andrewfarago (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} andrewfarago) wrote,@ 2007-04-24 17:30:00 |
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APEs of Wrath: Alternative Press Expo 2007
It's Tuesday afternoon, and before APE 2007 becomes a distant memory, I'll try to recount some of the events of the past week. I don't have any photos, but, as is the case with every single convention of the past three years, there were about 200 bloggers with digital cameras documenting everything, so you shouldn't have much trouble finding pics if you want them. For my own reference before future conventions, if nothing else, I'll focus more on the production of my comic and thoughts on the "selling myself" side of things. The whole write-up is kind of overlong and disjointed, but then again, so's APE weekend, so it seems appropriate...
*I finished up the art on my latest mini-comic last Tuesday. This was the first time in the seven years that I've been exhibiting at APE that I actually allowed myself enough time to photocopy the art *before* handing things over at the print shop, which allowed me to fix a few problem areas (lettering, not-quite-solid-black areas, spot removal, etc.). I even had enough time to go back and re-draw about a half-dozen panels that just weren't as good as they could have been, which will actually allow me to re-read this one next year without spotting 10 things I'd have done differently on every single page (probably only five per page with this book, which is a new record).
*The only last-minute stuff this year came because it's not as easy to find black construction paper in San Francisco as I'd assumed and because it's not as easy to copy artwork that comes within 1/8" of the page border as I'd thought, either. As a result, I spent the Friday morning before work assembling all 100 copies of my comic.
*Thanks to our local art supply shop, Flax, for having all the black construction paper that I could possibly need: http://www.flaxart.com/ and to Copy Central for all of their help in getting my comic printed on time: http://www.copycentral.com/
*This year's new comic, The Max O'Millions Adventure Society in "The Idol of Svalbard," saw my first price increase since I'd started making mini-comics. All of my previous efforts are $2 books, but this year's comic is a complete 26-page adventure (written by my wife, Shaenon Garrity), and the final project is much more polished than my past efforts (it's a relief to know that I'm still improving from year to year, and that I don't seem to have peaked just yet), and based on what I've seen other artists charge for comparable works, $3 didn't seem too much to ask this time around.
*Unlike past conventions, I finally have a website that I can promote to the 97% of customers who came to my table with no intention of buying anything from me. My other last-minute project involved printing up some flyers advertising my website. Making use of my William Bazillion logo, some light-green cardstock and my workplace's copy machine and paper cutter, I produced a stack of Bazillion dollar bills to promote my website. Instead of standing around growing increasingly bitter as a result of all of the non-sales that took place over the weekend, I was able to inform dozens of potential new readers about the existence of my webcomic. (I'll be selling copies of the mini-comic through my website soon, too, so I've got an additional venue for the unsold comics now that I didn't have last year. Keep checking http://www.webcomicsnation.com/andrew/b
*Thanks to Shaenon's booksales, we made back our table costs by Saturday afternoon. We managed to cover my printing costs and even turned a decent profit by the time all was said and done. If we'd been paying for airline tickets and a hotel room on top of everything else, I'm not sure how we'd have justified the trip.
The majority of exhibitors at APE live within a few hours' drive of San Francisco, and a lot of the exhibitors who don't live here probably managed to find crash space on a friend's floor or futon. Still, I'm sure that there are a decent number of people who spend money on airfare to get here, stay in a hotel in downtown San Francisco, eat out for every meal while they're in the city, and probably don't sell much more than I do over the course of the weekend. Tables cost nearly $200, three nights in a San Francisco motel sets you back at least another $200, airfare and taxis add another $200-400, food's another $50 if you're eating on the cheap ($100 if you want to use silverware at least a few times during your visit), another $100 for miscellaneous expenses and purchases at the convention, plus anywhere from $100 (what I spent producing my mini-comic) to $3000 on printing expenses, I'm surprised at how many non-locals make the trip every year. Sure, most of those expenses are split up amongst two or three artists sharing table space and hotel rooms, but it's still a lot of money to be made up $2 to $5 at a time.
*For the first time in seven years, the Cartoon Art Museum didn't host a Saturday night after-party, which was another factor in preventing me from losing my temper at any point during the weekend. For the past six APEs, I've gone to the convention center around 10am on Saturday morning, packed up an hour early to go set up for the Cartoon Art Museum's party, locked the doors at CAM around midnight, then made it home by 1am, allowing me a little bit of downtime before heading out the next morning around 10am for another seven hours of conventioneering. Shortening your workday by a full five hours works wonders.
*The floor at the Concourse Exhibition Center, the site for APE the past several years, has got to be one of the hardest substances on earth. When I'm staffing a convention table, I try to stand as much as possible, since it's easier to interact with potential customers that way, but that floor really takes its toll on you by the end of the day. I'm going to have to invest in a rubber floor mat or something similar before next year's show.
*I moderated panel discussions that included Renee French, Debbie Huey, Kevin Huizenga, Hope Larson, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Joe Sayers, Jason Shiga, Art Spiegelman, Chuck Whelon and Gene Yang. I felt slightly underprepared for each panel, but the all of the artists involved were very articulate and clever, and I managed to get through both panels without embarrassing myself too much.
