Furfright 2011 Con Report

Furfright 2011 has come and gone. What a weekend it’s been.

If anyone is interested in selling your comics/graphic novels at conventions (i.e. comic, anime, sci-fi), I will tell you this right now: It is NOT easy!! You must have not only time and money, but you must have patience and energy. You have to be on the clock, you have to be able to market and promote your work, you have to be able to communicate with the masses, and you must be able to talk with interested parties who might be interested in stocking your work. As I’ve been saying over and over again in this blog, there is a lot more to comics than simply drawing them.

That said, how did the convention go for me? It was a mixed bag. It was quite busy, as you’ll see in this video.

The convention was a failure for me in terms of finances. I ended up taking a loss financially speaking. I honestly don’t know what it was. Maybe it was rotten luck. Perhaps Sunnyville Stories and myself weren’t really well known. It could have been the weakened national economy. Either way, I only made some sales.

If you think selling comics at a convention is easy money…then please put down your pencil or stylus and give up right now. It takes time, patience, and skill to make any sort of real money.  In fact, Dave Sim (creator of Cerebus and hero to the self-publishing scene) openly admitted that in the first five years of doing his series, he actually could have made more money babysitting!

So what went right? First off, Sunnyville Stories gained a bigger reputation. People who hadn’t known about it before definitely know about it now. I must have talked to many people, handed out several of my business cards, and actually discussed the possibility of M&T Comics and Cards of carrying Sunnyville.

The blog also got a huge spike in traffic!  Remember the posts on day two and day three of Furfright?  Both went viral and pulled in much traffic to the blog!

What’s more is that I also have the start of a mailing list I can use to communicate with my fans and tell them of great new releases of mine. The people who bought from me at Furfright? I asked if they’d put down their name and email addresses in a notebook I had at the table. That way, I can communicate with them about future work put out.

All in all, Furfright 2011 may not have made a lot of money, but Sunnyville Stories has become a property that people are talking about. This gives me hope for the future. On that note, how about closing out this con report with a few more photos?

Till next time, friends! Subscribe to the RSS feed or via email if you haven’t already.