Have a great venue for indie launches, or want to share your tour stories? Head over here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's also a page for the US and Canadian and Angry Young Spaceman tours that have pics and venue listings.

Do-It-Yourself Indie Touring

Have your hometown launches lost their pungent melange of terror? Do you find that you show up for them without jittery nerves, several feet away from the precipice of emotional collapse? Do you find that afterwards you’re not drained to the point of not knowing who you are anymore? Then you might want to turn it up to eleven... and get in the van.

Spreading your cultural virus from the scene whence you sprang to elsewhere is holy work. Although I’ve only toured with my books, you can -- and should -- tour with anything: zine, flea circus, cartoon sculptures, medical equipment museum. What’s more essential than having a mass-produced commodity such as a CD or book is having realistic expectations of what the road has to offer.

In my experience, the fabled groupies and big sales are in short supply. The things that are in good supply are interesting folks, great conversations and neat places. If you expect as much from a tour as you do from a roadtrip, then you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised. If you expect a perpetual ego orgasm, then, well -- you’ll get a well-deserved kick in the ass.

GET A MAP OUT.
The first time I went on tour, I shoved forty novellas in my bike bag and headed north. About 500 miles out of Toronto, half my books were wrecked from the rain before I’d sold any of them. (I ended up mailing the rest ahead to Vancouver and getting rid of them at zine fairs and on consignment at bookstores.)

The second time I did a tour it was a bit more organized. There were a few cities in Canada that I’d spent a bit of time in, so I approached my favourite bars in Halifax, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. I told them it’d be a free event and it’d bring in more beer drinkers than an average weeknight, and they were eventually sold on it.(1) Book stores, the obvious choice for a book launch, aren’t your only choice -- places like art galleries or cool community spaces have the advantage of letting you keep all the money from your own books.(2) (If there’s a chance to do it at a bookstore you like, however, do it -- you’ll lose some dollars on books in the short run but building a relationship with cool booksellers is worth it.)

My third tour, in the US, was a bit of a surprise -- I had planned on doing launches in three cities that I knew pretty well. I sent out a mass e-mail saying passingly that if anyone wanted to help with promo and finding a venue I’d come to their town. The next day I had a dozen invitations, from old friends and near strangers. So my original plan of three cities expanded to twelve -- all because I asked for help. With that as my base, I also checked out some venues that other indie tours (such as the Good Grief/Burn Collector tour) had stopped at and booked a few shows there.

GET SOME WHEELS.
This’ll depend on how many cities and how many people you have.(3) Not having a licence, never mind a car, I’ve tried more varied modes than most -- bicycle, train, the ‘hound, and plane all preceded my touring in a car. The train offered a killer deal of twelve days of travel for $300 or something, so we did the whole Canadian tour -- all 12,348km (or 7672mi) of it by train. I say "we" because on my second tour, I had the sense to bring along a friend to help with the launches -- that certainly took the edge off of the five days between Halifax and Vancouver.

Having people to tour with is a huge emotional support, if they’re the right people. They can make a crappy night funny, and if they make stuff too then they can make your launch even better. When I saw that I could potentially put together a 12-city tour -- but couldn’t possibly afford to bus it to all those places -- I got talking with two like-minded indie press guys, one in Chicago and one in Seattle. They both had the rare combo of cars and flexible job situations, so I offered to organize the two tour legs and pay for the gas if they’d drive and perform with me.

It turned out to be a really good situation, all around -- not only was it less lonely, but we had bigger audiences and a more interesting show than if we had been solo.

GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER.
Talking about an interesting show -- I’m a big fan of people thinking creatively not just in their art, but in how they present it. If you’re a fantastic reader, with material suitable to be read aloud and an incredible delivery, then great. But as I’m dissatisfied by the obligatory fifteen-minute reading, I decided to launch my book (about a guy who goes to another planet to teach English) in a somewhat different way. I did a recruitment seminar on why you should teach English on other planets, complete with slides and alien artefacts. While this ain’t for everyone, it’s good to think about adding a little performance zing to the show. Think about what would interest and intrigue you as a launch goer. Mixing up the genres by also having locals present their short videos or playing a few songs can make for a fun night.(4)

GET THE WORD OUT.
When I knew the cities I was touring to, it was a pretty simple matter of mailing out a media package to the weeklies -- it had a copy of the book for review, and an invitation to the launch "info-session." I followed this up with a call to see if they needed more details or photos or anything. I also faxed a reminder of the launch to the listings section. I sent out e-mail and asked people I knew in those cities to call their friends, drop off invitations and posters in book and record stores.

