This weekend I’ll be at Congregate in High Point, NC. You can find my schedule here –John’s Congregate Schedule! I’ll also be at the Falstaff Books table, and we will have a small bookstore suite each evening in a room to be announced on site. Come see me! For the more visually oriented, here’s a pic of said schedule.
Just in case there’s anyone who hasn’t seen the video from The View yet –
This will be the last of my deep-dive posts on the different types of conventions, and next week I’ll do a wrap-up overview kind of post and maybe go over everything I’ve booked for 2018. Spoiler – we’ve over 20 and it’s not even December 2017! And at some point Dragon Con will get its own post because it’s almost every type of con all rolled into one.
This last type of event is my least favorite, and the type that I will frequently avoid. These are the Autograph Cons, or as I unpleasantly (and perhaps unfairly) call them, Starfucker Cons. You’ve seen them, they are conventions where all the promo materials center on the vast number of celebrities they have in attendance, and the whole event is geared around you paying money for an autographed photo.
Now, I know that there are photo opps at a lot of the pop culture cons, like Awesome Con. I know there’s a huge Walk of Fame at Dragon Con. But while you can attend these events for no other reason than to get an autograph, there is so much other stuff going on that I feel you can’t shoehorn those cons into this category.
No, the ones I’m talking about have 2-3 photo/autograph rooms, maybe 1-2 panel rooms with 1-2 panels going on at a time, and a big dealer’s room. These cons are lots of fun for fans of a particular franchise, but not a lot of fun for a writer trying to make back their table rental.
Let’s look at the challenges you’re going to face as a writer at one of these cons. First, there’s no author or artist’s alley, like you’ll find at fandom cons or comic cons. So you’re going to spend the same money as the person selling swords, t-shirts, DVDs, or any other stuff in the dealer room. This is a big jump in price. Tables for artists and authors are usually under $100 unless it’s a very big con. Dealer hall tables at even the smaller autograph cons are usually $300 or more. So that line item on the budget is now tripled.
Since this isn’t a fandom con, there aren’t very many panels. Since this is a con about celebrities, Hulk Hogan is way more likely to be on a panel than half a dozen writers talking about world-building. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how this con is built, and that’s what the people buying tickets want to see. But for a writer, it means that unless you wrote a screenplay that got produced and people cared enough about it to make an entire panel at this con for your film, you are not going to have any panel time. So you don’t have that hour in front of a captive audience to show people how charming, witty, and talented you are. So you aren’t building your brand that way, and you don’t have the opportunity to talk about your work on a panel and make people want to come buy your books.
Since you (and any other writers that happen to be there) aren’t the draw for the event, every sale is going to be work. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes you get the easy ones. One con in particular in Tennessee is famous for having fans that come up to your table with spreadsheets of their book collection and buying everything you have that they don’t already own. Those are the easy sales. “What have you released since BookCon last year?” “These three books.” “I’ll buy them all.” Doesn’t get any easier than that. That doesn’t happen at an event where people are there to get a photo opp with a movie star.
For one thing, photos with celebrities are expensive. The top stars charge over $100 per person for these photos. There’s a whole convoluted process by which they get paid for their appearance and that money comes out of the pictures sold, etc. etc., so don’t go hating on Luke Skywalker just because he charges a bucket of money for his photo. A lot of that is on the con organizer. Even more of it is on the back of the market, because as long as people will pay the fee, people will charge the fee. When $100 photo ops stop making money, prices will fall. But even autographs cost money at these events. You can absolutely have an autographed photo of your favorite star from your favorite show. For a price. And I don’t begrudge these actors their money. They’re lugging around a bunch of expensive photos that they have to buy, so they should get paid for them. But that doesn’t mean you should set up a book table at a con that focuses on autograph sales.
Let’s look at expenses for these cons. Most folks are going to spend a grand or two on their annual vacation, I assume. Back in the day, when I had a “normal” job, and Suzy and I took vacations instead of her just going to a con with me and us staying a day or two longer than the event, it usually cost us about $2k for our big vacation for the year. It’s gonna be $500-800 for airfare, then $500 or so for a few days in a nice hotel, then theatre tickets, eating out every meal, doing some touristy thing, and souvenirs. By the time you get home, you’ve dropped a couple grand on the trip. So if you’ve got a $2,000 budget for a vacation, and this big con is your vacation, here’s how the money is going to break down –
$600 for airfare (ballpark for two tickets)
$500 for hotel ($125/night, four nights)
$400 for food (two people, four days)
That leaves $500 out of your $2,000 budget.
