Still Promoting at Conventions I Can't Make

The main reason I went to the Alamo City Comic Convention was because someone I met told me that you can make more money at conventions in Texas than anywhere else.  "Texans will buy anything," he said.  I needed that sort of a break, so I looked into getting a booth at the Alamo City Comic Con.  I chose that one because it's near Austin where my uncle lives, and I've been wanting to show Austin to my girlfriend Jamie for a while now.

When I saw the price of the booths, I was taken aback.  $600.  I looked for a small press area, and there was none.  I looked around at other conventions and it was the same story.  It seems Wondercon is unique in having a small press section for independent artists.  It's really a pity because I can't see us independent authors making back $600 plus all the other expenses.

I tried to get a list of vendors who would be at the event, but the website was never updated with their names.  (It said 'vendor list coming soon' all the way up to two weeks before the event, at which point I stopped looking.)  By this time I already had a plane ticket to Austin and Rotary club talks scheduled for another one of my books, so I just went and got a badge to the convention.

I met several vendors, all of whom said they maybe just barely make their money back, and that it's really about exposure.  I suggested the idea of renting table space from them next year, and a couple of them seemed to like the idea.  One of them called it "sublet renting."  I'm going to try it at that convention.  I'm also going to see about hiring a model to cosplay at the front and hand out flyers, and also offer a giveaway to attendees if they write down their email addresses.  This might be a good way to proxy myself into these conventions that are too expensive for me to go to.

Before I left the convention, I set out a bunch of flyers in the common area.  This only worked slightly as I got five new views the day I put them out, all of them around 7 pm, soon after the convention ended.  So the tiny spike was probably from that, but it wasn't enough to justify going out of my way for it.  I'm really coming to believe that the best solution is anything that involves building the mailing list where I can be certain to personally send people things rather than counting on them to check out my projects.

Sci Fi and Comic Book Conventions I Want to Attend

I’ve been talking recently about what worked and what didn’t when I released book 2 of the Relic Worlds series; and more importantly, what I learned.  In one weekend I released book 2, presented the Relic Worlds series at Wondercon, and gave away book 1 in a KDP Select free promotion.  The result was not a lot of immediate sales, but a lot of people who are now following the series.

As a result, I’ve begun to plan for more online promotions on Facebook and Twitter, I’m doing a newsletter campaign on Mail Chimp, and I’ll be doing another free book promotion in conjunction with the second book having a countdown deal.  These are all the online plans, and the other half of the equation is networking in person.  This is best accomplished by going to conventions, so I’ve made a list of the conventions I plan to go to.

I was told that Texans will buy anything.  In fact, I was told that Dallas has the best sales rate of any comic book/sci fi and fantasy convention in the country.  Denver is apparently a close second.  I’ve decided to make my trips to these conventions coincide with trips my girlfriend and I want to take, and since we want to see Austin, I’ve decided my next convention will be Alamo City, which takes place in San Antonio, (just an hour’s drive from Austin.)  San Antonio supposed to be a pretty fascinating city itself, so I’m looking forward to that one.

I plan to keep Wondercon as sort of my “home base” if you will, building a regular following there while I travel to other places just once each to build my following.  I also want to attend Emerald City, which is in Seattle, and Chicago’s C2E2 Pop Culture convention.  Unfortunately, both of those are right around Wondercon, and that might be too much intensity in too short a time, (not to mention the expense.)  So I might only do one of those two.  Finally, I want to do New York Comic Con, though that might be way too expensive.  However, it’s the largest Comic Book convention, even larger than San Diego Comic Con, so it might be worth it.  Or it might just swallow a small project like mine up whole.  Maybe I should do that one a little further down the line.

I’m also looking at Sac Con, which is in Sacramento, and Nerd Con in San Diego, since they’d be close.  I did Loscon, and they want me back, but SO FEW of the people at that convention go into the dealer’s room that it’s not really worth it.

I’ll be looking at more conventions, and I’ll be going to as many as I can afford.

http://alamocitycomiccon.com/