Here’s how it went down!

It was from 10-4pm at a Marriott hotel. It was a nice-size room, well set up, with nice large tables! There was no real artist’s alley like at larger conventions, which was kind of nice, since we were right next to the dealers. BCC was NOT an anime convention, it was a comic book convention, so that was what was big. There was a nice diverse crowd though. A lot of parents bringing their children, which was nice to see! I’m sure most comic fans are aware of how the main audience for print comics nowadays is uh…the same audience that liked them 40 years ago.  My Not Alone books are also aimed at a younger crowd, so that was good for me!  I only have 3 left now, AND turned a nice profit on them from the 50 I originally printed out.

My prints did well also. Since this was a traditional comic crowd, I tried to have more “action” stuff this time around. Got a lot of compliments, which was nice. Two groups of people pitched web-business “aids” to me…but I wonder how aware they even are of the webcomic crowd. Tons of people grabbed my business cards too. I don’t think I’ll ever go to a convention without cards. :D

This time around I ALSO had a bunch of original sketches and inked sketches for sale. I was actually a bit sad to part with some of them. I don’t have a scanner here, so I don’t even have a digital copy. BUT, what I’m getting at here for digital artists is that people who go to conventions LOVE originals.  It also turns out that digital art really does help you out on real paper. My sketching was 100% better than when I last tried. It was very confidence inspiring!

I have 3 main pieces of advice this time around:

Always price your items to what is easiest to “break.”  I recommend going by 5’s.  No odd prices! It makes purchases really hard when people keep coming around with 20’s. Be sure to come with small bills yourself.

You look really professional if you have bags for people to use when they buy your stuff. If you’ve got prints, paper bags or tubes work very well. Regular shopping bags for anything else. I forgot both, so I folded up some regular print paper as a mini-holder. That way, no one got their finger grease on my beautiful prints!

Be completely confident in your work! You may sit next to amazing artists who are better than you. So what? It’s YOUR work, and you made it, and no one is going to buy ANYTHING from you if you keep going on and on about how “oh, this isn’t perfect and that sucks and I can do better I swear etc etc emo etc.” The only thing you’ll get is pity-sales by some lady who has too much mercy. This is especially important if you are “out of your element.” Holy freakin’ poopsicle, folks, I don’t read DC/Marvel comics, much less like them! I even dislike most of the movies made off them! I think only 1/20 of BCC goers had even HEARD of webcomics. But damn, I stood out, and that’s how I sold stuff. And, oh yeah, I was the only female comic creator in attendance. Booyeah.  A lot of women were like, “power to ya, girl!” Fun times. Semi-embarrassing, but fun!

The final tally for this small con: $30 spent on prints, $120 made, for a net profit of $90 in 6 hours. Not awesome, but not bad!

My prices: $5/sketch, $10/ink/11×17 poster/Not Alone book, $20/22×34 poster.

Sold 2 inks, 7 books, 3 11×17 posters. Sold ZERO sketches (but gave 2 away) and ZERO 22×34 posters. Either the posters were for the wrong crowd, or $20 is just too expensive (economy? This convention? Unsure!).

Sat next to John and his awesomely-talented son, who have a Facebook comic called Captain Outstanding going! Check that out here. It’s a REALLY funny premise.

Finally, the “character” of the convention was this totally…cliche…youngish dude dressed in a green shirt, a dark brown blazer, and YELLOW CORDUROY PANTS, with a military-green messenger bag and an unkempt beard. Can someone scream “emo poet” a little louder please? I need to bring a camera to these things! That’s all from me! The next con I will be attending is Steel City Comic Con in Pittsburgh, December 4, 5, and 6!

Webcomickers like myself are always looking for new, lazy ways to increase visits to their site. Well, here’s a couple you ought to check out if you haven’t already!

COMICRANK: Comicrank not only works as webcomic promotion, but also as a very unique tracking tool. Imagine a toplist where you never have to worry about voting or updating incentives. For some people who have too much to do already, Comicrank is your cup of tea! Its “toplist” is ordered by number of readers only, so yes, I GUESS you could call it a popularity meter, but I would argue it’s subtly different. That point however, is moot.  To sign up for Comicrank, make an account, fill out the information, and put a small button on your site which functions as a tracker (and does not interfere with other tracking codes like Google Analytics, to the best of my knowledge).  If you are a popular or middle-range comic, you’ll stand to attract some new readers because you will be on the front page of the site. If your comic is new or not too popular, it’s ALSO a good tool for un-inflated reader numbers (Kind of mid-way between Project Wonderful stats and Google Analytic stats).