Tickets – $120-200 for the con. This is without any VIP stuff. The earlier you buy the tickets, the cheaper.
Photos – $200 – that gets you a couple of photo ops, or a bunch of autographed stuff.
You have $100 left over to spend in the dealer room.
Getting your hands on part of that $100 is not going to be easy, especially in the early days of the event. By Sunday, people will know what they have spent and what they have left over, but if they have $100, and anything flashier than your books catches their eye, you’re screwed.
So it’s not that people aren’t spending money, it’s just that they are predisposed to spend it with you. This is a great event for people selling t-shirts that relate to the fandom of the show, or other things like that, it’s just a tough weekend for booksellers. I’m not saying I won’t do them. I’ve done Fandom Fest (probably never again), I’ve done Mad Monster Party (not bad), and I’m looking at doing a Supernatural fan event in 2018 (I have a lot of crossover fans). But I’m saying that when I’m building out my year, this is the last type of event that I put into my schedule, and only if it’s local and I feel like I have a good chance of making a return. Because just like the pop culture and comic cons, I don’t have any chance to interact with fans other than talking to them at my table and slinging paperbacks. It’s a long weekend, and it’s usually an expensive weekend. So I need to feel like I’m going to sell a bunch of shit to justify it.
I much prefer the fandom cons, like Atomacon, where I’ll be next weekend. If you’re anywhere near Charleston, SC, you should come see me!
Shameless plug aside, I hope these are helpful. If you have questions, you can reach me through the contact form on the site, you can find me on Facebook, and I also have a FB group. I’m pretty easy to find.
Until next time, I’ll be in the bar.
Welcome to Part 3 of my series on conventions, what they’re about, how to make money at them, all that jazz. Today we’re going to talk about what I call Trade Show Cons, or Exhibit Hall Cons. These are most often your comic cons or your book fairs (where you’re not a big guest, just a schmo with a table). They bring with them a whole new set of challenges, strategies, and expectations.
What is an Exhibit Hall Con? Well. these are the cons where you sit behind or beside or in front of your table all day and work to sell books. I don’t recommend sitting in front of your table. It’s hard to see the books through you. Like your dad used to say when you stood in front of the TV, you make a better door than you do a window, kid. These are often Comic cons (like the Roanoke Valley Comic Con, where I’ll be next weekend or Heroes Con, June 2018), but can also be big book fairs (like the West Virginia Book Festival, where I’ll be Friday and Saturday). Sometimes they’re even outside, like Time Travelers’ Weekend at the Carolina Renaissance Faire (where I’ll be November 11-12). I don’t feel like linking everything. If you wanna come say hi, just Google it.
So I do a fair number of these. By “a fair number” I mean that I have 17 already booked for 2018, ranging in size from maybe 2,000 attendees to 50,000+. So obviously I see some benefit in them. But what are the benefits, and what makes them better than a fandom con?
Well, it depends. This time it depends on you, the person who has to stand there and sell books all day. I’m good at this part. I’ve worked trade shows, conventions, flea markets, and that kind of thing my whole life. When I was a little kid, I learned how to do this stuff by sitting under the table at craft shows reading while my mom sold little stuff she made. So I got a start hand-selling things when I was seven or eight. It’s been my entire life doing this kind of thing. It just feels natural to me. So for me, I get a chance to shake hands, kiss babies, and sell.
I like selling. I see it as a challenge. Somebody walks up to my table and says “I’m not much of a reader.” That’s like waving a red flag and shouting “Toro!” to me. I often look at the folks I’m sharing a table with and mutter “hold my beer.” Those are my favorites, because I have to use all the muscles I trained in two decades of business sales to get somebody to drop twenty bucks on my table and walk away with a new book. It’s a game. If I get the sale, I get a point.
If you hate selling, or hate talking to strangers, you shouldn’t do these conventions. They won’t be fun to you, and people can see when you aren’t having fun. I have a great crew going to West Virginia tomorrow. Me, Gail Z. Martin, Darin Kennedy, and James P. Macdonald. If you get within our orbit, you’re almost certainly leaving with a book, because all four of us are talkers, and we all have fun selling to people. That’s a huge key to these events – have fun. Because as with everything in writing, if you aren’t having fun, it’s not worth doing.