When I was going places I’d never been before, having a contact in the places I was going was essential (although alternative weekly resource AAN helps with a lot of the details) for promotion. Where my contact was more experienced, the press and audience numbers were better -- getting forty people to a book launch in a foreign country was an achievement. I really liked the shows where I was able to team up with a local, since the promotion helped us both.(5)

GET RID OF THE CALCULATOR.
Gauging the success of these things is tricky. Booksales is one tangible way, but I’ve had launches where I haven’t sold any books that have been better than ones where I’ve sold ten. Us poor folk are always more interesting, is the damnable truth. And the 50 books I sold across Canada and 25 across the US, an average of about four a launch, don’t account for those that eventually buy the book. But after you factor in the gas money and the occasional emergency hotel stay, you’ll be really lucky if your sales cover your immediate costs, so be mentally prepared for this.(6)

GET TO IT.
The kids need more than rock in their art diet -- will you be the one to deliver your goods? The road is calling...

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(1) BACK

Don't forget Book Your Own Fucking Life! -- ostensibly a punk band resource but we had no problem getting contacts for several stops on our video tour, and we met several clusters of kick-ass people this way. Plus, start planning early. I did manage to put together a five-shows-in-five-days East Coast tour on two weeks notice, but it was painful. I'm comfortable with one and a half to two months advance planning, any more than that and booking gets weird. -Jonathan Culp

BYOFL is a good source to find places to eat and record stores to browse. -Siue Moffat

(2) BACK

I've gone to a few bookstores, too, that have let me set up a merch table. Talk to the manager first. Explain that you're poor and need a couple of bucks to make it to the next stop, and usually they won't mind if you sell your books yourself. -Sean Carswell

(3) BACK

Don't drive at night in Northern Ontario. :) -Jonathan Culp [See JC's tourzine for clarification.]

Me and Jonathan brought a tent, sleeping bags and the CAA (AAA for Yanks) campground book. It's much cheaper than hostles and there are many free campgrounds in the States. There are many more days of getting to a place than staying in place. It MIGHT be a good idea to join CAA or something like that in case of a breakdown. Most people travel in substandard cars due to lack of money, and when the local tow guy comes and charges you $50 or more it can eat into your food money! -Siue Moffat

(4) BACK

Set up a merch table early. It's real tempting to get into the bar and want to hang out and drink instead of trying to sell books, and whenever you get into a bookstore, of course you'll always want to check out the selection, but it's important to make sure that people know that you have shit for sale early. Bring cheap stuff too. Zines, buttons, bumper stickers, etc., sell better than books. A lot of people who won't spend ten bucks on a book will throw down two or three bucks for a zine or some other small thing. Most of these people, too, will end up buying the book sometime down the road. -Sean Carswell

We had an email sign up list to keep people informed of what we were doing and stay in contact with neat folks. We got maybe 100 (?) people to sign up for that. -Siue Moffat

(5) BACK

Don't forget about the local radio stations in places you're going. We didn't notice any real correlation between getting some press, even a listing, and the audience turn out. Don't know why this is. I don't know if we came to any conclusions as how we managed to get 50 people out in Sudbury and NONE in Regina. -Siue Moffat

I wouldn't have wanted to be without a local promoter, even for the towns I knew. Help with postering, insight about good current contacts, enthusiasm; we had some really great people pulling for us. A couple duds, too, but that's the rule of the street. -Jonathan Culp

(6) BACK

We were amazed at our success, considering the eccentricity and jerry-built character of the tour...we ended up breaking even with our expenses on the door (although we fronted for our own meals) and making quite a bit more from sales - we might have sold 200 items in 30 towns. But, no, it is still not lucrative - considering the real life that awaits your return to domestic reality... -Jonathan Culp

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Siue and Jonathan, when they're not running around Canada showing videos they like to complete strangers, do a distro called Satan MacNuggit.

I've interviewed Sean for the Threat By Example section about his self-published book, but he also publishes and tours with other folk when he's not putting out punk zine Razorcake.

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Have a great venue for indie launches, or want to share your tour stories? Head over here.