Ladies and gentlemen, Fargo-Moorhead Comicon has come and gone. It was quite a convention for me. How did it go?
For such a small convention, I’m surprised we had so much foot traffic. As for me, you’re probably wondering how both Sunnyville and myself fared. I have good news and bad news.
First the bad news – my sales were not what they could have been. I offered the Sunnyville trade paperbacks, individual Sunnyville comics (more on that in a moment) and original 4×6 inch watercolor cards with original Sunnyville art.
A number of items were sold and while I did better than last year, my take wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be.
Now we’ll get to the good news. The size of the mailing list is about to increase; a number of my buyers and some of the passersby did sign up for the list! When I discussed selling to libraries with another passerby, they gave me a hot tip – the library over in Thief River Falls, Minnesota is keen on adding comics to their collection. At the time of this writing, I’m drafting a sales letter to be mailed out first thing in the morning.
I also had the honor of meeting a fellow North Dakota, the writer William Heinzen. Hailing from Bismarck, this promising genius has recently released his first fantasy novel Warrior of Light. It looks amazing and can be purchased wherever books are sold.
Remember those individual comics I mentioned earlier? Those are what really sold the most! I had a number of copies just sitting around of Sunnyville Stories #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #11 and the Sunnyville Sketchbook. These comics were not doing me any good, just sitting away in storage to gather dust. So I decided to liquidate them by offering them for dirt cheap. It worked as I had a number of buyers and had people take my business cards as well as sign up for my mailing list.
I did move a few of the Sunnyville collected volumes. I wish though I had moved more of them.
This does give me hope for Valleycon and my pending appearances for Corecon and Anime Fargo (those need to be confirmed). I do have a few more comics stashed away somewhere and some zines of mine too; I plan to offer those too in the future. So all in all, I didn’t quite hit the mark at FM Comicon 2017 but made a strong showing and will do better at the next conventions, especially with my upcoming plans. On that note, I’d like to conclude with an interesting snapshot. Check out who happens to read Sunnyville Stories!
Who’d have guessed? Deadpool is a Sunnyville fan!
