Here it is, as promised. Those of you considering going to conventions for the first time, or even you convention veterans, here’s my experience from the Corn Hill Arts Festival, from the beginning. I hope my experience can help all of you at your next convention. Keep in mind, Corn Hill is NOT a comic convention. It is a totally different demographic than what attends comic-oriented events. It’s a FESTIVAL. Tons of booths, no central theme, everyone from young kids to older folks.  I still believe the experience to be important, so I’m going to share it all, but keep that fact in mind please!

First, the Corn Hill Arts Festival is an annual art event in Rochester, New York, USA. It’s outdoors, 2 days, from 10am to 5-6pm.  I applied for an Emerging Artists booth after stumbling upon a listing for that at Craigslist (completely by accident! I NEVER go on Craigslist!). Well, it was a complete SHOCKER that I got a booth, because let’s face it: comics are considered the black sheep of the art family. Even lawn ornament makers get higher esteem, not to knock them, because I like ornaments, but we are all aware that comics are looked down on by the majority of people on the planet…especially those who don’t even READ comics….but okay, I digress. Anyways, the booth was $15 compared to the normal $300. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for a poor graduate like myself, so I went for it and actually GOT it.

THEN, okay, get this, from a previous article I wrote about the festival here at WWS, the Corn Hill organizers noticed me (go you, WWS readers!). THEY contacted the Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester’s newspaper, who wanted to interview some of the emerging artists. And then, this happened:

You can read the full article here. This was Saturday morning’s paper, the first day of the festival. Okay, um, I had no flippin’ idea this was going to happen. I was expecting some sort of small itty blurb on the back page of something hidden between car dealership ads and dating service ads. Yes. Um. I fluctuated between D: and XD for the next 4 hours. But hot damn! Check out Ravar, front and center! How many comic characters can boast that?!

ANYWAYS…! My booth set ups, day 1 and day 2, respectively:

My sister Dien manning my booth <3

That's a genuine Indiana Jones replica fedora.

Notice the huge-ass 6×2 full-color vinyl banner. This was my frickin’ debut folks, and I didn’t hold back. If I recommend anything for anyone doing a convention or festival, a banner is my number 1 recommendation! It attracts eyes! It’s a purchase that pays for itself! For this banner, I paid $85.  Banners with 1-3 colors are FAR less expensive, if you care to design that way (cost is by the square foot, and by the number of color). Many businesses gave me quotes of $100-150, and that was quite a rip-off. Alex Heberling of Garanos says she got one for $50. If you are preparing for a convention, open those yellow pages, call everywhere, and get quotes. Make sure you have your specifics on hand so you don’t sound a moron either.

WHAT I WAS SELLING:

I’ll start with the shirts, since they were most popular items.  My T-shirts had absolutely NOTHING to do with my comic. I’m sorry folks, but anyone who thinks that slapping their logo or characters on a T-shirt works is in for case of broken piggy-bank and depression. Why would anyone buy merchandise with characters they didn’t recognize? If you are going to convention or festival to SELL things, it’s not about YOU. It’s about the people TO WHOM you are selling. This is not to say your characters CAN’T sell, just they need to be part of a design more easily accepted by people who don’t know your work.  I had 4 shirt designs, all with a different demographic in mind:

Zombie T-shirt (top left, first image): SOLD OUT, 10/10. Extremely popular. Targeted to males 16-30.  I bought each for $16 at a local printer (small run, more expensive, plus 2 colors and a set-up fee. Would be less the next run I do, since no set up fee, and a larger batch since I know it’s popular. The more you buy, the less expensive each is. Most stores have minimums orders of 12.) Sold each for $18, should have gone $20 probably. Made $180. I had people ask to reserve one the next time I printed it. That’s a good sign! I will be making more designs on this theme. I encourage you to capitalize on themes NOT ASSOCIATED with your comic. If you are attending a gaming/anime convention, come up with a gaming shirt that makes people laugh.  If you can make people laugh, they stop and talk with you, and you can convince them to buy the merchandise.  DO NOT INFRINGE ON COPYRIGHT. This means, to legally make money, don’t put a character you don’t own, or mention a trademarked name (Nintendo, etc) on the shirt. Guys, that’s illegal. More and more conventions are enforcing this rule.  Be aware of this.

