The thread that will not close
Eleven messages to land one Thursday afternoon, then the guest moves it twice because nobody wrote down which time zone you both meant.
38 minutes per guest, 33 hours across a weekly year
00:00 Guest booking for independent shows
Lock the guest, gather the bio and headshot, and sit down with your questions already written.
MicPrep hands every guest one link that books a real recording window, asks the things you always forget to ask, and files the headshot at full resolution. By the morning of the record your prep sheet is assembled: pronunciation, the three stories worth chasing, the links they want credited and the sponsor read you owe.
612 independent US showsbook their weekly guests here
Encrypted, US hosted storageguest contact details are never sold
Live in one editing sessionimport the show, publish the link, invite
PREP SHEET / EP 118
Ready three days early
- Name recorded by the guest
- Three stories she wants to tell
- Headshot at 3000 px, cleared
- Sponsor read after the cold open
On air in 00:14
Track 01 The four days before the record
Booking one guest costs about forty minutes of email nobody pays you for
Ask any host who ships weekly what actually eats the week, and it is never the edit. It is the thread that will not close, the headshot that never arrives, and the notes you rebuild from scratch an hour before the guest joins.
The headshot that never came
The edit is finished on Sunday night and the only photo you have is a 400 pixel avatar scraped from a conference page. The episode waits while you chase the real file.
Publishes held an average of 2 days
Prep scattered across six places
Research in a doc, the bio in a direct message, three browser tabs you meant to read, and the one question that mattered sitting in your text messages.
Roughly 1 hour 20 minutes rebuilt per episode
The name you get wrong on tape
You mispronounce the company in the cold open, so you either re-record the intro or you leave it and read about it in the reviews two weeks later.
18 minutes of pickup edits, every single time
Track 02 The run of show
Four steps between the yes and the record
Nothing here asks you to change how you make the show. It changes who does the chasing.
-
Publish one booking link
Set the blocks you are genuinely willing to sit in the chair, connect Google Calendar or Outlook, and the link offers nothing else. Guests pick in their own time zone and the confirmation carries the recording room address.
-
The questionnaire goes out on its own
The second a slot is taken, your show's question set lands in the guest's inbox with your artwork on it: bio, headshot, name recording, story leads, the subjects they would rather skip, and the links they want credited.
-
The prep sheet assembles itself
Every answer drops onto one page in the order you record, beside your standing questions and last season's callbacks. Star the lines you actually want, drag two into the cold open, then print it or keep it on the second screen.
-
Record, then publish with the assets in hand
The headshot, three lengths of bio, chapter notes and the guest's links export straight into your show notes template. Nothing is left in an inbox for you to find on release morning.
Two mics, one prepared host
Recording day
The sheet opens with the name clip, then pronunciation, then the three story leads in the order you chose. Under that sits the standing block every episode of your show runs: the opening question, the mid roll cue and the sign off you always ask for.
Track 03 What sits on the desk
Six pieces of the booking desk, built for shows with one producer
Every one of these exists because a host wrote in about the specific hour it was costing them.
Recording windows, not an open calendar
You mark the blocks you record in and MicPrep offers only those, with the buffer you keep before and after a session already protected. Two guests can never land back to back by accident, and a booked slot disappears everywhere within seconds.
A question set for every feed
Run one questionnaire for the long interview and a shorter one for the listener mailbag, each with its own required fields. If a guest tries to submit without a usable headshot or a bio, the form tells them before you ever see it.
The prep sheet assembles itself
Answers, your research notes and your standing questions land on one page in recording order, with a print layout that survives a clipboard. Export it as PDF, send it to a co host, or keep the live version open next to the multitrack.
Name check, recorded by the guest
Inside the questionnaire the guest records five seconds of their own name and their company. You hear it while you write the cold open instead of hearing about it in the reviews.
An asset locker with usage cleared
Headshots keep their full resolution, bios are stored at 40, 90 and 200 words, and the guest ticks the line that clears the photo for promotion. On release day everything is one download, already named after the episode.
Reminders a busy guest survives
A confirmation, a nudge at seven days, a tech check the day before and the room link one hour out, all sent from your show name. The final reminder is opened by 94 percent of guests, which is why so few sessions go quiet.
Track 04 What the numbers do
The hours come back on the fourth episode, not the fortieth
These figures come from show accounts that moved a whole season of guests onto the booking link, measured against the quarter before they started.
Saved per booked guest
Scheduling, chasing assets and rebuilding notes are the three jobs the desk takes off you. Hosts who track their time report the whole saving by the fourth episode of a season.
Questionnaires back before record day
Required fields plus four timed reminders do most of it. Anyone who misses the seven day nudge gets a stripped form that asks only for the bio and the photo.
Episodes held for missing artwork
Once the asset locker is marked required, a guest cannot finish the form without a print resolution photo and a cleared usage line. Weekly Show accounts have not held a publish for artwork since March 2025.