KAPPUKOOHI BANNER EXCHANGE: Ignoring the very strange, tough-to-pronounce name of this banner exchange, it’s a perfect size for just about everyone  (88×31 button).  This is a great way to reach a very diverse audience. Not everyone who signs up for the exchange will be your comic’s same genre, so your banner could be displayed for free on sites whose readers most likely would not normally stumble upon your comic. Since it’s free advertising in exchange for such a small space on your site, I’d recommend trying it out. I’ve gotten modest results, which bodes well for when more people join, since the exchange circle is still very small. For small banner spaces like this, it is IMPERATIVE that your banner have clearly-readable text, if you include text at all. You have a small space to make an impact, so do it right. I recommend checking out the “members” link on the site to see other banners currently up. (Hopefully this may one day take the place of the ill-fated rubifruit exchange.)

SIGN UP ON UPDATE TRACKING SITES: Bunches of these sites exist, and for minimal work, you can start “advertising” your comic update to all visitors on that site by either merely creating an account, or in some cases, inserting a small code on your webpage. For sites that update many days a week, it’s almost a synergistic effect for gaining readers–your link is always prominent on that site. If you update not so often, it still works, just not as well for those who can update more. Then again, that is a rule of thumb with webcomics: the more you can update, the more readers you will have (dependent also on quality, but that’s not what this article is about.)

Anyways, that’s it from me! Today’s article was more for people pretty new to these kinds of self-advertising. I hope it was useful.

—————-

« Keep one hand on my armor; keep the other in front of you. » Fenni phrased it as advice, though Relan knew it was an order as she slowly stood, using the Keyen as a guide.  Her fingers slowly sifted through his thick fur to find the metal and leather, though it seemed oddly cold.  Or was it just that her fingers were so cold? « Do not use my eyes as a guide, and keep yours shut.  Do not speak, and make no quick movements.  Do you understand, Relan? »

« Fenni, what’s going on? »

« Do you understand? » He pressed.

« Yes, but—» Again he spoke aloud, his language somewhere between a growl and words.  For Relan, it was almost painful to keep her eyes tightly shut, to not see with whom, or what, her kru’shan was conversing.

« What in the seven hells is going on? » She shouted at him, biting her lip and grabbing tight onto his scruff.

« I—I’m sorry, Relan, » he began, « I can’t tell you. » He paused. « They won’t let me. » The Keyen language was passed for a few more seconds above her head, before the leaves around the rustled, and Fenni slowly began to move forward.  « All that they will let me say is, ‘by the Treatise of the Twelve, all who track with the Great Keyens will not be harmed.  They also say by not traveling by river, we cannot freely leave until we are escorted back to human lands. Step up: roots. » Stepping over a root curl just in time, Relan cautiously asked while at the same time knowing Fenni would give no real answer,

« ‘Human’ lands? »

« Many other creatures inhabit these lands, Relan, some far older, others—younger.  Most don’t want others to know they exist.  Humans have a habit of—» He stopped suddenly, anxiety leaking through a shield he was putting up between them.

« Fenni, what are you doing? »

« They don’t want us to talk anymore.  I’m sorry, Relan. From here on out, we walk silent. And hold tight, we might have far to go, » he warned, suddenly picking up his pace to a darting trot.

-           -           -           -           -

Caspian followed Ish’s guardian down a narrow but well-traveled foot path deep inside the hidden grove. Only a little ways in, the Ghost stopped and gestured for the half-blood to continue, alone. Suspicious, he passed beneath the long shadows of two large, stone pillars, one sunken deep in the loam and tilted a little overhead. As though the pillars were a gateway, smaller red-marked, white stones spread in a circle around, and Caspian felt a curious chill as he passed through, but did not let it take his attention.  He could hear voices, angry voices, deep inside.

“…brought an Ayenroki with you? You let him live?” An outraged voice demanded at a near hiss. The half-blood stopped in his tracks, letting his weight settle on the moist ground silently.

