The craft of getting booked

The 11 emails every entertainer sends before a single gig.

By Teresa & Sem Abrahams · 3 min read

The performing was never the hard part. The eleven emails before the show were. Count them sometime, from the first "are you available?" to the final "thanks, you're paid in full." It's remarkably consistent — and every step is a place the booking can quietly fall apart.

1. "Are you available on the 14th?" — the enquiry lands.
2. "Let me check and get back to you." The most expensive sentence in this business.
3. "Yes! What kind of event is it?" Now you're collecting the details you should have asked for up front.
4. "It's a school assembly, about 200 kids." Great — but where, and what time, and how long?
5. "Here's my price and what's included." Re-typed from the last one, hopefully with the right number.
6. "Can you do a workshop after?" A new quote, a new back-and-forth.
7. "Here's the contract — please sign and return." Print, sign, scan, or worse, post.
8. "Just following up on the contract…" Because it's been a week.
9. "Here's the deposit invoice." And a reminder when it's not paid.
10. "See you Thursday — here's where to park." The day-of logistics you'll repeat by phone anyway.
11. "Thank you! Here's the balance." And, months later, the note you forget to send that would have booked them again.

None of these is hard. But there are eleven of them, per gig, and you're doing them between shows, in the car, on your phone, from memory. Multiply by a busy year and the admin is a second full-time job — one that doesn't pay and that you're bad at, because you'd rather be performing.

A school would call, we'd take three days to reply, and they'd book someone else. Two enquiries would land the same afternoon and we'd double-book a Saturday. The performing was never what cost us shows.

Where the chain actually leaks

Three places, always. Speed — a slow reply loses the short-notice bookings (and a surprising number are short-notice). Signature and deposit — the gap between "yes" and "signed" is where a soft yes goes cold. And the follow-up that never happens — the note a year later that turns one booking into an annual tradition.

Turning eleven into one

The reason we built our own system, and eventually ActBook, was simple: fold those eleven emails into one link a client taps to book you. They pick the date and the show, it checks whether you're really free, it collects the details, attaches the contract, takes the deposit — and later it sends the thank-you and the re-book nudge on its own. The eleven emails still happen. You just stop being the one typing them.

Turn your eleven emails into one link →