Last Sunday was my first author’s vendor booth at Sacramento Comic-Con since four years ago. The annual pop culture Convention, held in downtown Sacramento’s convention center, was the first one since the pandemic began. The attendance was scant but only compared to the other years before the world became stricken by the current plague; because Covid is still around, there’s still a lot of people who won’t go to crowded events. Yet, considering that, it was a good turnout. I can’t say a lot about how good Sunday’s con was since I didn’t get a chance to visit the other booths or go to any panels. However, of what I did see, it all looked like it went by really well. And it went by far better for my booth than I had expected since it hadn’t looked that good earlier. 

Preparations

Although the con went by fine, it was still a bit of a struggle for me especially in the preparations the day before and the day of. I got my swag, which consisted of promotional Book marks and my business cards, printed out too late so I couldn’t get them cut by the printing service. I had to cut them myself and didn’t have time to even do half of them. When I shopped around for a cash box I wasn’t able to find one and so ended up using the same thing to hold money in as I did for the previous vendor table: a coffin bank, if you will. This was a lidded cardboard Halloween novelty box shaped like a coffin that I had bought at a Dollar Tree. In fact, it still had its sticky note epitaph stuck to it from the last time which read "You can't take it with you"--and so you can't. 

On the day of the con, the struggles didn’t stop quite yet. After hauling my suitcase of books, like a 1950s door-to-door sales man, from the bus stop to the convention center I checked in and looked for my table. I finally found it after rushing up and down two or three rows several times. It was in between a booth that Sold metal tees with devil images printed on them and a booth that specialised in manga/anime art prints. I set up my stuff and was glad to see that I had everything with me that I needed. Until it came to the prices of my books. A day or two before, I had written on a sheet of paper the prices and the tax that I needed to charge and could have sworn that I packed it. But I couldn’t find it anywhere in my suitcase or backpack. So, I had to figure out the prices and taxes again right there before the con opened. 

During the Con

When the con opened at 10 AM, the traffic was slow at first. I really wasn’t expecting a lot of attendees to stop at my table even just to look. This is a time of rising costs due to a recession resulting from the pandemic. I admit that, because of this, I had to raise my own books’ prices for this convention. Also, I haven’t changed the illustrations to my print books’ covers in nearly the last ten years. The standard market expectations for today’s speculative fiction book covers are photorealistic, digital illustrations. I don’t believe in them, but that’s what the majority of consumers seem to respond to. My print book covers’ illustrations were mostly freehand-made by yours truly. So, I didn't think anyone would care about the art. In fact, I thought they would be turned off by it. I was wrong! 

Eventually, people were stopping by to look at my books every 10 to 15 minutes it seemed! Some of them asked me what the books were about and others looked at the blurb in back of each one. Several said they liked the story concepts and even the cover art! These included ones, who bought my books which I sold twice as many as last time!  Last time I only sold around five, this time I sold 11. Okay, that doesn’t even pay for the $125 vendor table, but it’s more about the promotion than anything. The profits actually come from the online sales since there’s no table to pay for when selling self-published books on Amazon. Many people also found the concept to my upcoming book, "Bad Apps", interesting when I explained it them. So, maybe there’ll be more people waiting for “Badd Apps” when I release it which will probably be summer if not earlier. 

What Sold My Books at a Comic Convention

So, what sold my books at Sac Comic-Con, a pop culture convention that caters to a visual crowd, many of them teens and 20-somethings, or if older who are just as visual as they were when they were younger (which is also my case)? What sold my books at a convention of mostly people who are into comics and graphic novels more than prose fiction? I think the art on the book covers helped sell to this crowd. Many of these con-goers are people who are into print comics and so are probably into freehand art, art made with manual tools such as pencils and brushes rather than with software. I’m really delighted that some people liked my book covers. Hopefully they'll like the stories behind those covers as well. 

Coming Up

The newsletter for February is running later than late! I know and I apologise. Preparing for the convention took up most of my time and literally took up all of my day Saturday. Because it's running so late, I think I'm going to combine the February newsletter with the March one. So, I just ask for your patience and will have it out in another week if not sooner. For those of you who haven't signed up for it yet, you can do so here. It's free! I’d like to thank those people who stopped by my table at last Sunday’s convention and showed an interest in my books, purchased them or both. Next blog post will be our Book-To-Movie review, so be here then!  

Have you been to a comic book or science fiction/fantasy conventions lately?

Until next time . . .