Exhibit Hall cons are probably the single best place for short-term gains. You can sling some paper, and get some green paper in return, and you can usually cover your costs (books, parking, hotel, food, gas) and make a small to medium profit. This of course depends on how many titles you have. With your first book it’s going to be tough to move enough copies to cover a table rental. Table rentals run from $50 for a small comic con to $350 for a big one, and even more. And once you get to a certain level of inventory, you can’t do just one table. At Raleigh Supercon next summer I have a corner vendor booth. It cost a bunch. But I have a ton of titles, not just my own, but by my authors, so I need as much real estate as I can get. And by next summer, we’ll have well over 50 Falstaff titles on display, and that takes a lot of table space. That convention will cost me probably $1,500 by the time all costs are figure in, so I’m hoping to move a fuckton of books.
If you don’t yet have a fuckton of books to move, look around for the small comic conventions in your area, and book those instead. There you can get a table for $50, drive in the morning of the show to set up, buy a $10 convention center lunch, sell ten books and drive home at the end of the day with a few bucks of profit in your pocket. And ten new books out there in the world working to build new fans for you.
I estimate that probably half the books I sell at an exhibit hall con ever get read. So if I sell a hundred books over the course of a weekend (which almost never happens, that’s a BIG number), fifty of them will get read. Twenty of those are by people who are already fans, so that’s thirty new fans. People buy a lot of multiple books, and I do a lot of bundles, so let’s say I pick up twenty new fans in a weekend. That weekend trip probably cost me $500, so I spent $25 per fan.
If I could guarantee that someone would become a fan for $25 each, I would pay that in a heartbeat. I’d just go to the Fan Vending Machine and put in Benjamins like I was P Diddy at a strip club. Because a fan is worth so much more than $25 over the life of their fandom. That’s how much they might spend with you in one year, so as long as you don’t piss them off or stop writing, that $25 is going to pay dividends far exceeding your initial investment.
So your Per Fan Cost at an exhibit hall show is likely to be greater than at some other cons, but you also have the chance to reach more fans than at fandom cons or industry cons, and the people there are predisposed to spend money. A comic con isn’t like a fandom con, where people save up all year just for the trip and the experience – people come to these things to spend money. When I used to go to Heroes Con, I never went without at least $100 budgeted to buy stuff. So people are predisposed to spend money, you just have to convince them to do it with YOU.
I’ve run long again, so next week we’ll talk about Starfucker Cons, then we’ll move into Table Setup, Elevator Pitches, and Why I don’t sell hard to cosplayers (and I LOVE cosplayers). Until then, I just had a book come out, so go buy something, will ya?
Last time I talked about Industry Cons, like World Fantasy Con, World Horror Con, RWA Nationals, and other pro-centric cons. The greatest benefit of these cons is often the networking, as they are light on fan attendees and heavy on pros. They can be a great place to make or renew relationships, to meet people who can have a real impact on your career long-term, but you should never go into a conversation with someone just thinking about what they can do for you. That’s not networking, that’s being an asshole. Real networking, the kind that will actually do something for you, is relationship-building, making friends, being genuinely interested in what people are saying and doing, because people are generally pretty interesting. You will get more out of the favor you do for someone else than you ever will from asking for a favor. So just go hang out with people, meet them, and be nice. That will come back to you in spades over the long haul.
But this isn’t a blog post about networking, it’s a blog post about fandom cons. What I refer to as fandom cons are the heart and soul of science fiction and fantasy cons all over the US and the world. These are the small to mid=size cons that aren’t run by some giant media or entertainment company. They are cons with anywhere from 200 to 5,000 people in attendance, and they are generally non-profit organizations run by volunteers, or sometimes a very tiny paid staff. Usually people are paid in badges, hugs, and pizza.
These are honestly my favorite type of convention to attend, because they press a lot of buttons for me as far as things I enjoy doing. Fandom cons usually have a fair amount of programming, from panels and games to discussions and workshops. Being a pompous ass that I am, I love being on panels. When I’m feeling gracious about myself, which is most of the time, I tell myself and the world that I enjoy panels because it gives me the opportunity to pontificate and scratches the itch that I had when I used to want to be a teacher.
Don’t worry, I got over that one when I realized that my reflexive response to stupid statements by people in authority is to say “Go Fuck Yourself” loudly and often. I decided that reflex wasn’t conducive to a long teaching career, so I should either learn to shut my cake hole or look for a new career path. I chose to not shut my cake hole. Pretty much ever.
