The future is here– digital press kits

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 6th, 2007

From the MySpace blog of Seattle’s Mainstage Comedy Club, in a posting entitled “Press Kits in our Digital Age”:

Just a quick update on press kits:

Mainstage will only book comics who submit their press kits digitally – starting August 15th.

If we do not have a digital press kit on file, we will not consider booking you.

A digital press kit consists of a headshot (with sufficient dpi for our posters, newsletter, and any print we decide to do), a bio which includes well-written information about your act, your credits, your website/myspace info, a link to footage of you, and up-to-date contact information which includes your email and cellphone number.

If your press kit is your myspace page, please cobble the aforementioned info into a document for emailing. Please check for spelling and gramatical errors. All digital press kits should be sent to:

dorothy (at) mainstagecomedy.com – Dorothy is NOT handling the booking, so please refrain from contacting her about it.

We are making this change in an effort to streamline our marketing. If you have already submitted your press kit by mail, please re-submit it digitally.

Please restrict your phone and email inquiries about getting booked. More than two inquiries will be frowned upon.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Note: The word “grammatical” is spelled wrong! (It wasn’t our error!)

But seriously, folks– The comedy business has been drifting toward this for some time now. We’ve been prepared! (In fact, when the call went out last week, via a MySpace bulletin, we were the first ones to respond!) We’ve been sending out our acts on some sort of disc for a while (.mpg on a CD starting in ’03, DVD for the past 18 months or so). And we’ve been offering our promo materials (headshots, bio, resume, other clips) via a web page for so long that, initially, hardly anyone was technically savvy enough to take advantage! But folks are catching up. And with YouTube and other technical advances (and the price drop for so many fancy gadgets like DVD burners and printers that print directly on to the back of a disc), it’s easier and cheaper to make a high-quality, eye-catching product for promotion or sale.

If anyone would like to check out our Electronic Press Kit (Ooooh!), click here. If you’re a club owner, we’ll be happy to furnish a hard copy on request, complete with sizzling demo DVD and color headshots.

Also: Check out The Male Half’s Electronic Corporate Press Kit.