Comic's Corner

Tour Planner.

For the comic with no agent, running a tour out of a notes app and a Gmail thread. This 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

Route check

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

The run

Tap a stop to change it or remove it.

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

What this 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 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.

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). Your run and your scorecard are stored only in this browser: clearing the browser's data for this site erases them, so copy the scorecard out from time to time.