NWWBW Week ending Sunday 12th of July

[grug]

Last week we were preparing for Supanova. It was a huge success for us. (apparently the numbers were up on attendance, putting us ahead of Melbourne numbers and catching up on Sydney)

Our sales were way up, we even made an actual profit!

Chris, you were asking about how the double page spreads in my 24 hour comic were going to print, they came out perfectly. I forgot to ask the printers about them, and just put the pages in the PDF cut in half. I expected to have gutters, but they are seamless.

This week it is school holidays, and though I have to work, it is pretty quiet, so I should have time to do a bunch of comic work.

[grug]

Of note to the local comic artists who have printed/sold books before:

We put our prices up a dollar - now they are $6.

This didn't hinder our sales at all, in fact, like I said, our sales were way up. Not to, uh, toot our own horns or whatever, but I know we pretty drastically outsold the rest of the comic artists in artists alley. There weren't many of them, and and most of them only had one book to sell, whereas we had 18 or 19 books on our table. That certainly worked in our favour.

We also had a bunch of returning customers. A whole bunch of people bought our work last year and came to ask what was new.

We ended up selling around 150 books.

Anyway, I thought that might be of interest.

[grasshopper]

That's cool mang, way to go.

I'm thinking that next year those of us who don't have 19 books ( ) should team up.

Either that or I was thinking about approaching Keith from Quality with a business proposition. I know that for next year he'd like to get a booth twice the size, and I was thinking about asking him if he'd be interested in maybe renting out some space for a small table to sell local artists stuff. It would help us get stuff out there, and it would help differentiate Quality from other comic stores from out East.

What do you guys think? Of either of those ideas?

[grasshopper]

I should have taken a look at how the pages printed out. I totally forgot about it. Any chance you could scan in a spread to show how it came out?

And what kind of merch do you guys normally do? I saw Jess' buttons, and I know she's been doing those for awhile as I've picked up some before, but I was wondering if you guys do anything else (any A3 posters or such)?

[grug]

I think it's a great idea and it would be really cool, and yet I'm not sure that QC would got for it.

I'm trying to find the form you use to buy space at Supanova (I know I have it around here somewhere ) but I know it's a huge jump to go from table to booth.

The artists alley tables, if bought during the "early bird" time, are only about $200. For you to take up QC's valuable space that could have stock and then, I'd assume, pay less than $200... Well, it doesn't seem like a great deal for them.

The thing is, "regular" comic readers aren't particularly interested in indies or minis, so you not really going to be much of a draw for QC. Some people would probably be interested, but I can't see it really translating into sales for them.

I could be wrong of course.

I also totally forgot to show you the book. I thought about it that night. Ah well! I will scan you a double page spread next time I have the book out, but it is honestly so seamless to be almost redundant. It's making me reconsider how I'm going to lay out some of my future products.

Merch-wise we some big-ticket items - a pop-up book (which sold out in the first hour and I felt like an idiot for not putting more of them together), some soft toys that Jess made (screen print on calico of a character, with a patterned piece of fabric on the back and stuffed with filler) we also sold out of those and are making some new characters this weekend, and screen printed tote bags. They sold slow on the first day, but on the second day we had sold out of the toys and were able to put the bags on the table and then we sold a bunch.

We also had button badges which sell really great, but also draw the non-comic-readers over to the table, and then some of those people pick up comics.

We are looking into prints, but haven't made them yet. My suspicion is that they will sell better at art markets than at Supanova, but we're gonna give them a go anyway.

[grug]

One problem we are having, actually, is that we have too much stock. Anything not well displayed just does not sell, as soon as it's made more prominent sales pick up.

We're trying to come up with a new display system, or else maybe see if we can start getting two tables at Supanova's from now on.

[grug]

I found the S'nova prices. Assuming they don't go up, booth wise (first price is early bird, second is regular):

One Booth $1,210.00 $1,485.00
Two Booths $2,178.00 $2,673.00

[grasshopper]

*eep*
That is a huge price jump from table to booth. Maybe I'll forget about that notion then.
But $200 for a table, that's not bad at all. I'm guessing that includes passes for two people to work the table for the weekend? Taking that into consideration, that's about a $100 value right there. I really think I'm going to go for it next year. By then I'll have 5 books at least. If anyone else wants to jump in on this with me that'd be cool.

And I may as well post this drawing from the life drawing session last night now as I doubt I'll get anything else done for the week thanks to yet another stupid head cold (seriously, my third one this winter... what the hell?), plus the inevitable time suck that will be put into the 360 that I just bought (but haven't hooked up as yet as I know how much time it will take form me).

[grug]

Nice! I'd like to see some of your other life drawings too!

Also: the tables are actually $220 (though they might go up) and you get passes for three people.

[grasshopper]

I'm going to start scanning in my older ones and throwing them into the Life Drawing thread I have with the dates in it. Yay new printer/scanner that allows to to move things from a tangible form to the weird world of online!