*I also got to catch up with Jeffrey Brown, Charles Brownstein, Jon "Bean" Hastings, Keith Knight, Stephen Notley, Rory Root and about a dozen other folks that I mostly see at comic conventions. It's strange to think that I see some of these people with more regularity and frequency than my extended family back in Ohio.
*I met Amy Kim Ganter (artist of Sorcerors & Secretaries, among other projects) and First Second Marketing Associate Gina Gagliano. Both of them paid me cash for mini-comics that I had attempted to give them for free, which means that I will never say an unkind word about either one of them (not that I was planning to, mind you).
*Big props to our table-mate, Jason Thompson, for keeping us company, buying cookies and preventing anyone from stealing our stuff when we took lunch breaks or went off to moderate panel discussions.
*As usual, I barely got to see any of the other exhibitors except when I was running to moderate my panels or to the bathroom. If I didn't make it over to your table, it's because those ten copies of my mini-comic weren't going to sell themselves, y'know?
*I'm grateful that convention-goers will support the arts by making their way to the not-quite-easy-to-get-to Concourse Exhibition Center and paying admission to get into the Alternative Press Expo, but can someone tell me why 90% of the people that do so don't bring any additional money with them to spend once they're inside? Over and over and over again, this year and over the past seven years that I've been exhibiting at conventions, every time I mention the price of something on my table, more often than not, I hear, "Oh...I don't have any money."
Not to come off as a greedy capitalist type, but on behalf of all of the artists and exhibitors at conventions everywhere, please, please, PLEASE bring ten bucks with you in addition to your entrance fee, food money and bus fare. At least give us that glimmer of hope that we can get two dollars from you. I'm not even going to ask where the money came from, honest. If you're over 16 and you're willing to stand in front of me and read and laugh at several of the comics that I'm attempting to sell, then I trust that you've got good taste, and that you're intelligent, and that you've got at least one marketable skill that will allow you to have at least ten dollars in disposable income one weekend out of the year.
*If my current storyline's still running in The Chronicles of William Bazillion next year (and it might very well be), I need to make myself a t-shirt that says, "Ask Me About Santa's Nazi Gold." I'm sure I'd have doubled my sales if I'd done that.
*The quote of the weekend came when Kevin Huizenga and Art Spiegelman were discussing whether "graphic novels" was a good term for longform comics or not, and if "comics" was even the best word for describing the artform. Spiegelman had discussed this with Dan Clowes earlier in the weekend, and Dan summarized the entire medium with one simple-yet-profound definition: "Comics: Where words and pictures go to fuck." If he'd thought of that 15 years ago, he could've saved Scott McCloud an awful lot of work.
It's Tuesday afternoon, and before APE 2007 becomes a distant memory, I'll try to recount some of the events of the past week. I don't have any photos, but, as is the case with every single convention of the past three years, there were about 200 bloggers with digital cameras documenting everything, so you shouldn't have much trouble finding pics if you want them. For my own reference before future conventions, if nothing else, I'll focus more on the production of my comic and thoughts on the "selling myself" side of things. The whole write-up is kind of overlong and disjointed, but then again, so's APE weekend, so it seems appropriate...
*I finished up the art on my latest mini-comic last Tuesday. This was the first time in the seven years that I've been exhibiting at APE that I actually allowed myself enough time to photocopy the art *before* handing things over at the print shop, which allowed me to fix a few problem areas (lettering, not-quite-solid-black areas, spot removal, etc.). I even had enough time to go back and re-draw about a half-dozen panels that just weren't as good as they could have been, which will actually allow me to re-read this one next year without spotting 10 things I'd have done differently on every single page (probably only five per page with this book, which is a new record).
*The only last-minute stuff this year came because it's not as easy to find black construction paper in San Francisco as I'd assumed and because it's not as easy to copy artwork that comes within 1/8" of the page border as I'd thought, either. As a result, I spent the Friday morning before work assembling all 100 copies of my comic.
*Thanks to our local art supply shop, Flax, for having all the black construction paper that I could possibly need: http://www.flaxart.com/ and to Copy Central for all of their help in getting my comic printed on time: http://www.copycentral.com/
*This year's new comic, The Max O'Millions Adventure Society in "The Idol of Svalbard," saw my first price increase since I'd started making mini-comics. All of my previous efforts are $2 books, but this year's comic is a complete 26-page adventure (written by my wife, Shaenon Garrity), and the final project is much more polished than my past efforts (it's a relief to know that I'm still improving from year to year, and that I don't seem to have peaked just yet), and based on what I've seen other artists charge for comparable works, $3 didn't seem too much to ask this time around.
*Unlike past conventions, I finally have a website that I can promote to the 97% of customers who came to my table with no intention of buying anything from me. My other last-minute project involved printing up some flyers advertising my website. Making use of my William Bazillion logo, some light-green cardstock and my workplace's copy machine and paper cutter, I produced a stack of Bazillion dollar bills to promote my website. Instead of standing around growing increasingly bitter as a result of all of the non-sales that took place over the weekend, I was able to inform dozens of potential new readers about the existence of my webcomic. (I'll be selling copies of the mini-comic through my website soon, too, so I've got an additional venue for the unsold comics now that I didn't have last year. Keep checking http://www.webcomicsnation.com/andrew/b
*Thanks to Shaenon's booksales, we made back our table costs by Saturday afternoon. We managed to cover my printing costs and even turned a decent profit by the time all was said and done. If we'd been paying for airline tickets and a hotel room on top of everything else, I'm not sure how we'd have justified the trip.
