Exhibiting at Conventions
  • How many of you people have convention experience? [booth or table, not just attending]

    1. How do you approach promoting your comic at conventions while behind the table?

    2. What items seem to sell better than others?

    3. Is there a particular set up you use that makes people want to stop at your table instead of just passing by?
  • 90.00 K
    12 Posts
    AMYA
    242 Fans
    1. You need to be very social, even if you're not normally outside the show. You need to put on an act. Be ready to pitch your story to new readers, and engage in in-depth conversation with current readers. Get them talking about what they like in your work; invite them to hold objects and flip through your work. I often bring a preview with me of  6 unpublished pages. If someone mentions they read online, I'll invite them to have a peek, and use that to feed into their excitement of being at the table. It's all about helping them build an attachment with your work, so they'll want to walk away with it.

    2. Our books always sell the best, followed by our prints and large matt items.

    3. We build huge displays; as in, 12 feet tall. You have to draw them in with the artwork, and capture them with the story. I've attached an image of one of our tables. This was when we were starting to test how high we could go. I think this one is 10 feet from the table top. The next one we went even larger. We always keep our books in front of us- which makes it easy to gear any conversation towards them.


    image
    960 x 717 - 140K
  • What is your backdrop made of?
    How do you get it to conventions?
  • 60327.00 K
    3 Posts
    Really great info Faye, it's definitely appreciated. We'll be attending our first cons this year and I think I'm going to have to ramp up the height... Going further, here's a question to add:

    4. What has been your LEAST successful product? Has there been something that's just a bust?
  • 4. My canvas grocery bags. Seattle recently went plastic grocery bag-free so I thought it would be a good sell. I think the logo I printed on them just was't that great. I'll have to try again with a different graphic.
  • 90.00 K
    12 Posts
    AMYA
    242 Fans
    Our backdrop is actually made from PVC pipe. It is rather light, so flies well. There is a good guide for PVC pipe displays here: http://www.bugpudding.com/bristolboard/2010/03/convention-and-show-display-design/

    As for our least successful item... 8x10 prints. Never again. Now I just do 11x17 posters and 4x6 postcards. No middle range. It's not worth a print run, for the 1 person who asks for a smaller poster size maybe once in ever five shows.
  • 8918.00 K
    144 Posts
    Aurorae
    22 Fans
    Faye, you may want to check out this article I wrote about DIY printing. It's a real eye-opener. My prints are not only printed on demand (I usually print five or so just to gauge customer reaction and then go from there) but they're also WAY HIGHER quality than anything you'll get from a digital offset printer. Letter-sized prints run me about 60 cents apiece while 13x19 prints run me about $1.50 apiece.

    image
  • 5515.00 K
    30 Posts
    I've started doing a ton of conventions (12 last year!) I've actually been there to promote my choose-your-own-adventure books, but I started a regular webcomic recently, so now I'll be promoting that as well.

    I got a couple of retractable banner stands with my book covers on them (the art is pretty colorful so they grab the eye reasonably well), but the number one investment I made was in a button maker. As people pass by I rope them in by offering a free button, then give them my sales pitch while they sift through the bin.

    So far it's working really well -- I think the key is to make cool buttons that people want to wear (as opposed to just something with your logo on it).

    image
    CFhalf
  • 8918.00 K
    144 Posts
    Aurorae
    22 Fans
    So buttons have worked well for you? I've played around with the idea of making buttons for quite some time but never got around to it... Which is stupid because I have a $350 button maker.

    I need to get on that and just make some damned buttons.
    image
  • Great stuff. Just make sure it does not look overcrowded and busy.
  • I'm trying buttons at my next couple of cons to see how they work out (traditionally I've just sold books and prints)
  • 90.00 K
    12 Posts
    AMYA
    242 Fans
    A little late @Rocketpig, but I actually do my prints through a CMYK Offset printer, rather than digital. My work has a lot of blues, which can be difficult to print. So I invest in getting the best print I can! It normally runs me 70 cents a print (11x17). It just never seems to look right with digital printers.
  • 8918.00 K
    144 Posts
    Aurorae
    22 Fans
    That's why I opted for a six color printer (which can go as high as eight or nine colors depending on what you're willing to pay). The printer can achieve any color I've thrown at it... After all, it's made to reproduce photographs. If it can do that, chances are it will handle a drawing. Putting the prints under a glass, the photo printer is actually outputting a higher quality dot than even offset printers. It's truly outstanding.