“They are sworn to destroy us, Ish!” A different voice snarled. “How could you even think to let him leave here alive?”  A more familiar voice forced itself over the others,

“Shall I have had him killed the moment I discovered what he was?  Now, when Rilketh steals our children and sends them back to kill us? We need allies!” Caspian frowned when another interjected,

“The Ayenroki would never become our allies, Ish, and you know it.”

“I will not accept that!  I will not accept that our debt to our ancestors—our children—will never be paid.” Ish spoke with a fury to quiet everyone else.  “We all will be forfeit unless we survive, and we won’t if the Empire has its way.   I will not have the weight of failing all who have come before on my shoulders.  This curse must end!”  Ish did not wait to see if her words, however much she proclaimed to dislike them, had any impact.  She stormed silently from the circle, walking past Caspian as he stepped silently into the deep shadows, her eyes glowing sullenly red from the light of the moons.  She paused a second, her gaze raking over him and the surrounding trail, before leaving.

Wondering if she knew he had been there the whole time, Caspian stepped back onto the trail after a moment, and continued down to where he had overheard the Ghosts talking.  He knew there could be no more waiting, not if he wanted to get back in time, or alive. Not bothering to fake respect or supplication, he confidently paced down the trail, quickly coming to a small clearing of short, soft grass.  Eleven women talking quietly, angrily, among themselves, immediately noticed his entrance.  Not giving them the time to make the first move, he strode into the center of the circle and said to ruffle them,

“I am Caspian. Why was I summoned?”  He wasn’t too surprised when the ire rose.

“The Ayenroki,” one muttered, her short, striped hair bristling.  From her clothes and pale skin, the half-blood supposed she came from the north.  Wondering if her attitude was colder than the climate to which she was accustomed, he replied,

“Yes. The Ayenroki.  What do you want?”

“Ish was the one who sent for you, not us,” another snarled as they moved around him in a circle, all taller than him, gazes studying every inch of him as they glared down.  He kept his face impassive, fingering the hilts of his swords.  The movement did not go unnoticed.

“He wields swords.  He must be Ayenroki.  No Ghost would dare, not unless they were taken by the Empire.”

“I was not,” he unquestionably stated.

“Yet you bear the mark of a tsen’a vesh,” the pale Ghost pressed again, her mouth stretching into a snarl, “and wear the uniform of an Elite.”

“I don’t have the time to stand here and answer questions about my allegiance!” He suddenly roared.  Using his fist to accentuate, he thundered, “I am an Ayenroki!  I fight with a krandesh! Since the fall of the North I have fought against the Empire!  If you can’t accept that, than Ish is right—your time is over.”  If air could crackle without lightning, Caspian knew it would have then. He continued,

“In the last war, it was the Ayenroki who turned the tide of battle.  Before we joined, nearly all of these lands were held by Rilketh, and since that war, we have kept ourselves separate from the world.  The Isles do not even know what is happening here.  Shi’li has already fallen.  Other lands will follow, and then when you have hidden in your last forest, your last cave, you too will be overrun.  You have no choice but to make allies, and you have no choice but to do so through me.”

Unnoticed during his tirade, another Ghost, a thin, older scout, had come into the circle of the red-marked, white stones.  Talking with one of the eleven women, he turned behind him and growled something low.  From out of the shadows, a tall, shaggy beast paced forward, eyes glowing golden beneath curled horns and armor creaking softly amidst the shaking of leaves above. Their eyes met, and instantly the animal’s narrowed.  Without warning, it bared its fangs and lowered its head, charging forward with a snarl.

Caught off guard, Caspian did not even have time to pull his swords before the beast was on top of him, fangs snapping for his neck.  Dwarfed beneath it, the half-blood’s arms barely shielded his face as he swore, mind racing for a way to fight back.  But almost immediately the animal was dragged off of him, digging its paws in the ground to try to rush forward despite the combined pull of seven of the eleven Ghosts.  Its mouth contorted, forcing out growls that nearly sounded like words, and to Caspian’s amazement, the Ghosts answered with growls of their own.

Warily regaining his feet, the half-blood backed away, pulling out his swords even as the women glared at him.  Soon, the beast calmed down, a soft growl still emanating continuously from its throat.  The Ghosts quickly released it from their holds, and panting slightly, it turned its gaze to them.