Chapter 2 Excerpt

Please note, this is NOT the entire chapter!

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The shows I work in the summer I consider “fair dates”. Fair dates to me mean some sort of event, generally outdoors, that lasted for a relatively short amount of time, that drew huge crowds who were hungry for entertainment. Most of the fair dates I work were 3-4 days long and attracted 20,000-50,000 guests over the course of the event.

Often times they are held in smaller towns where the fair organizers will have the local streets closed off, and the events will be taking place on the street. Most of these events that I work are not county and state fairs, though the information outlined in this book directly applies to them as well.

There are a couple of reasons I did not concentrate on state and county fairs when I broke into the fair date market. One of the biggest reasons was that much of the booking for these fairs is done at conventions and tradeshows dedicated to the fair industry. I had to book my summer fair tour while I was 2000 miles away in college hitting the books. I didn’t have the opportunity to take the time and money to fly in and network. I needed to be able to book massive amounts of work without leaving my college apartment, and be able to do so on a college student’s budget. I was determined to find a way to do this.

I found that local community fairs had ample budgets to make it worth my while, were often not bogged down by committees like the state and county fairs, and were much more receptive to dealing one on one with hiring entertainers like myself, as opposed to many state and county fairs who prefer booking their entertainment exclusively through agents.

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