    But hey, whatever works for you. 70 cents is a great price.
    image
  • The only real common denominator I've picked up in over three years of exhibiting at conventions is that there is no real common denominator where sales are concerned, and I tend to get that same answer when I ask peers with much more experience.

    At one convention you may see your books fly off the rack while the art prints gather dust. At another, vice-versa. At one convention my wife (the artist in our pairing) gets so many commission requests she has to start turning people down. At another, she has nothing better to do than pump out some more hand-drawn sketch cards based on whatever weird concept is in her head at the moment. And no matter how weird those concepts get, someone, sooner or later, is going to buy it.

    These are the general thoughts on the matter I've come up with.

    - Try to stand out from your neighbors, although don't be obnoxious about it. If you're one of those people who can afford a whole booth island to yourselves, by all means go hog wild. If you've got six feet in Artist's Alley, a nice retractable banner, non-white tablecloth, and some display stands to get your items vertical for passerby should work.

    - Have a wide variety of merchandise available at a wide variety of price range. I do not necessarily practice what I preach here because doing this properly requires a significant amount of experimentation and labor in figuring out how much you can transport and set-up/tear down in a safe, timely, and efficient manner. We have yet to try to include anything fragile in our stock because, amongst other considerations, I have the dexterity of a drunken yak. But I know a peer who has this amazing display he and a single assistant can load in, where he sells everything from $1 bookmarks to $20 trade paperbacks to a $200 replica Thompson submachinegun. There are art prints and mugs and t-shirts and all manner of other miscellany, all of which have a retrofuturistic Dieselpunk theme to them as befits his comic, but none really relying on the comic by itself. Which brings me to...

    - Unless you're The Oatmeal, Homestuck, or some other megacomic, don't rely on your brand alone to move merchandise. Even in the case of The Oatmeal the merch tends to be certain images or punchlines people respond to rather than just something with the logo. Joke first and foremost, then the logo off to one side. Or cool picture, and logo off to one side. It's a bit of a bitter pill to swallow for the ego, but strangers tend to buy our t-shirt with the rearing zombie horse because it has a rearing zombie horse, not because that horse happens to be a character in our comic. You will ideally have fans of your work coming by as well, but if you're trying to make your costs back there's a balance to be struck between specific and generic. And who knows? Some of those impulse buys might actually serve as gateway drugs to what else you have to offer.
    image
  • 5515.00 K
    30 Posts
    @Rocketpig If you already have the buttonmaker, I'd say get all over that ****. People get so overstimulated at cons, and I wind up selling a lot of books to people who never would have bothered to stop at my table if I weren't giving them freebies. Plus, if they really like the buttons (which cost me like 4¢ each in supplies), they're much more receptive to hearing my sales pitch.
    CFhalf
  • 338.00 K
    14 Posts
    I'm pondering my own first 'foray' in the whole convention thing soon (got a Back Office book on the way soon - I hope). 
    I wonder if anyone can recommend a good cheap on-line supplier for freebies and such? (The post above really has me thinking about Free Buttons for any future table).
  • We get our postcard-sized fliers done by GotPrint - http://gotprint.com

    They've raised their prices since we started with them, but we can still get 1000 double-sided, full color glossies for less than 5 cents each after taxes. I will admit another part of that is that they happen to be local enough to us we can do a pick-up and entirely negate any shipping charges, if you're not local to one of their centers that will probably tack on some extra expense.
    image
  • 215.00 K
    5 Posts
    I wrote an article about my convention set-up for the Webcomic Alliance. I'll post it in the next comment.
    Chris Flick
    Writer • Creator • Illustrator
    Capes & Babes
    www.capesnbabes.com