More guests confirmed inside a week
One link, one automatic time zone conversion and one reminder loop close the booking before the guest's week fills up. Measured against the same shows booking by email the quarter before.
Track 05 From the control room
Three hosts on what changed in their Mondays
I kept a guest folder on the desktop and a second one buried in my email, and I still walked into records cold. Now the sheet prints the night before with the name clip attached. My cold opens got shorter because I stopped hedging on how to say things.
We book eleven guests a month across three feeds. The thing that actually changed our week is the required headshot field, because the art request thread simply stopped existing. Our editor now finds the photo in the same folder as the audio, named correctly.
Two guests in a row told me the booking was the most professional one they had done all year, and one of them hosts a show four times our size. That matters when you are asking a stranger for ninety minutes and a photo release.
4,180Episodes prepped
2.1 daysMedian questionnaire return
612Independent US shows
Track 06 Plans and pricing
Three plans, priced like a microphone cable, not like enterprise software
Pick the one that matches how often you sit down to record. You can move between plans in the same week without losing a single booking.
Solo Show
$15per month, per account
One feed, a handful of guests a month, and everything you need to walk in prepared.
- One show with one booking link
- Four guest bookings each month
- Starter question set, twelve fields
- Prep sheet with print and PDF export
- Asset locker, 5 GB
- Email support, answered within one business day
Recommended
Weekly Show
$39per month, per account
For the show that ships every week and never wants to chase a bio again.
- One show, unlimited guest bookings
- Custom question sets with required fields
- Name recordings and story leads
- Four step reminder sequence from your show name
- Show notes export with chapters and links
- Asset locker, 50 GB, usage clearance on file
- Calendar sync for two hosts
Network
$89per month, per account
For producers running several feeds with shared guest history and more than one host at the desk.
- Up to eight shows on one account
- Shared guest history across every feed
- Producer seats with role permissions
- Booking desk view of the whole month
- Branded booking page per show
- Priority support with a four hour response target
- Full guest data export whenever you ask
Every plan is billed monthly in US dollars, with no setup fee and no annual contract. Cancel from account settings at any time and your prep sheets stay downloadable for ninety days.
Track 07 Asked before every walkthrough
Questions hosts send us before they book a call
Three plans, all billed monthly in US dollars: Solo Show at $15 per month, Weekly Show at $39 per month and Network at $89 per month. There is no setup fee, no onboarding charge and no annual contract. The price on the card is the price on the invoice, and it does not move with the number of guests you book on Weekly Show. If your operation grows past eight feeds we talk before anything on your bill changes.
Most hosts publish their first link the same afternoon. You import the show name and artwork, mark the recording windows you are willing to keep, and pick one of four starter question sets. Connecting Google Calendar or Outlook takes about two minutes, after which the link stops offering slots you have already filled. The slowest part is deciding what to ask, which is exactly why the starter sets exist.
Guest submissions are stored encrypted on servers located in the United States, and only the hosts and producers you invite to a show can open them. We do not sell contact details, we do not pass them to sponsors, and we never use a guest's answers to market anything back to them. You can export everything a guest submitted as a single archive, and you can delete a guest record permanently from the same screen. Deletion removes the written answers, the name recording and the headshot within thirty days.
MicPrep reads availability from Google Calendar and Outlook, then writes the confirmed booking back with the recording room link attached. Show notes export as Markdown, plain text or a block that pastes cleanly into Captivate, Transistor and Buzzsprout. Riverside, Zencastr, SquadCast and Zoom addresses can all be attached to a booking, and the guest receives them inside the reminder sequence. If your host is not on that list you still get clean text and full resolution artwork to paste wherever you publish.
You cancel in account settings and billing stops at the end of that month, with no exit call and no cancellation fee. Your booking links go dark within the hour so nobody lands on a dead page. Every prep sheet, questionnaire answer and headshot stays downloadable for ninety days after the final payment, packaged as one archive. After those ninety days the account and its guest records are deleted.
That is the first question almost every host asks, and the honest number is 92 percent. The form is short on purpose: six required fields, a five second name recording and an optional block for the stories they want to tell. It arrives from your show with your artwork on it, not from a piece of software they have never heard of. Anyone still quiet at the seven day reminder gets a stripped version asking only for the bio and the headshot, and that one comes back 96 percent of the time.
Long form The Green Room
The Green Room, our magazine on booking and pre interview craft
Nine reported pieces on guest booking, consent, kit and cost, written for hosts who record a guest every week and edit the same night. Three of them are below.
Track 08 Book the walkthrough
Bring your own show and we will book a guest in front of you
Tell us the name of your feed and how guests get on it today. We run the walkthrough on your show, not on a demo account: a live booking link, your question set and the prep sheet it produces, in about twenty minutes.