Note: I have (minimal) experience doing this. I suspect a good way to do it might be the following: First, send out a letter listing a. When the event is b. What's the high end of possible payment (in very general terms) and make it clear that all that is being asked is if the receiver is *not* interested, given that information. You can send that letter to lots of bands at once; any that respond, you can cross off your list. Then, send specific offers to one band at a time, with deadlines for responding. Jesse On Thu, 2011-08-18 at 18:13 -0400, Michael Barraclough wrote:

I'm also still here - hmm, only callers responding so far. I think it varies. I'm the booking coordinator for Palo Alto contra; most recently when trying to catch hold of several bands going to a special dance weekend, I checked with the organizers if it was okay if we tried to catch them, then wrote to all and explained I was writing to all and that there were a lot of chances for ancillary gigs in the Bay Area and if Palo Alto couldn't use 'em I'd still try to hook them up with organizers of other dances. Nobody seemed to be offended by that. As a caller, I've occasionally gotten "this is a really tentative inquiry kind of in case the person we booked already has to cancel and so we're asking if you're available with no kind of commitment at all", and I can understand that and don't mind it. I haven't gotten "we're booking a dance weekend and are checking the availability of a dozen callers and will pick the available ones we like the best", and I don't think I'd like that much. (If that happened I suppose I should be flattered to be on the medium-length list, but I think I'd feel, I dunno, undervalued. But maybe I'm projecting too much.) If I were programming a dance camp - not just a contra-contra-contra weekend or a one-night ball - the mix of talents and personalities would be significant - you're getting a really different weekend if you book George Marshall as a caller than if you book David Kaynor, to pick two callers I highly respect - so I would tend to think about the kind of program I wanted to have and then work in serial, because who I ask to be the second caller depends on who I've hired to be the first, etc. That's not an etiquette answer, but I think it's relevant anyway. On logistics: - As Michael says, if you are asking in parallel, you have to be clear about that. You don't want somebody saying "Yes, happy to do it" and then finding out you can't use her/him. (I made that mistake once and that person hasn't responded to any of my contact attempts in the last year, even when I'm doing a non-parallel booking and am really explicit about.) - If you're asking in serial, you need some kind of timeout. I often say "It would be really helpful to have an answer in the next couple of weeks, even if the answer is "I can't tell yet but will know by x date". You don't want to be waiting indefinitely, get a "no", and then have to scramble. (I think this is part of why big-name talent gets booked further and further ahead. You want to start booking your summer dance camp staff for next year well before this year's camp.) -- Alan -- =============================================================================== Alan Winston --- WINSTON(a)SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025 ===============================================================================