#comic festivals

Celebrating #TCAF2020 - Digital Initiatives 

Hi Everyone, join us Friday May 8th at 6pm EST and Saturday May 9th at 1pm EST to celebrate TCAF! 

Use #TCAF2020 to share comics and/or zines from creators who you were looking forward to at TCAF this year. And if you were going to be an exhibitor at the festival, make sure to use the hashtag to share your work. We’re going to try and do our best to share and support you! Use Twitter, Instagram and/or Tumblr! 

The 12th Annual East Bay Alternative Book & Zine Fest to Run as Hybrid Event in 2021 on Dec 11-12

We always like to give a boost to indie and grassroots publishing events at Broken Frontier. Details below on this year’s East Bay Alternative Book & Zine Fest. Don’t forget to let us know about similar events by getting in touch with us here. 12th Annual East Bay Alternative Book & Zine Fest (EBABZ) From the sparkling zine community of the Bay Area, the 12th Annual East Bay Alternative Book and…

The Cons & Festivals Are Coming Back! – Dave McKean’s Art For Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2021

With the prospect (say it quietly, keep your fingers crossed) of lockdown easing here in the UK (thanks to the valiant efforts of the NHS vaccination service rather than the government), there’s a newfound positivity in the air and the real possibility of seeing comic events going ahead. Case in point – The Lakes International Comic Art Festival has just revealed the festival artwork for 2021, a…

I went to a Russian Comic Festival and Lived to Tell the Tale: Thoughts and Memories from Boomfest.

  Boomfest, an international sequential storytelling festival, took its roots in 2007 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. This year I was fortunate enough to attend the 10th annual Boomfest. Before I get to my thoughts from the actual festival, let me quickly point your attention to the festival’s venue. THIS venue. Take THAT, North American comic festivals and your soulless convention centres. To be…

I’ve sold my work at many many different events over the last few years, from craft fairs to comics festivals, and I thought I’d put together a post with some tips for first-timers!

Costs vary hugely, so do weigh up whether it’s going to be worth your time & money. Sometimes it can be hard to tell without trying, but in my experience free small-scale events are often a waste of time. Get advice from other creators!

You can often opt for a whole or a half table... I always go for half to keep my costs down, though it’s said that having a whole table can inspire potential buyers to take you more seriously so it’s something to think about.

Basic stuff you need to bring along: 

Tablecloth (doesn’t have to be a tablecloth - just any piece of fabric to hide the inevitable chaos that will develop under your table over the course of the day.) Float & something to keep your money in. Do sort out plenty of change in advance. Food and drink. Bottle of water and some food that’s easy to eat behind your table if you can’t get away. I’ve had fairs where I haven’t eaten all day due to nerves and/or not having brought snacks, and it doesn’t leave you in the best shape for dealing with your customers by the end of the day. 

Other things you might consider bringing. (You can sell your stuff at an event without bothering with any of this... but these are things to think about.)

Calculator (if you don’t have one on your phone and are mentally deficient at maths like me.) Card payment device (e.g Izettle and Paypal Here. They work in conjunction with a smartphone so you’ll need to have one of those too.) In my experience these have been well worth the setup cost and small transaction fee. At Thought Bubble last month, one customer spent £70 at my table - I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had a sign out stating that I took cards. Spare battery! There are loads of portable chargers on the market. Business cards. Sellotape and scissors. Clothes pegs and blu-tac. Occasionally events have clotheslines where you can hang prints above your table, or you’ll be able to put stuff up on the wall behind you. Often this isn’t allowed but good to have blu-tac with you anyway. Price labels for your stock. I like people to be able to see what things cost without having to ask. Bring spare blank labels/spare pieces of paper/pens in case you want to change anything over the course of the event. Bags to offer customers. I offer paper bags which aren’t that useful for carrying but do help protect small or fragile items. If you sell large prints you might want to think about how people are going to carry them if they buy them. I always package my prints in cellophane sleeves... I’ve had coffee spilled on my prints before so it’s definitely worth buying plastic sleeves. Print stand/book stands. I muddled through with improvised print stands for years... but this year bought a proper one that folds flat for carrying and it’s a huge improvement! Make things easy for potential buyers... if they’re worried the prints will fall over if they touch them they’re less likely to flick through them. If you have a mailing list, you could have a notepad/piece of paper out for people to write their emails on if they want to be added. A spreadsheet (or a scrawled list will do too) with quantities of stock you’ve brought with you with space to keep a tally of sales. My sheet has prices and is organised into sections (prints, zines, books etc.) I’m usually on my own when I do events and if I need a quick break I can leave one of my table neighbours in charge, and having the price list will hopefully make it easy for them if people buy things. Decoration... is there anything that’ll make your table eye-catching? Mike Medaglia (whose work has a spiritual theme) decorates his tables with prayer flags.

Philippa Rice makes table-top dioramas... 

My neighbour at Thought Bubble this year Jaime Huxtable had worked on illustrations for an app, so he had an ipad on his table with the app open. Anything which can act as a talking point is useful! And at book/comic fairs, anything that’s not a book or comic will start to jump put at people by the time they’ve looked around thirty tables of books.

Talking. It does help to chat to potential buyers, though it’s a fine balance between being open and friendly and scaring people off. As a customer at fairs it’s nice to feel you can browse someone’s work without them immediately jumping at you. You have to feel like there’s no pressure to buy. But as a seller, it’s a fact that if you’ve engaged someone in conversation they’re more likely to buy something! So don’t be totally silent. Make eye contact and smile. People often draw (I knit) behind the table as it gives you something to do if you sense that the person at your table wants time to browse, and you can easily drop it if you need to start engaging with them. Could you sell badges or have branded bags... anything that people would be wearing/carrying around the event that might create talking-points and send more traffic your way?

One final point on the appearance of your table - don’t overload it too much. If it’s too confusing people may be overwhelmed and move on. I’ve also heard the theory that you shouldn’t put too many of each item out. People are more likely to buy if they think you may be running low... and if you look like you have plenty of everything they may decide to come back later and then not get round to it. 

In spite of your best efforts it might be a quiet event, and you might not be selling much. But you can try to maximise the opportunities of the event in other ways. Are there other creators there you want to meet, or are there new people you haven’t seen before? Chatting to the other exhibitors is great and can be really useful. Ask people where they get their stuff printed or made... where they sell their work. What other events do they recommend? Are there talks/workshops/portfolio reviews at the event that would be useful to attend (as long as someone can watch your table?) Are there publishers there you could talk to? Are shops represented there who you can ask about stocking your books/products? This is something you could do in advance potentially - make an arrangement with a shop that’s exhibiting at the same event that you’ll drop some stock off with them. You might want to hand out mini-comics to people for free, or there might be other ways to promote your work apart from just selling.  

Finally - this is something I had a little trouble with early on! Not everyone will have struggled with this but I did. You don’t have to buy something from every creator that you chat to (or every creator who buys something of yours!) Be upfront and say you’re not allowing yourself to spend - or really you don’t need to say anything at all. If you think you and a creator are genuinely mutually interested in each other’s work you can suggest a trade... but otherwise people will understand of you look at their work but don’t buy. You can easily wipe out most of your profits buying stuff so do what the festival-goers do and make a list of a few bits you want to get and try to stick to it!

NEW POST: Find out our top event picks for July in our Events News!

Welcome to July’s edition of TGE’s guide to things happening in the world of indie films, fiction, comics and the arts.

Film Festivals

The Loch Ness Film Festival, Inverness (24th-26th July 2015) – a multi-location, multi-genre film festival happening in venues around the illustrious home of Nessie. There is also a full line-up of events and talks happening around the festival too. Roots to…