But anyway, fandom cons. They have a bunch of panels, and usually a dealer room or author’s alley, or some other opportunity for me to set up a table and sell books. So I get to sit on panels with people who are much smarter than me, make a few dick jokes, and then sell books after. Or maybe I get on a panel with people where I make valid points about the at hand and participate in a lively discussion. Or dick jokes. Either way.
Why do you want to be on panels? Shouldn’t you just rent a table in the dealer hall and sell books all day, every day? Well…remember Uncle John’s First Rule of Sales? Of course you don’t, because I almost never refer to myself as Uncle John (although I am an uncle, have been for 40 years at this point, and I have a lot of grey in my beard, so I may just begin referring to myself as such) and I’ve never codified this idea into a “rule,” at least not in writing.
Uncle John’s First Rule of Sales – People buy shit from people they like.Â
I know. Rocket science, right? Well, that’s why this is all free, and real sales courses cost a fuckton of money. I just realized that I swear more in blogs that I write while listening to Jason Isbell. He’s a goddamn genius, and frequently Wendig-level profane.
But the point of this is – if you’re on panels, you get to show off your sparkling personality o everyone in the room, and you get to show off what a smart writerly motherfucker you are. Don’t spend too much time talking about your book, though. That looks dickish, and like you’re just there to sell shit. You kinda are, but you are also there to answer the questions the moderator and audience bring to you. So unless your book really relates to the question, don’t mention it.
So yes, you want to get on panels. You want to get on panels, and be witty, or funny, or brilliant, or charming, or dazzling, or professional, or whatever pieces of all of those that make up your shtick. Then at the end of the panel, remind the audience that you have a table in the dealer room, or you have books in your briefcase, or you’re doing the Broad Universe reading at 7PM, or whatever. Give them a reminder to come see you, and to bring money when they do.
Fandom cons are also great places to make solid connections with people way up the food chain from you. Typically a small (500-3,000 attendees) will have 1-2 “name” guests, who get their hotel and travel paid for. These folks are usually award winners, best sellers, legends in the field, or all of the above. I’ve done very small conventions with Guests of Honor such as Rachel Caine, Joe Haldeman, Timothy Zahn, Ben Bova, Patrick Rothfuss, and many more. The size of the event and the fact that you’re there as a guest as well gives you a level of access that may be greater than most folk. And some folks just like hanging out. I sat in the bar listening to Joe Haldeman tell stories for several hours one night. I’d never met him before, and I was just an attendee at the con. I bought my badge just like every one else. George R.R. Martin is well-known as a lover of room parties, and a few years ago at ConCarolinas GRRM was in one room talking to fans at a room party, and in the room next door David Weber was chatting with fans at a different room party!
This does not happen as often at huge cons. It’s just harder to find folks. But that, as well as the ability to hang out with people in the bar or restaurant and get to know them, can create long-lasting friendships. There’s a group of 40 or so writers that endured what we often refer to as SweatFest, the year the FandomFest AC broke in Louisville, Kentucky in July. It was godawful. It was the hottest thing I think I’ve ever put up with. But I met some people that I have done business with ever since, and some of them are my dearest friends. Those kind of stories are why we do the fandom cons. They become a badge of honor, and a shorthand that people use to refer to events, and the relationships forged while sitting at a table next to someone in a deserted dealer room may not pay your hotel bill for the weekend, but you can certainly make some lifelong friends.
Just a few people that I met for the first time at Fandom cons –
Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, Emily Lavin Leverett, Sarah Joy Adams, Gail Z. Martin, David B. Coe, A.G. Carpenter, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Allan Gilbreath, Andrea Judy, Bobby Nash, Edmund Schubert, Natania Barron, Michael G. Williams, Tally Johnson, S.H. Roddey, Alexandra Christian, Kalayna Price, Rachel Caine, Laura Anne Gilman, Seanan McGuire, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Mike Stackpole, Eric Flint, Dr. Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Timothy Zahn, Barbara Hambly, john Scalzi, Robin Hobb, Ernie Cline, Jim C. Hines, Cat Rambo, Kimberly Richardson, and the list goes on for hours. Some of these people I’ve hung out with, some I’ve published, some have edited with me, some have edited me, some have bought my books, some have sold me books, but every one of them I first met at a little fandom con.
That’s why I go to fandom cons. Because I meet amazing people.
