Well the convention was a roaring success. Well, atleast a growling success. Loud growling. There now follows a long and rather dry description of everything that happened. Yes!
I arrived around 9.30 and the place was already filling up - there were almost 100 exhibitors on tables all around the hall and it was already quite exciting. I met the other guys from Black List Press who were really friendly and started to set up my part of the table. All the other tables were covered with books and merchandise which made my offerings seem rather meager - I'd managed to print out 30 colour stickers and Em had printed around 100 black and white sample comics to get people interested. I'd spent all the previous night making badges, but the first few hadn't seemed very promising - smaller than I remembered and not very good quality, so I ummed and ahhed for a while and eventually decided to sell them for 10p each - not quite as bad as giving them away for free, but close enough that people will still be interested. I ended up taking around 25 in a lunch box, but I took along the badgemaker and a refil pack just in case.
Here's the table at the start of the day:
(The guys behind the table are Matt (left) and Rob (staring like a psychopath) from Black List Press, lovely fellers both.)
As the event opened I had to go and sit in the 'portfolio' section (all exhibitors had to help out for an hour), and I mostly just sat around and got bored. But when I got back to my tabel I was excited to learn that people had already been asking for me. I sat back down and hoped that the only people who knew me hadn't left already.
Gradually the hall began to fill up and soon there was a regular flow of people past the table, but none of them seemed to be stopping. At this point I decided to get proactive, and start using the most powerful weapon in my arsenal - free stuff. Every time someone walked past and made the error of even glancing in the direction of our table I would shout 'Free comic! Free!' while firecely brandishing a comic at them. This seemed a pretty successful technique and the comics started to disappear pretty quickly, and the people who stopped to read it at the table all had a chuckle which was really encouraging.
Even better yet, people started buying the badges, and buying hard. One guy bought 8, and at this point I realised I was underselling myself - I upped the price to 20p to see if people would keep buying, and started making some more on the spot. But I still couldn't make them as fast as people were buying so I was forced (yes FORCED) to up the price to 30p, just so I production could meet demand. By the end of the day every last badge was sold - I just wish I'd been charging 50p form the start - I would be a millionaire by now! Well, you know, if I'd sold two million badges.
I didn't get much chance to look around, but once all the blank badges had been made I took a little break and went for a wander. The Weebl and Bob table was always packed, but in the far corner of the hall was my main target - John Allison.
His comic '
Scary-go-Round' is really great - probably the best british webcomic out there, so I thought if I could just get talking to him I could maybe get some tips and get him to take a look at Beaver and Steve. I timidly aproached his table with the intention of buying one of his comics to strike up conversation, but I was almost to late - he only had 3 comics left. I got there just in time and bought one, but I was a little star struck, and spent the whole time at his table making mindnumbing small talk. Once he'd signed my book and drawn a rather natty picture on the back cover I panicked and thrust a crumpled sweaty copy of my comic sampler into his hand before running off into the crowd. Mission accomplished.
The best part of the day was meeting people who actually knew the comic - people would come up and say 'I love your comic' . Unfortunately I would usually be so dumbstruck by this that I could just manage to say 'um. thanks.' followed by an awkward silence while I tried to think of something to say. It was usually 'now buy a badge'. I think I got a bit more chatty by the end of the day, but there must be few people who went home wondering if I secretly hated them.
By the end of the day everything was gone - all the badges had sold and all the comics had been taken (I tried to hold onto the last one so that I had something to show people walking by, but in the last 15 minutes someone sneakily walked off with it, so I didn't have anything left at all). I gave out all the stickers and had to hand draw some more just so I had something to hand out, and almost all the hand drawn ones went too. So it was a great success - well, it was if anyone actually comes back to read the comic, and if you ignore the fact that I had to pay for the table and made a loss on the badges. But it was worth it just to have people tell me I'm great. Yes. I AM GREAT.
I'll be back next year!
