Dear Readers,
Thank YOU. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to write to us, share your own narratives, and respectfully share great ideas with us. For many of you, like, say, Marc Alan Fishman of , losing money at #SDCC isn’t your truth, and we are genuinely happy that it isn’t. Marc’s thoughts are here. Chicago artist friend Gene Ha shared his amazing , which included content on how to display at conventions and how to sell at conventions. Gene also turned us onto the great convention display of artist . I think our friends Donato Giancola and Jason Palmer also do a great job with convention booth displays and here are some images of their booths.
A Jason Palmer Booth Display at SDCC
A sliver of Donato Giancola’s elegant booth display at SDCC
Today Dave and I will be guests on Wendi Freeman’s podcast, regarding this whole convention controversy topic–and other topics–so give us a listen if you’re interested and do check out Wendi’s great podcast. She’s a lot of fun and has great content.
Here’s a final thought for today. Led by our artist friend Jim Pavelec, there is a site called ArtPact.com a free and subscription-based private group dedicated to sharing information among comic book freelancers. I requested that Jim add a forum for creators to anonymously discuss which conventions worked, and why or why not they worked. He assured me that he would be adding that conventions forum module to his site. ArtPact.com enables freelancers in the comic book industry the freedom to anonymously share information without fear of repercussion. Users review the various publishers and art directors they work for, they share contracts, and they have already affected some change within the entertainment industry in terms of contracts and payment terms. There’s a free version, and there’s a $29/year version. I’d recommend you do the latter to get the full benefit. Disclaimer: I make no money from ArtPact.com.
Thank you for reading, and keep those great ideas and topics coming.
Denise
Hey, Denise! Just read a somewhat interesting article at ICv2.com today. It plays very much into some of what you talk about, as far as changing demographics at shows, as well as some in-depth analysis on how much people area spending. The one area it lacked, though, was exactly what they are spending that money on (which would seem the central point to all your posts on this topic). Still, it might yield some useful info for you and Dave. You should give it a look.
http://icv2.com/articles/news/29851.html
Thanks for the roundup! ICYMI: My comics & comedy publisher The Devastator created an anonymous survey to determine how much artists and small press actually made at the bigger conventions. We’ll be doing it again this year in conjunction with Comics Beat:
http://devastatorpress.com/exhibitors2013/
We’d like exhibitors to get a realistic sense of what kind of revenue they can potentially generate at a con.