by john | Oct 4, 2017 | Appearances, Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Travel
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.
by john | Aug 25, 2017 | Appearances
Yeah, I know I post something like this almost every year about this time. These tips are still relevant, and become only moreso as the convention grows and the hotels do not. So here are Hartness’s tips for surviving Dragon Con.
- Carry a water bottle. You don’t have to carry a full one, there are water stations all over the place, and many of the hotel bars will fill your bottle for you if you’re nice and don’t jam it in their faces when they’re crazy busy. But it’s hot as Beelzebub’s ballsack in Atlanta Labor Day Weekend, and humid as a gator’s taint. If you aren’t accustomed to moving around in that kind of heat and humidity, you could end up in real trouble. So stay hydrated. For every beer or alcoholic drink you have, drink one glass of water. Ditto for soda.
- Plan for shit. There’s an app and everything. Your favorite writers have probably posted their schedules to their websites or Facebook. So there’s no excuse for doing nothing, unless you want to do nothing for a little while.
- Plan for shit to go sideway. It’s fucking crowded. It’s fucking hot. You’re fucking hungover. Hell, maybe you’re just fucking. But be prepared to throw your plans in the shitter if something awesome comes up. Maybe you’ll be waiting in line for a restaurant and one of your favorite cover artist of all time will invite you to go sit in the back of a panel and have a picnic with he and his wife, who happens to be one of your literary heroes. Maybe you’ll end up dancing with this amazing guy/girl/genderfluid person at DJ Spider’s set and you’ll go hook up. Maybe you’ll walk past a room and find a legendary knife maker teaching knife throwing. These are all things that are worth abandoning your spot in line to get Nathan Filion’s autograph, I promise. Have the flexibility to enjoy an experience more than a thing. And two of those three cool things happened to me. No, I’m not telling you which one didn’t happen. If you want to know buy me a drink, or bring a cold Miller Lite to one of my panels for me.
- Meet new people. There are some awesome people at Dragon, and some of them are folks that you’ve either read or heard of or watched on TV. Meet them. Either go up to their table and say hi, or if they’re in a bar with a crowd of people, don’t be afraid to walk up and say hi. If you’re a public figure and you don’t want anyone to approach you, you won’t be hanging out in a bar. Don’t be a dick, and if they seem to be in an intense meeting or conversation, don’t bug folks. Ditto when they’re eating in a restaurant. But bars? Before or after panels (especially after)? Fair game.
- Go to a reading by an author you’ve never read. I suggest the one held in the Hyatt Marietta room at 1PM on Saturday. Even if you’ve read my stuff, there will probably be someone reading there that you’ve never heard of. I open my readings up to my friends, because I don’t want to read for an hour. So come see me and my pals! Then stick around for whoever is after me, because they’re probably awesome, too.
- Go to the Dealer Room Monday or during the parade. This is a legit pro tip – the dealer room is crowded as FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK. To avoid that shit, go when people aren’t there. Parade time and Monday are prime shopping times. Don’t know when the parade is? Use the app. You’re a damn adult, I can’t do everything for you. 🙂
- Don’t go near the fucking habitrails from 4PM Friday to 1PM Sunday. Those things are like a goddamn claustrophobic sauna during the height of the con. I avoid them at all costs during those hours.
- Take pictures, but don’t be a dick about it. Don’t stop in the fucking habitrails. Don’t stop at the top of the fucking escalator. Don’t stop right outside the fucking elevator. Don’t fucking stop abruptly. Don’t stop right inside or outside a fucking door. Don’t fuck up the traffic flow. There are 75,000 fucking people, and all of them want to get somewhere.
- Don’t be a perv or a creeper. Here’s how to tell if whatever you’re about to do or say qualifies. Ask yourself this question – “If someone said those words to my mother/sister/daughter/spouse/friend would I want to punch them in the dick?” If the answer is “yes,” then don’t say those words. The same thing applies to actions. If you wouldn’t want someone to do it to you or someone you love, don’t do it. This does not apply to me slapping Tamsin Silver on the ass. I have been granted a lifetime pass, and she has a lifetime pass to grab my butt. We went to college together. We’ve seen some shit, y’all.
