I originally posted this on Blusky in response to Marie Enger asking about how artists did sales wise at Emerald City. Then my pal Nero asked that I repost it as a blog post so it is easier for creators to link around. Since I don’t like social media much, I’m happy to obligee.
Here’s what I do at conventions, with the preface that these are things that work for me – someone who doesn’t sell fanart and 90% of my table is books.
Banners
Most people have a single con banner with their name on it and that banner is usually 3 feet wide. Instead, I have two banners that have the name of comics I sell. One is for Sorcery 101 and one is for The City Between. This is because I’m not a big enough name for my name alone to be a draw. But the title of my comics pull people in and make them ask about that specific title. Or in the case of Sorcery 101 (which started in 2005 and ran for 12 years) ask why it sounds familiar.
I also made sure people can also read them from far away. Almost all cons use branding that is red, blue, or green. So the Sorcery 101 banner is orangey yellow to stand out The City Between banner is yellow up top for a similar reason. Both banners are 2 feet wide instead of 3, because the 2 foot banner fits in my checked luggage/suitcase. Here is a link to the specific banner.
Signage
My price tags are cards that go behind each book. I read a book titled Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. It explains that the average person looks at a sign for 30 seconds. So they won’t read a long price list. All mine say are “Title – $”. The exception is the few pins I have are on a card that says all pins are $15 or $10 with the connected book. Then the book title is next to the pin.
Upsell
I have discounts/deals but they are all about buying more books. The pins don’t get discounted with each other, but do with a book. I also have a tote bag with The City Between skyline that is $15 or free with purchase over $60.
Book Sales are Priority
Both tote bags I sold at Emerald City are connected to The City Between. So if someone likes or comments on the tote bag, I use it as a prompt to say “It’s connected to my comic series about queer werewolves in the future.” to get them to look at the books.
I also tell parents walking by (slowly, not ones in a rush) that the fairytale books are kid friendly if they are looking for something for their kid. I also have the kid friendly books separete from the stuff aimed at adults.
I also have elevator pitches for all my comics. It is one sentence so I’m not talking someones ear off/or explaining the book until the person buys something or leaves. I want them to know what it is about but still have time to think/browse on their own.
These elevator pitches are also easy to type up for a table helper to repeat if I’m away. Here are examples:
- Sorcery 101 is about an inept sorcerer learning magic from a grumpy vampire. I did it for 12 years and those two giant volumes are the whole thing.
This tells them the plot but also that it is a finished story (which is definitely part of a selling point for longer series).
For The City Between I say:
- It is about queer werewolves in the future. The books can be read in any order.
Then I have elevator pitches for the specific volumes.
I think refining elevator pitches are important for selling books because unless everything about the book is clear from the cover like Marie Enger’s Death to the Wizard Kings it might not be obvious to someone that they might like it.
To go back to The City Between, the cover of the Dead Deception gets the mystery/noir side across, but not the queer werewolf part. Lot of the ways to make it visually read as queerer would make it look like a romance, which is the wrong message for the series. So I’m letting the individual covers share the more book specific parts and verbally say the series is about queer werewolves is what works best. And it helps sell a book that can’t fit everything in a design.
Similarly while people like the cautionary fables books, a big selling point is there is on for every continent. And a lot of people get drawn to one cover but don’t immediately realize that they are labeled by region.
Why I Don’t Sell Certain Things
I mostly sell books because designing merch or designing prints is a different skill than making comics. I don’t particularly like designing merch and when I’ve tried I didn’t have much luck with it because it isn’t a skill I’ve worked on developing. I also don’t particularly like buying merch, so I never really know if a design is something that is gonna make someone really into pins buy a pin or what makes stickers sell. So I’ve accepted that and focused on my strengths.
The main non-book thing at my table are the tote bags I’m selling. Those are both designed by Unicorn Empire. I commissioned them and explained The City Between. They knocked the design out of the park.
Also, I’m not the best at designing prints. So I don’t sell them. I table with Kory Bing at Emerald City Comic Con and she’s great at designing prints. She’s got cool dinosaur prints which people do mostly buy because they like dinosaurs, but if I tried to make a dino print it wouldn’t be half as good. And if we both designed a werewolf print, her’s would be more striking than mine.
Not in the blusky thread but bringing it up since some people would probably ask, I also don’t sell fanart because I think it is a trap. I’ve seen a lot of artists say they HAVE to sell fanart to make back their table and also that no one is interested in their original stuff. The elevator pitch part of selling books is the most helpful way to get people to buy your creator owned things. When you have mostly fanart or fanmerch, the recognition of the show/movie/game is doing the elevator pitch part. So you aren’t learning how to sell your stuff and are relying on the property to do the selling for you. Also, when someone buys a print or charm you made of Baldur’s Gate 3 or whatever, are they buying it because they like you or because they like Baldur’s Gate 3? It leads to a vicious cycle of being dependent on fanart to make back costs and never building up your own work. So while it was rough starting out, I’m now at a point where my book sales are making me about the same as some of the people only selling fanart at Emerald City (based on replies to Marie’s blusky thread).
Finally, I have a QR code for people to sign up for my newsletter because I fequentally forget to print flyers/cards and social media is very much in flux right now.
Anyway, that’s the run down of how I run my table at cons as a person who mostly just sells books.