The majority of exhibitors at APE live within a few hours' drive of San Francisco, and a lot of the exhibitors who don't live here probably managed to find crash space on a friend's floor or futon. Still, I'm sure that there are a decent number of people who spend money on airfare to get here, stay in a hotel in downtown San Francisco, eat out for every meal while they're in the city, and probably don't sell much more than I do over the course of the weekend. Tables cost nearly $200, three nights in a San Francisco motel sets you back at least another $200, airfare and taxis add another $200-400, food's another $50 if you're eating on the cheap ($100 if you want to use silverware at least a few times during your visit), another $100 for miscellaneous expenses and purchases at the convention, plus anywhere from $100 (what I spent producing my mini-comic) to $3000 on printing expenses, I'm surprised at how many non-locals make the trip every year. Sure, most of those expenses are split up amongst two or three artists sharing table space and hotel rooms, but it's still a lot of money to be made up $2 to $5 at a time.
*For the first time in seven years, the Cartoon Art Museum didn't host a Saturday night after-party, which was another factor in preventing me from losing my temper at any point during the weekend. For the past six APEs, I've gone to the convention center around 10am on Saturday morning, packed up an hour early to go set up for the Cartoon Art Museum's party, locked the doors at CAM around midnight, then made it home by 1am, allowing me a little bit of downtime before heading out the next morning around 10am for another seven hours of conventioneering. Shortening your workday by a full five hours works wonders.
*The floor at the Concourse Exhibition Center, the site for APE the past several years, has got to be one of the hardest substances on earth. When I'm staffing a convention table, I try to stand as much as possible, since it's easier to interact with potential customers that way, but that floor really takes its toll on you by the end of the day. I'm going to have to invest in a rubber floor mat or something similar before next year's show.
*I moderated panel discussions that included Renee French, Debbie Huey, Kevin Huizenga, Hope Larson, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Joe Sayers, Jason Shiga, Art Spiegelman, Chuck Whelon and Gene Yang. I felt slightly underprepared for each panel, but the all of the artists involved were very articulate and clever, and I managed to get through both panels without embarrassing myself too much.
*I also got to catch up with Jeffrey Brown, Charles Brownstein, Jon "Bean" Hastings, Keith Knight, Stephen Notley, Rory Root and about a dozen other folks that I mostly see at comic conventions. It's strange to think that I see some of these people with more regularity and frequency than my extended family back in Ohio.
*I met Amy Kim Ganter (artist of Sorcerors & Secretaries, among other projects) and First Second Marketing Associate Gina Gagliano. Both of them paid me cash for mini-comics that I had attempted to give them for free, which means that I will never say an unkind word about either one of them (not that I was planning to, mind you).
*Big props to our table-mate, Jason Thompson, for keeping us company, buying cookies and preventing anyone from stealing our stuff when we took lunch breaks or went off to moderate panel discussions.
*As usual, I barely got to see any of the other exhibitors except when I was running to moderate my panels or to the bathroom. If I didn't make it over to your table, it's because those ten copies of my mini-comic weren't going to sell themselves, y'know?
*I'm grateful that convention-goers will support the arts by making their way to the not-quite-easy-to-get-to Concourse Exhibition Center and paying admission to get into the Alternative Press Expo, but can someone tell me why 90% of the people that do so don't bring any additional money with them to spend once they're inside? Over and over and over again, this year and over the past seven years that I've been exhibiting at conventions, every time I mention the price of something on my table, more often than not, I hear, "Oh...I don't have any money."
Not to come off as a greedy capitalist type, but on behalf of all of the artists and exhibitors at conventions everywhere, please, please, PLEASE bring ten bucks with you in addition to your entrance fee, food money and bus fare. At least give us that glimmer of hope that we can get two dollars from you. I'm not even going to ask where the money came from, honest. If you're over 16 and you're willing to stand in front of me and read and laugh at several of the comics that I'm attempting to sell, then I trust that you've got good taste, and that you're intelligent, and that you've got at least one marketable skill that will allow you to have at least ten dollars in disposable income one weekend out of the year.
*If my current storyline's still running in The Chronicles of William Bazillion next year (and it might very well be), I need to make myself a t-shirt that says, "Ask Me About Santa's Nazi Gold." I'm sure I'd have doubled my sales if I'd done that.
*The quote of the weekend came when Kevin Huizenga and Art Spiegelman were discussing whether "graphic novels" was a good term for longform comics or not, and if "comics" was even the best word for describing the artform. Spiegelman had discussed this with Dan Clowes earlier in the weekend, and Dan summarized the entire medium with one simple-yet-profound definition: "Comics: Where words and pictures go to fuck." If he'd thought of that 15 years ago, he could've saved Scott McCloud an awful lot of work.