- Stay calm, stay flexible, have fun. We all have anxieties. We all have things that set us off. Keep all that shit in check, and if you need to go sit in a bathroom stall for fifteen minutes to chill the fuck out, then go do that. Just grunt every once in a while so people will think you’re taking a titanic shit and they won’t be afraid you died. But for real, I have hidden in the crapper for five minutes to escape the madness on more than one occasion and at more than one con. It’s a legit survival strategy. Anytime you’re in a new place, you find out where all the exits are, and where all the shitters are.
- Do at least one thing you never thought you’d do. For some of y’all, this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip. For others, it’s an annual thing. For some of us, it’s the toughest and most enjoyable work week of the year. But there’s one thing that’s universal – we love this shit. So do something awesome. Meet someone awesome. Have a motherfucking adventure!
- Buy my shit. No trip to Dragon Con is complete without buying my shit. You can place orders on the Autographed Books page and I’ll deliver them to Dragon Con. Just tell me which one of my panels you plan to be at (preferably one in the Hyatt, since that’s where I’m staying) and I’ll bring your books to the panel. Yeah, I’m a whore. What did you expect, public fucking service?
Here’s my schedule –
Title: Two Sides of the Same Coin: Angels & Demons in Urban Fantasy
Time: Fri 05:30 pm Location: Chastain 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Representations of angels & demons vary widely within folklore, religion, & literature. Our panelists will discuss how depictions often focus on their similarities as well as their differences.
Title: Reading: John G. Hartness
Time: Sat 01:00 pm Location: Marietta – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: The author of urban southern fantasy and host of the podcast Literate Liquors reads from his works.
Title: The Black Dog: Depression & Mental Health in Fiction & Fandom
Time: Sat 04:00 pm Location: Embassy AB – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Our panelists examine how mental health is portrayed in SF. Are there any portrayals that help those of us dealing with our own issues? Note that this is not a prescriptive or workshop.
Title: Writer’s Block: Real or Imagined?
Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: Embassy CD – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: The debate about writer’s block is as old as the craft. Every writer has an opinion. The pros discuss the condition and the cures.
Title: Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading
Time: Sun 10:00 am Location: Piedmont – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Enjoy a varied sampler of short readings from authors whose work spans a range of fantasy sub-genres in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading.
Title: Run Screaming into the Night
Time: Sun 05:30 pm Location: Embassy CD – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: Does your own writing scare you? Dark Fantasy & Horror need a real edge that guarantees a terrifying read…even for the writer.
Title: Coming to America: An American Gods Fan Panel
Time: Sun 08:30 pm Location: Chastain 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
Description: A moderated fan-panel discussion of the new hit series based on the book by Neil Gaiman.
See you next week!
by john | Aug 1, 2016 | Appearances, Promos/Giveaways, Writing
Hey folks – I know there are a few people who aren’t on my mailing list that sometimes pop by here, so I wanted to give everybody an update on what’s going on and where I will be.
BTW, why aren’t you on my mailing list? Sign up here and you’ll get a free book!
So, new stuff. Here we go. On July 29, I released Heaven Sent, book #5 of the Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter series.
In Heaven Sent, we travel back to 2009 to see the first meeting between Harker and Glory, his guardian angel. She shows up at a crime scene where he is looking into the death of a prominent Charlotte attorney. The lawyer is found in a mall parking lot in the middle of the night, and his body has been drained of most of its blood. Not vampires, this time, the huge slash across the dead man’s throat makes that clear. So why is Harker involved?
To the naked eye, there’s no reason. But when Harker looks over the crime scene with his Second Sight, he sees something strange about the man. Wings. The dead man has a pair of golden ephemeral wings sprouting from his back. The dead man is a Nephilim, a half-human, half-angel hybrid that can walk among the mundane world without anyone ever being the wiser.
Now he’s dead, and he’s not the first one. Quincy Harker has to find out who is murdering angels in the Queen City, and why. Then he has to stop them. Good thing his backup on this case was Heaven Sent.
Heaven Sent is available exclusively on Amazon, as part of it’s Kindle Unlimited service.
I promise, I’ll get into why I went back to KDP Select, making many of my titles available free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers, in another post. Maybe here, maybe on Magical Words.
Coming Soon – Man in Black – Black Knight Chronicles #6
The latest installment of the award-winning Black Knight Chronicles series finds Jimmy Black in more trouble than he’s ever been. He took care of one threat in the last book, In the Still of the Knight, but now he has to deal with all the fallout of the choices he made there.
