The Alliance gang minus Antoine. (That banner is actually frickin' HUGE!)
Whew! That was fun!
With all the preparation one does for exhibiting at a comic convention, it’s easy to forget the oncoming aftermath. And, in my case, the aftermath is compounded by a bad cold I took home as a souvenir. I think my throat is going to burst in flames and I could pass out from this fatigue at any given momen—-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz * urk? * What? Oh right, typing.. typing…. Nonetheless, I will try to give you fine Z&F readers a summary of my hectic weekend with the Webcomic Alliance at Chicago’s C2E2!
You may recall that C2E2 last year was my very first exhibition at a comic convention, so it was interesting to see both how I have improved my pitch and selling ability, and how the convention itself improved. Happy to say it was pretty much thumbs-up across the board!
I flew into Chicago on Thursday night, and met up with Byron & Kurt of Webcomic Alliance, as well as Kurt’s friend “Coder Mike”. Ken’s flight arrived Friday morning, just in the nick of time. Byron was awesome enough, being a nearby resident, to take all of our books and supplies we had shipped to him to the McCormick convention center on Thursday. Ummmm…… Except for mine. I had to go the entire first day without my main Z&F collection (Vol. 1), but Byron did manage to get them to me by the end of the day. However, surprisingly enough, I did fairly well with just my Abby’s Adventures kids books and the Z&F mini collection on Friday. Saturday was busy. Busier than I recall last year. People were very interested, but reluctant to buy, which sometimes happens. This is not necessarily a failure, as I did promote Z&F and pass out a TON (and I mean a TON) of bookmarks. I also collected an expansive list of emails for the Z&F newsletter, which in my opinion, is even better than bookmarks. Sund
ay was a terrific day for me, but that’s due to C2E2 promoting “Kids Day”, and both my comic and kids’ book series are family-friendly. I donated some homemade Abby’s Adventures coloring books to the kids day events, and even had a mother and daughter (named Abby) show up at my booth looking to buy an Abby’s Adventures book! Despite being cut short, Sunday was my best day. I really should look into doing more kids events!
I wish I could have spent more time checking out Chicago, seems like a wonderful city! I did get to finally sink my teeth into a deep dish pizza, and feast on an Italian Beef sandwich…. And also some of the best Mexican grub I’ve had in a while. Good food, good friends, comics and geekery to the max, all in all a great weekend!
On to the next one, which is in TWO weeks right here in Philly!
Pictures!
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Hey, you sent the freakin’ books so early they got put to the side when I had to work on a client’s stupid PC. So, blame my client and your penchant for getting stuff done WAY early. Come on, to be a true artist, you have to do stuff last minute. It’s in the Union contract, man…
The show was much better. I miss all of Friday due to a client’s “emergency” and thus your books got there late. They would have been there much sooner but I got stuck at my home office. That won’t happen again for sure. Lesson learned.
Artist Alley is the place to be. I made nearly as much on commissions as I did on book sales, so that was a huge increase over last year. By next year, we’ll have this down pat! See you in October for NYCC!
Thanks for sharing your con recap Dawn! I have a table at the Philadelphia show as well, so I guess I will see you there.