Capes-n-Babes

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As many of you know, Dawn Griffin and I were at Katsucon 19 as “Webcomic Alliance” this past weekend. For me, it’s a great show because it’s local and having a teenage daughter who is into anime, it’s great to be able to go to a show with her and know she’s having a blast with all of her friends while I’m in Artist Alley.

That being said, I didn’t make nearly the amount of sales like I did last year even though I ended up with pretty good totals. There could be a wide variety of factors for that – for example, as this filler ad shows today, I did an awful lot of sketch cards on Saturday. When I do a lot of sketch cards – as great and as consistent as they sell – because they are “live art”, that takes away from my ability to sell the Capes & Babes books. The caricature sketch cards also take time to do. I’m pretty fast with a lot of them but occasionally, one or two will slow me down or I will get a rush of cards that I have to do in a very short period of time. Sometimes it’s really hard balancing the two – selling already made product on my table or drawing sketch cards and commission…

But one of the other traps that is real easy to fall into when you’ve tabled at the same convention multiple years is the expectation that you will either do the same or exceed the amount of sales you’ve done at previous shows – so even though you may have had a pretty good sales weekend, you may end up feeling disappointed that you didn’t do better this year than you did the previous year. That’s a hard trap not to fall into.

As a former athlete and high school coach, one of the worst things you can do is simply assume every year you will exceed whatever achievements you set the year before – or that you will always beet the same opponents that you’ve beaten in year’s past. There’s too many unknown factors involved to simply assume the new year will be better than the last… your team could suffer a lot of unexpected injuries, another team could acquire a really great athlete that makes a big difference between winning and losing… weather could even be a factor too. So when it comes to conventions, a lot of those same type of unpredictable factors can come into play as well – no matter what show attend.

In the end though, if I am able to secure an Artist Alley table at next year’s Katsucon 20, I’ll be there for sure – no matter what my ultimate take away is because, for me, doing certain shows isn’t always about what the total sales might be. Some shows are just fun to do while for other shows, it may be a situation where you get to see and hang with friends you haven’t seen in a while. And as I said before, Katsucon is in my back yard, my daughter loves to cosplay at the show and heck, even if I didn;t have a table, I’d probably go to the show anyway.

But hopefully, I’ll see you all in Artist Alley again next year!