He’s the new Master of the City, a supernatural crime lord who only ever wanted to be a superhero. He’s been called in by the police to help on a case where he just wants to bite everybody instead of working with them. He just found out that there’s a mysterious Vampire Council, that they’re watching him, and if he screws up – they’ll kill him.
And on top of all that, he’s having serious girlfriend issues.
And oh, yeah, then there’s Lilith…
Man in Black will be available everywhere books are sold August 15th!
Google
Amazon
Kobo
Coming in August – Queen of Kats Part 2 – Survival
Once upon a time, there was a thief named Remarin. He was a very good thief, if a it lacking in impulse control. Remarin was hired to steal something because, well, thief. He stole the thing, but his fence double-crossed him. Because, well, thief. So Remarin killed the fence and ran off with an urchin boy he found hiding in the back room of his fence’s shop.
Except the urchin wasn’t an urchin.
And the urchin wasn’t a boy.
She was a girl, her name was Kit, and her uncle murdered her father and took her throne. It was all very much like Hamlet, except without the iambic pentameter.
So Remarin traveled through the lands with the disguised princess, finally settling in one spot for just long enough to get comfortable.
Until someone from Remain’s home finds him. It seems Kit isn’t the only one living a life under false pretenses. And now Remain’s past has caught up to him. The thief has to confront his real identity to save his brother’s life in Queen of Kats Part 2 – Survival.
Queen of Kats will be exclusive to Amazon, but you can get it, and all my new releases, early just by becoming a patron! With Patreon, you choose the pledge, and the rewards. Get free stories, ebooks, and previews! Click here to become a Patron!
Coming sometime in September will be a new Bubba novella. More on that as it finishes.
Where to find me
As convention season winds down, I’ve got a few more appearances on the docket this month and next.
8/7 – Charlotte Comicon
8/13 – Clover Community Con
8/27-8/28 – Soda City Comiccon – Columbia, SC
9/2-9/5 – Dragon Con – Atlanta, GA
I hope to see y’all at one or more of these events!
by john | Aug 4, 2015 | Appearances, Travel, Writing
I’ve got a ton of news and THREE NEW RELEASES THIS MONTH but for now, here’s my DCon schedule. Let me know if I’ll see you there!
Title: Pulp Fiction
Description: Pulp has enjoyed a renaissance in the last few years. Why? And why do authors choose to write in this genre?
Time: Fri 01:00 pm Location: Embassy A-B – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Van Allen Plexico, Bobby Nash, James Palmer, John G. Hartness)
Book Signing – The Missing Volume – 2:30 Friday PM
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Title: Supernatural Variety in UF
Description: Authors discuss the array of supernatural beings appearing in their work, and how their choices affect their stories and worlds.
Time: Sat 01:00 pm Location: Chastain ED – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: J. C. Daniels, Jenna Black, Myke Cole, John G. Hartness, Samantha Sommersby, Tamsin L. Silver)
——————-
Title: Hunting Monsters
Description: Whether a job or a calling, our panelists’ protagonists track down and destroy monsters
Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: Augusta Ballroom – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Faith Hunter, Larry Correia, Jonathan Maberry, John G. Hartness, Laurell K. Hamilton, James R. Tuck, Carrie Vaughn)
——————-
Title: The History of Pulp Fiction
Description: What is pulp? Where does it come from? Where is it going today?
Time: Sun 10:00 am Location: Augusta 3 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: James R. Tuck, Bobby Nash, Van Allen Plexico, John G. Hartness)
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Title: Backdrop: Settings and Locales in UF
Description: Our panel of authors discusses how their settings influence their characters and worlds.
Time: Sun 11:30 am Location: Chastain ED – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Myke Cole, Laura Anne Gilman, Julie Kenner, J. F. Lewis, John G. Hartness, Carrie Vaughn, Jennifer St. Giles)
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Title: Hard-knuckle Horror
Description: Combining the ethos of hard-boiled crime fiction with supernatural terror
Time: Sun 07:00 pm Location: Peachtree 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: James R. Tuck, Richard Kadrey, John G. Hartness, John Hornor Jacobs, Kenneth Hite)
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Title: Vampiric Variations
Description: Authors discuss how their choices of vampire mythos & traits inform their characters and worlds.
Time: Mon 11:30 am Location: Chastain ED – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Samantha Sommersby, Linda Robertson, John G. Hartness, Julie Kenner, Faith Hunter, Sherrilyn Kenyon)