Polymath T-shirt (last one folded on the table, large size here to read): sold 3/10. Targeted to 25-45 year-old men and women. I decided to print this shirt because it was the one with the most views in my online store.  I bought each shirt for $12.20 and sold them for $15. Made $45. This shirt had a lot of [meaningful] text on it. I hung it prominently so that people wanted to stop to read it when they saw it. This gave me time to engage them in conversation.  It was a strategy that I discovered accidently. Present some curiosity that makes people pause. If they pause, you can talk to them. If you can talk to them, they are much more likely to buy something.

Fighting is my Preferred Method of Meditation T-shirt (the only T-shirt I’ve ever sold multiple times through my cafepress store) Targeted to men 18-30 who watch or engage in fighting/MMA/UFC/martial arts.  At the same cost as the polymath T’s,  I sold 2 for $27 total (one of them had brushed up against some rust, so I took of $3 bucks). This is my oldest design, I hadn’t really expected it to sell all too great, but since it’s the only one that’s actually sold multiple times before, I decided to print it.

Ban Aerial Hunting T-shirt. This was one I did as a gamble. It was targeted to liberal women, 25-40. Okay, that’s about half the population of Rochester, but this design sold ZERO. Zilch. Nada. None. I don’t think I’ll attempt any politically-themed shirt again. I will however be sellings these on my site…in case anyone is interested…ahem.

While I’m still on the subject of shirts, SIZES are very important. I recommend this ratio (out of 10): 1 small, 2 medium, 4 large, 2 XL, 1XXL.  XXLs cost more than the rest, so if you can’t go for that, probably 3 mediums. Also, the more colors on the T-shirts, the more expensive they are. I changed a lot of my designs to single colors, except for the zombie shirt.

Not Alone Comic Books, printed by Ka-Blam: A LOT of people stopped by to pick these up and browse them. They by far were the most impressive part of my booth. Anybody can make a T-shirt, but few people have a book with their name on it.  I sold 18 books at $10 each for $180 total, and each book cost me $7.

Prints: prints and posters are what most people usually sell at conventions in my experience. At the festival, prints were NOT popular. The only prints I saw people buy were photography prints, or pop-culture (MJ tribute) posters. I’m unsure if the CONTENT of my posters is simply poor, if it’s just the wrong audience. Until I attempt to sell them to a comic-oriented audience, I won’t know. I sold only 2 11×17 prints for $10 each, for a total of $20. Each 11×17 cost me $2.50, so that was still a lot of profit on each.  I had 20 11×17 made, and 8 22×34 posters. The 22×34 posters were top qulaity AWESOME prints, and cost me $31 each. I had them marked at $35 to sell. I also made the posters a 4-image series in the attempt to sell multiple prints to one individual (with the mind-set that since it’s a series, you have to collect them all, a la pokemon!), but that did not work. I would encourage others to try something similar and let me know how it works though!

WHAT ELSE I HAD:

BUSINESS CARDS! I think the only thing I would recommend before a large banner for a convention is business cards. I handed out over 100. My business cards were so incredibly eye-catching, people wanted to take more than one. If nothing else, it was a totally memorable card, unlike something cheap on card stock, printed at home. That works, I guess, but I wanted to look professional. A good business card REALLY can give you an edge. I recommend print100.com, which was where I got mine done. You can add me as a referrer (warofwinds@gmail.com) and they give me credit there. Be awesome, go! Get cards!  Taka gave me one of his when he showed up. They have rounded corners and are awesome, by print100 also. I keep cards on me always! If someone mentions websites or characters in a conversation, I can pull one out and hand it to them.

Commission examples: these were popular, and I had tell people multiple times I could not sell them since they were other people’s original characters I had been commissioned to draw. The second day, I displayed these much more prominently than the first. Many more people took my card and said they would be in touch.  It was definitely a goal of mine to drum up some commission business. A couple people have already emailed me about jobs.

