When I was first booking Margaret and myself, I sent out self-addressed, stamped envelopes. Sometimes even self-addressed stamped return packets for the demo tapes (this was the old days). I got so few back that I felt it was a waste of money. The few who did respond thanked me, but it was just a couple out of hundreds.

I, too, dislike cold calling and try to contact folks via email first. It'd be great to have someone do the work for us, but in the end, we are the people most interested in getting ourselves bookings. As DebC mentioned earlier, you can't place a value on the great gigs we gotten to do over the years. You also can't place a value on the friends we would never have met if we hadn't played music.