Comic Convention Advice for Indie Exhibitors

After a year of conventions under my belt, I’d like to share what I’ve learned about exhibiting at comic conventions as an indie, small press creator. This advice might be useful to Artist Alley folks and other exhibitors on the Comics Convention scene.

Nah, I don’t know everything, but I did learn a few tips that I feel are worth sharing. Most are basic, but I’m posting them to remind me too.

Also, “Con” = “Comic’s Convention”.

So, here we go:

1. Learn from other creators. I do this all the time, and a convention is a rare place where you can find lots of super-experienced folks to learn from. I ask other artists how the Con is going, what other Cons they do, and see if they have any solutions to some regular con problems. Where did you get your cards printed? How do you sell your book for X$? What distributor are you using? How did you ink that? This info is golden (often representing years of valuable experience), so also be willing to share everything you know, too. Indie folks gotta help each other.
2. If you can, bring a friend and define your roles. In my case, this “friend” is my wife, and she has made the Cons much less stressful. She takes the money, I talk to people. I sign the print/book, she puts it into a sleeve. She grabs the lunch, I watch the booth. This tag-team approach isn’t always feasible, but it does make things much smoother and faster for the customer. And you can have your friend grab lunch too, which is really important to survive.
3. Ship to your hotel ahead of time. We attempted to bring all of our books via luggage, but this turned out to be very expensive and difficult. (They’re just too dang heavy.) Instead, I shipped some product to my hotel ahead of time. Be sure to let your hotel know ahead of time, and label it really big. The real trick is to figure out what shipping method isn’t going to break the bank. For me, it’s the flat rate priority boxes from the USPS. For $8.50 or so, I can ship 30 books in 2 days which sure beats the $50.00 weight fee at the airport.
4. Get your book into the public’s hand. Though this isn’t rocket science, it does really help to spend the energy to try to get people to stop and look at your work. If I can get the book into somebody’s hand, I have at least a 40-50% chance of selling them that book. Don’t let them judge you by your banner; make them judge your art and want your book.
5. Tell your story. Hey, in marketing, story sells. People can be genuinely interested in the story of how and why you do what you do. You might find that the people who are willing to listen to your story might also be interested in your work.
6. If your tabletop arrangement isn’t selling, fix it the next day. You probably don’t want to tie up your table by making a mess of it during the convention, but you certainly can try out new arrangements the next morning. We try to assess what worked and what didn’t during the day, so that we can improve sales the next one. In most cases, we’ve had too much product on the table, and just needed to simplify things for the public.
7. Go vertical. Getting people to see your wares/books is probably the most important thing about tableing a convention. People won’t be able to see your books, if they’re flat on your tabletop. Get as vertical as possible, getting your stuff up in people’s faces. This is sometimes a challenge, based on your product, but keep striving for verticality. I’m always trying to find new ways to do this.
8. Bring snacks. Cons are high energy affairs for most of us creators. It’s really fun and exciting, but all of that talking sucks up a tons of energy. I find that I have absolutely no idea what time it is, so I may not get hungry until 3 hours after lunch. You need to keep your energy up, so pack small snacks like trail mix, dried fruit, breakfast bars, and stuff like that. They charge a fortune for stuff like this at the Cons, so bring it instead.
9. Get your book/comic/product produced well in time for your first Con. This is easier said than done, but it sucks to stress out about receiving a drop-shipment from your printer AT the convention hall. (Why I’m bald!) Why not plan things out better, and get your book a couple of weeks before your first convention?
10. Have a drawing to grow your email list. I’m using them this year as a way to gather subscribers to my newsletter. Plus, it helps get people to stop by your table again, if you have the drawing at the end of the day. I’ve seen exhibitors do this, and end each day of the convention with a big crowd of people swarming their table. (And selling stuff.) How doesn’t that rule?
11. Book your plane and hotel far ahead of time. It’s easy to slip on this one, but it will cost you more money in the end. I don’t know about you, but I want my Con to make money, not lose money.
12. Get some collateral. Sure, if you can’t make a sale, at least have some cheap take-away like a business card, postcard or flier available for people to take. Then, you can at least drive them to your website to check out your stuff later. I don’t think that it looks so good to be spliting your perferated cards right there in person at the Con.
13. Update your site, before the Con. I’ve found that people check my website within 24 hours of getting my postcard at the convention. It’s almost instant. Get your site up and running well in the weeks prior to a Con, not after.
14. For huge cons like ComicCon, hand out a table reminder mini flier (1/12 of a page) so that people can come back and find your booth/table. Just put it out there in a basket with your booth number and your URL, in case they never do make it back. It needn’t be fancy. This is something that I saw last year, and I thought that it would be good to finally try out since some folks said that they just couldn’t find us again.
15. Sleep. If you don’t want to get sick the week following your big con, make sure that you actually get some sleep during the con. I know, you like to party with your comic friends, and that’s cool. But if you run yourself too ragged, you’re just asking to get a post-con cold. For me, it’s a very likely scenario if I don’t get my sleep. We’re old, so this is very important.
16. Wear good shoes. Seriously. I bought a pair of brown Converse as my “Con” shoes, and had the worst blisters of my life… for 2 Conventions. It was awful, and my blisters were the size of a fully grown sloth. My problem is that living in Phoenix, I wear sandals most of the year. This year, I’m wearing my clunkers.

This is all that I can think of right now. Like most of my articles, I’ll be adding to this list as I learn more.

- Daniel Davis
www.steamcrow.com