Aritsts Statement/biography/ “Who is KEZ”: I had a short biography of me, how I started comics, how I make comics, that kind of thing. It was a perfect conversation starter, especially when I was busy talking with one person and other people were at the booth. On the second day, I had this statement right above the newspaper article.  When people found out that I have a degree in Biology, not arts, well, that was a whole conversation right there!

EXTRA STUFF I BROUGHT THAT I’M REALLY GLAD I DID:

I am the kind of person who likes to be prepared. Prepared people don’t look like morons when they realize they have forgotten really important things more experienced people would have brought. I had what I call my “miscellaneous items box.” This box contained: clothesline, scissors, clothespins, paperclips, duct tape, masking tape, sharpie markers, pens, pencils, extra sheets of paper, T-shirt hangers and shopping bags. Having shopping bags was a great touch. A lot of booths didn’t have any, so people were just  tucking it uncomfortably under an arm. Saving a couple bags from your next grocery store run could really help you out. Also, a trash bag is nice to have for yourself.

The clothesline was perfect for hanging posters. I padded the clothespins with soft cloth to keep them from making indents in my posters as well. I used the clothesline to hang T-shirts too (Yay knot-tying skills! I swear, the most useful class I took in college was “Adventure Challenge.” David Berkey, you rock man). Hanging the T-shirts made people stop to look, and then they looked in the booth as well. We used TONS of tape. Bring that, definitely. I used paperclips on the second day to pin prices to the T-shirts as well. I hate bringing real pins with me. I drop them, lose them, prick myself…yeah. I stay away from pins.

I also brought boxes with me. The free kinds that you can pick up at BJ’s, Sams Club, Cost Co, etc. I used these as display boxes for items that I did not want to get ruffled. Look for the ones that can be folded inside out. It saves you the time of covering up annoying “Old Spice” logos.

I had packaging containers for the poster prints: cheap little tubes you can pick up at the post office for a buck or 2. This was my sister’s idea. Brilliant. I wish we could have gotten more use out of them though. If nothing else, I can sell the psots online and ship them now, no problem.

I brought chairs. THREE chairs. One each for me and my sister, and one extra, INVITING, empty, chair for other people to use. It got a lot of use.

Tables. At a convention, they usually provide these, but at festivals, they don’t. Luckily, we have a family friend that let me borrow his.  Speaking of tables, I brought a sheet to cover them. A sheet is less classy than snazzy black fabric, but far more classy than an uncovered table. Plus, you can put your packaging underneath the tables and it’s hidden.

Towels and plastic covering: important for any outdoor event, not so much for an indoor event unless you’ll need to transport items through the rain to your car or something.

A cooler full of snacks and bottled water. This saved our lives, because the food there sucked and made me want to hurl. Eww. My stomach just cringed thinking about it.

WHAT ELSE I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY:

I wanted merchandise I could sell for under $5:  stickers and bookmarks mainly, but I didn’t have the TIME. As a digital artist, I had to CRAM out everything in time for this festival.  IAt the next thing I do, I want to have shot-glasses for sale. Yeah, my awesome printer guys can print ANYTHING for me. Maybe fleece blankets and beer cozies. Maybe stationary. If you’re serious about getting stuff printed, real high-quality stuff, email me at warofwinds@gmail.com and I’ll tell you who does my stuff. They have my highest recommendation, and VERY fair prices.

More themed stuff. Guys, I really love discussing zombie scenarios, weapons, martial arts, etc. Next time, I’ll have more of that. Geeks like me love that kind of stuff, and geeks are all over comic conventions. There are also tons of geeks walking around art festivals, usually dragged there by their totally un-geeky counterpart who disapproves, but humors, that side of their significant other.

More examples of The War of Winds. Other than the banner and one comic page I had printed out, I did not have many examples of the style, which is MUCH different than the Not Alone style.  It’s hard to print that comic out, y’know? Infinite canvas is EXTREMELY annoying in print.

