle for me, but most of them haven't failed me so much as I failed them. 

But I looked up PayHip because they do real-time payments to your PayPal account while taking 5% from each sale. This is separate from what PayPal takes, which I had to ask about to know what I'd make back. And you know what? It fucking works! 

Basically they provide the platform to track the downloads with a PayPal cart set up on check out. You upload your eBooks with cover image and they provide the button, stuff like that. 

Your Own Marketing

Now, this is the catch but by design it all makes sense. They don't have a library to browse through the selections. But they do have:

• Affiliate Features
• Social Network Features
• Author Invites

Affiliate Features

These are set up to where you can put the email address of a person who will share out your book for you and a percentage of the sales is set by the author to give to that person. 

Social Network Features

Not only through email but obviously the social network thing is set up. You'll be promoting all the time. 

Author Invites

You can also invite an author to the network as it grabs the contact list from all popular email accounts plus through Facebook. 

I've been checking around other social networks and they don't seem to have too much on them. Like a Google+ page is one follower, they have use of one #PayHip tag in the same network. They've only been around for two years but this thing definitely works.

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