So y’all might have heard that I was in St. Louis last weekend, hitting up both Penned Con 2017 and Archon 41. My conversations with several people at both cons raised the question – Is it worth it?
It’s a valid question, and one I ask myself often when I go to conventions. Last week I drove over 1500 miles round trip. I was away from home for six days. I spent five nights in a hotel, and ate out every meal for six days. That’s not an insignificant investment in time, effort, and money, and that’s before we go into the inventory involved with me taking over 120 paperbacks and hardbacks across five states!
So when I evaluate a convention’s worth, I look first at what kind of convention it is. There are several major types of convention that I attend, some more frequently than others, and I expect different things from all of them. Today, we’ll take a look at what cons fit into what type, and what I’m looking for at each one.
Let’s start with the ones that are frequently the most expensive, and have the lowest opportunity for immediate return on investment, but may have the greatest long term ROI – industry cons. In the writing business there are several different types of industry con, and they are usually the ones that have the highest cost to attend. When I talk about industry cons, I mean World Fantasy Con, World Horror Con, RWA Nationals, and ThrillerFest. Regional writer festivals like the NC Writers’ Network Fall Gathering also fall into this category.
Industry cons often cost everyone but the volunteers and Guests of Honor to attend. Unlike comic cons or fandom cons, even the vendors at some professional cons still have to buy their badge on top of their table fee. And if you don’t have a table, even if you’ve been a pro in the field for decades, you may still have to spring for a badge. That’s not a knock on the convention, it’s just the way they are structured. The target audience of the con is the pros, so they aren’t using your work on panels to draw in the Muggles, they are putting you on maybe one or two panels to speak to your peers.So at these cons you pay for your badge. And they ain’t cheap. Some of these cons will cost several hundred dollars to attend, and it’s less likely that you’ll have an opportunity to make that cost back by selling books, as the number of fans in attendance is far lower than the number of pros. You may find yourself laying out $300 for a badge, then $150-250 per night for a hotel, plus travel. These cons can easily set you back a grand or more, with little to no opportunity to recoup that money quickly.
So why go? Because it’s a long game, remember? I had a great meeting at Dragon Con with an editor that I’m working on a proposal for. If it goes through, it’ll take most of 2018 before I see a dime off that meeting, and I’ve been building a relationship with that editor since 2014 at Dragon. It’s the long game. He’s not going to leave the business. I’m not going to leave the business. If it takes us four to six years to make any money off being friends, so be it. If we never make any money off being friends, so be it. But the connections you make at industry cons have so many more ancillary benefits over dollars and cents and immediate sales. Maybe a drink in the Westin bar turns into a cover blurb given or received. Maybe a panel on the Urban Fantasy track results in contracts for eight novellas (See: Mason Dixon, Monster Hunter). Maybe you meet somebody that you can give advice to, or somebody that you can learn from. Industry cons are great for that kind of networking, that kind of relationship building. I didn’t sell a single book at World Horror Con, but spending the weekend hanging out with Alethea Kontis, Jake Bible, Chris Golden, Charles Rutledge, James Tuck, and other friends was well worth the expense of the con.
That’s not to say that you should jump in on every industry con that’s within driving distance. I’ve never done the RWA national conference. I write very little romance, and most of what I publish can only be called romance in the very loosest of terms. So I don’t go to those cons. I don’t go to the NC Writers’ Network Gathering except when it’s in Charlotte. It’s mainly a literary fiction, historical fiction, and poetry conference, without a ton of genre fiction writers or readers. So while I really like the organization and support their programming, I can’t justify it as an every-year con. I’ll be there in 2018 when they’re in Charlotte, though. That’s for damn sure. So you do have to balance potential return on investment with your attendance, but you don’t have to look at it as a black and white set of numbers on a balance sheet. I plan to attend World Fantasy Con next year in Baltimore because it’s drivable, and I can sell some books, raise the overall profile of Falstaff Books, and maybe sign up some more writers to our stable. It’ll take years to see if that investment will pay off.
Long. Game.
Next week we’ll talk about fandom cons, and maybe move into pop culture cons or comic cons/vendor hall cons. Later on we’ll look at what I call Starfucker cons, then we’ll talk about what you’re trying to get out of a con, how many you should do in a year, and when is it too much of a good thing?
Until then, I had a new book come out yesterday, so I’d love it if you’d go buy Amazing Grace. If you scroll back through the archives, you can hear me read the prologue. If you’ve already bought it, and enjoyed it, leave a review! They really matter.
