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 I often bring a preview with me of  6 unpublished pages.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.

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?

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/

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.

Great stuff. Just make sure it does not look overcrowded and busy.

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.

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.

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 wrote an article about my convention set-up for the Webcomic Alliance. I'll post it in the next comment.