Cardboard cut-outs. Someone wanted to buy Ravar. Sorry guys, but my GREEN WARRIOR (those of you who follow me on Twitter will get that reference) is all mine. I think I might get my printer guys to do some cardboard cut outs though.

IN CONCLUSION:

I did not break even. Not even half even. About 1/4 even after taxes ($432 total, out of about $1200 spent). The crowds were far less than expected, mainly due to a big ‘ol storm that ruined the prime hours of the festival on Saturday. I couldn’t display anything for about 2.5 hours. And then it took people another hour to come back. 250k were expected. I would estimate that in those 2 days, in total, I saw about 4-5k in my area of the festival. Now, keep in mind, Corn Hill is a HUGE festival. The booths go on for miles. There were probably many people who simply never found the Emerging Artist area. Regardless, the experience was extremely positive. Because of that newspaper article, I had innumerable people stop by, some JUST to see me. I had a young girl up to me and show me her portfolio. I think she was ten or eleven. That was probably the highlight of the whole weekend right there. I had a man pitch a book adaptation/movie deal to me. A lot of friends stopped by and told me how proud they were of what I was doing, or how happy they were I had the opportunity, or just to show some support with their presence. My dad bought 10 copies of the paper to send to relatives. Everyone was extremely positive, and totally supportive—when I had expected the complete opposite!. At times, I had crowds of people, and I talked to them about comics–the ART of it, how I make it, what of skills it requires…it was wonderful. Remember, I did my college thesis on comics, so that kind of thing is important to me!

Now I know exactly what I’m going to do differently, what sells, what doesn’t, and frankly, just how to HAWK merchandise. If you are going to a convention, be out-going, dammit, not that introvert in the corner drawing in the sketchbook. When you are drawing, no one wants to interrupt you to talk with you!  Drawing on-the-spot commissions is different than drawing in the hopes that no one talks to you but buys your merchandise anyways. Smile, say hello to everyone. Be a CHARACTER.  I, for example, wear a fedora. I can pull that off. People remember the crazy comic-making girl in the fedora.  So many people at this festival looked depressed in the backs of their booths, avoided eye contact, and talked to only a handful of people when rivers of people passed by.  Each person is a prospective buyer. If you see them stopping to look across the way, invite them over. Make them feel comfortable. Show them the merchandise they are looking at. Tell them about your passions, it will make them connect to you and your work, and may help them make the decision to buy it.  When someone asks you that question they are GOING to ask you (“hey, what’s your comic about?”), BE ABLE TO CONDENSE IT INTO TEN SECONDS. When people ask you what your inspiration is, same thing! Ten seconds! If they have more questions, they will ask. A conversation is TWO sided, guys. You yack someone’s ear off describing the backstory of your world, and that person will nod and walk away REAL fast.

Don’t be shy or ashamed of anything. Be DAMN proud of your work, even if it’s nothing like the person’s next to you.  I had a problem with this. Not Alone, the comic I had for sale, is to me a pretty horribly-written story. I describe it as cotton-candy, while my other work, The War of Winds, is beef stew. But you know what? I was the only person in the history of the entire festival (that I’m aware of) that wrote, drew, designed and self-published a frickin’ BOOK.  I was the first comic creator PERIOD. And I was proud of that.

Phew, DA’END.  Oh wait. Yeah, I hope to attend a bunch of other festivals in the area. A couple people asked me if I’d be at the East End Fesitval, but it looks to be mainly about music, so I dunno. I’d really like to go a couple comic convetions in the area. I’d LOVE to go to Anime Weekend Atlanta with some comic buds. I have to see if I can make back the cost of a plane ticket, a room, and a weekend pass first.  I need a few days off to think about this stuff though. Anywho, those of you more experienced at cons and selling stuff, I don’t know how my strategy jives with yours. I admit to a shotgun approach in my merchandise. But I needed experience on what sells, and now I know.  Some of you will probably say my stuff was underpriced or over-priced. My goal was to keep everything under $20, since it’s mainly a cash-only festival. Oi. Ok, NOW the end.