Just been catching up after a break and reading this thread with a degree of puzzlement.

First of all, the only times I have been offered the % or flat fee choice is in situations where the % would represent more than the flat fee, so it's hardly a hardship. It does mean that the club would get to make a slight profit on the door take, but as I judge whether or not to take the gig on the basis of the flat fee (in case it all goes pear-shaped because of another competing event in the same area or a sudden epidemic of 'flu) I have no problem at all with the club making that profit. It's not at my expense. I do my best for all gigs I play by using my mailing list (not just emails, but postcards to street addresses) because it's always in my best interest to have the biggest audience possible.

I can choose whether or not to take the lower paying gigs, just as a club can choose whether or not to pay my usual fee. I don't worry about the price at the door. The only time I've been seriously annoyed is when I agreed to do a gig for the door take and found that they passed a beer mug around half way through the night and suggested a donation of £1 - which represented less than the cost of a pint which I considered insulting.   The room on that occasion was packed, the audience very appreciative, so why on earth the organiser thought £1 was appropriate is a mystery to me. Luckily I sold a good quantity of CDs, but money from CD sales tends to go straight into the fund to make the next one so it's not the same as a fee in my accounting system.

As to this business of "fair pay" we're in very murky territory. Because I'm fairly useless at self promotion I do a number of different things to make ends meet and pay the bills, and I'm aware of how many people in "real" life work incredibly hard for remarkably little money, often travelling long distances, doing a lot of research in their own time and having had plenty of unpaid training. So I do still consider it a privilege to be able to earn any part of my living by doing something I love. I'm also constantly impressed by how hard the club organisers work and how much of an effort they make to ensure their club survives, when for them it's on top of a day job and for non-commercial rewards. My own experience over the past decade at least is that I've almost always had excellent accommodation offered to me and wonderful hospitality (I have some other tales to tell from the eighties, but that's a long time ago now).

There are other comparisons to be made: I have had long chats with people involved in the comedy circuit and the jazz circuit, both of which tend to run on similar lines to the folk clubs. Folk performers seem to get a better deal, from all I've heard, mostly because of the sense of community that we've built up over the years. And my husband is an actor working in the historical interpretation field - again, my normal fee is better than his, even though for his work there's considerably more job-specific research to do and longer hours to work after the travelling and preparation times.

Of course I'd love to have more gigs, earn more at each one and sell loads of albums. I'd also love to rate a feature in fRoots, be on Women's Hour, adopted by Smooth Ops and all the rest. If there's anyone on this thread who can help me with any of these aspirations, please let me know! In the meantime, I'm only worried that most clubs and most organisers are past their first flush of youth, so I'll check out George's other thread to see how we can improve matters in that direction.

Anne
http://www.annelister.com