Festivals & Cons

I've only been to a few ren faires, but as a customer, it's always more comfortable to go to a booth with lots of items - or more than one - and at different price points, rather than the booths selling just one thing. If you can diversify, you might get more people stopping by.

I usually spend far more money than I make at conventions. I go for fun and networking, not for profit, though.

Instead of traveling to these things or buying a table, you might consider buying promo pieces and see if any conventions that are geared towards your target audience will put it on their swag table or in the welcome bags. Just make sure whatever it is you're spending money on isn't something most people would discard (such as paper promo) or that every other author and their brother is providing (such as pens).

Anytime.

I've been a long-time attendee at the Origins Game Convention in Columbus, OH. Some prominent authors do seminars on writing. I've attended sessions by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Alston, among others.

I believe they're there more for networking and marketing than actual sales though. I don't recall ever seeing an author setting up shop in the vendor hall. It costs a few hundred bucks for a booth, plus your travel and lodging, so you would have to do quite a lot of selling just to break even. It might be worth trying to team up with a couple other people though to share costs and diversify products. GenCon and other gaming cons would be similar. Never been to ComicCon so I can't comment.

One thing to consider for gaming (or other cons) is placing an ad in the main event booklet. It would likely be more expensive, but you will reach thousands of eyes, and people hang onto them. I have event books going back years. People will pull them out and might see your ad down the road.

Mukavetz said:

Never been to ComicCon so I can't comment.

Click to expand...

I've been to quite a few. If anything they're worse. SDCC in particular is so focused on mass entertainment that *anything* less enormous is likely to be left in the wayside. I have seen authors trying to sell books there, but it seems like something that's lost in the shuffle. (I've also seen some give books away, which is a better strategy for getting people to read them, but not so good if you want to make money.)

Smaller Comic Cons (Wizard World, WonderCon, etc.) aren't quite as hectic. But most of the people are there for the comics, the costumes, or the buzz...so I'd be surprised if novels registered for most. Even indie comics tend to be mostly ignored as there's so much going on that only a really dedicated fan would be likely to seek you out, I think.

Probably a better bet would be to try to appear on panels, or host a booth with another few dozen authors. (Since it feels less awkward as a con-goer to go up to a booth with a lot of different items than a bunch of copies of one book...at least to me.)

But echoing the advice that an ad (or give-away - preferably something that won't be instantly tossed) would probably be of more interest to most people.