Comic's Corner

Comedy Tour Planner.

For the comic with no agent, running a tour out of a notes app and a Gmail thread. This comedy tour planner catches the four ways a self-booked run loses money — an impossible drive, a stop that does not clear, a missed deadline, and a guarantee mistaken for take-home — while you can still do something about it. After the show, it keeps what each city bought.

Your vehicle, and what it runs on Fuel is real arithmetic — miles ÷ mpg × price per gallon, or on electric, miles ÷ miles per kWh × price per kWh. Leave the price blank and each leg is priced at this week's pump average for the state it drives into; type the price you're seeing and every leg uses yours. Paying a car's owner back by the mile, as Buddy Up's split does, is a different number: it covers wear and insurance too. Your home base is both ends of the run: the first drive out, and the drive home after the last stop.

Home base Runs on MPG $ per gallon — blank for this week's

Blank, each leg is priced at EIA's weekly retail average for regular gasoline, taxes included, in the state it drives into — or in its region, where EIA publishes no figure for the state. Week of 28 September 2026: $4.465 a gallon across the U.S. Type the price you're seeing to use yours instead.

Route check

Arithmetic on the numbers you entered, and on the road miles between Club Directory rooms. Nothing inferred from traffic or a guess.

Nothing to check yetAdd two stops with dates and the miles between them, and the route check starts working.

The run

Tap a stop to change it or remove it.

No stops yet Add the dates you already have, then the gaps between them become visible — or see first what the planner does with a run.

The posts that ask fans to add you — Filling the Room →

What the comedy tour planner does not do

No distance is guessed. The miles between stops are the ones you enter — or, when both stops are rooms picked from the Club Directory, the road miles OpenStreetMap's router gives for that pair, where D.O.C. holds them (the pairs on Road Maps' Tour routes). For any other two directory rooms the route check starts from the distance as the crow flies, says it is a floor, and asks for the road miles. Drive time is the miles at 55 mph, and the check adds 40 minutes after your set to get out of the room; add the city's traffic and the weather yourself. The same goes for charging: the stops are arithmetic on the range you enter, and the chargers themselves are the Department of Energy's list and map, not a guess about which ones will be working that night.

After the show

Every city, remembered

The book's rule for a touring career: “Build a national career one local audience at a time.” One line per show, the night of — the room, what the city bought, who signed up, the merch table, what sold it, and when to come back. It stays in this browser; D.O.C. never sees it, and nobody else does either.

No city on the scorecard yet

Add the first show below — the night of, while the numbers are fresh — or paste back in a scorecard you copied out on another device.

Add a show

One line, the night of

The book's list for after each visit: “Track tickets sold, capacity, price, promotion, email growth, merch, show quality, venue notes, and local partners after each visit.” The scorecard keeps it in six parts, each with the book's reason for keeping it. Leave out what you don't have — the city and the date are enough to start.

The room

“Fire-code capacity is not necessarily sellable capacity after stage, camera, tech booth, accessible seating, and blocked sightlines.”

City

State

Venue

Date

Seats you could sell

The deal

The sales

“A show can be profitable while the tour loses money because of travel between dates.”

Paid tickets

Comps

Ticket price ($)

Gross ($)

Net before tax ($)

The list

“Followers are attention; ticket buyers are a market.”

Email sign-ups

Text sign-ups

The table

“Track which items sell by city, size, price, and show type.”

Merch buyers

Merch, after the venue’s cut ($)

What sold it

“Stop spending on channels that produce only likes.”

Where buyers heard about it

Local press, radio, podcasts, opener, promoter

The clip that worked (a link)

The next visit

“Come back often enough that people remember you, but not so often that demand has no time to rebuild.”

How the show went (1–5)

Come back in (months)

Notes

Sold out

The next room

A step, not a leap

Each city's card names its next room by these four rules, in the book's words.

Sold out twice — a step up. “Move from 75 seats to 120 before jumping to 500.”
Sold out once — the same room again. “Increase capacity only after repeat evidence.”
Seats left over — a room that fits. “A sold-out 80-seat room feels better and can be more profitable than 80 people scattered through 300 seats.”
Before a theater — model it first. “A sold-out small room is not automatically proof of a 1,000-seat market.” “Model 50%, 75%, and sellout attendance” — The Math of a Gig works a room of your own through to what is left.

Four steps

How to use the comedy tour planner

Set your home base and vehicle. Home is both ends of the run. Fuel is priced at this week's pump average unless you type the price you're seeing.
Add the dates you have. Pick a room from the Club Directory or type any venue, then the guarantee, your door split and the miles from the stop before.
Read the route check. It flags a drive that will not work, a stop that does not clear, a missing price or distance, and a deadline coming up.
Score each city after the show. One line the night of: what the city bought, and the next room it has earned.

The comedy tour planner takes any room. To fill the gaps, start with the rooms in the Club Directory, borrow a route from Routing Packs, or bring a whole night with Buddy Up.

Sources

Topic numbers refer to D.O.C.'s companion book, Stand-Up Comedy: From Writing to Touring. The scorecard's six parts, the reason under each, and the rules for the next room are the book's own words, from its City by City page (Topics 124, 199, 212, 227, 233, 254, 383 and 443). What you put in the comedy tour planner, your run and your scorecard, is stored only in this browser: clearing the browser's data for this site erases them, so copy the scorecard out from time to time.