Conventions: A Year In Review

Apparently it's common for artists to cover their displays with a cloth when closing up for the night. Who knew?

This was the first year I've ever tabled at conventions. I had just finished my Kickstarter for my webcomic-turned-graphic-novel Love Debut! and figured this was as good a time as any to try the convention circuit. I'd had a modest readership online, but I was by no means as well-established as some of the other creators who were tabling in the same space. Most of the people I met were meeting me for the first time. At various times, it was exciting, stressful, humbling, discouraging, and really, really fun.

It's been a few months now since my last convention, but I've wanted to write a post reflecting on my experiences and sharing some numbers in the hope that they might be useful. Keep in mind that all of this is from my perspective as a webcomic artist and writer!

Some Lessons Learned (in no particular order)

Lesson 1: Don't make too much stuff.

Don't order too much of anything until you figure out what sells. Every convention is a little different, but there are reliable patterns that emerge, and that slightly lower price per item doesn't even out the hassle of figuring out where to store all that merchandise no one is buying... For comics, my new goal is to not have more than 50 copies of any one item unless I know it sells fast.

Lesson 2: Keep very meticulous notes on what you are selling, and for how much.

It's very weird, but in my case, my gut feeling on how well I was doing really didn't match up to the numbers at all. Conventions that I felt I'd done badly at turned out to be pretty okay when I did the math later, and items I thought were selling really well ended up not making me that much money. Luckily, the reason I can figure all that out is because I kept track of what I was selling.

I've seen some artists with spreadsheets on clipboards, others who kept a journal. I did the not-recommended approach of grabbing whatever scrap of paper was closest to me and jotting down cash purchases. (Square, my point-of-sale app, did a fairly decent job of tracking card transactions -- except when I forgot to add new products, or needed to do a custom transaction.)

Lesson 3: When traveling, suitcase-weighing is absolutely essential.

Traveling anywhere with a big ole suitcase is a huge hassle. The sight of stairs will make you want to weep. (New York City has to be one of the worst culprits when it comes to stairs you HAVE to climb.) But what will really get you (financially) is traveling with a suitcase over 50 pounds. For TCAF, my first international convention, I had shipped my books ahead of time and packed some extra merch in my suitcase. The net result was that my suitcase was juuust over 50 pounds on my return flight, and I had to spend a few tense minutes at the airport hastily re-packing to avoid the penalty. Think you're safe traveling by bus? Check again. You might have to pay extra if your suitcase is over 50 pounds.

Some artists have one of those luggage scales to check the weight; I did the less reliable method of standing on a health scale and trying to lift my suitcase. Either way, the lighter the better. Your bank account, and your back and shins, will thank you for it.

Lesson 4: Bring a sketchbook and pen.

Convention sketches!

Maybe this is redundant and you travel everywhere with a sketchbook, in which case, excellent! You can skip the rest of this section. But seriously, having a sketchbook was SUCH an essential item. With a sketchbook, you can:

+ Hastily improvise new signage
+ Track cash transactions
+ Open commissions spur of the moment
+ Appear *very busy* so as to either (one) not frighten away potential customers by staring at them, or (two) give yourself something to do during slow periods
+ Take notes on cool recommendations from people you meet

So, yeah, definitely keep your sketchbook handy.

Was It Worth It?

Testing my display for Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF)

Well, maybe not, if I was doing it just to make money.

This past year I went to TCAF, Otakon, FlameCon, and SPX. 2 of those conventions were local for me, 1 of those conventions was in the city my parents lived, and then there was TCAF, haha. Not factoring in how much it cost to produce the merchandise I was selling, I made:

• TCAF: -$251.89 (Table: $151.13, Flights: $234.91, Shipping DC > CAN: $45, Lodging: $80)
• Otakon: $232.05 (Table + Badge: $165.00, Est. Metro: $20)
• FlameCon: $127.73 (Table: $132.00, MegaBus: $49, Subway: $15, 2 Taxis: $78)
• SPX: $180.33 (Table: $187.50, Taxi: $40)

Across all the conventions, my highest selling item was my 24-page comic short "Ramen Robot Cafe" (sold all 40 copies), followed unexpectedly by activism zine "What Now?" (sold/gave away all 26 copies). Love Debut!, my big Kickstarter graphic novel, came in third with 19 copies sold. Weirdly enough, despite conventional wisdom (ha) that prints do very well, I sold only 12 total. This data is all very specific to me, but more broadly, I do think short, standalone pieces at lower price-points are generally well-received. And given that most of the prints I have are original, their success is maybe not so surprising.

Compare those numbers above to my recent Kickstarter: I raised $4,731 from backers to print Love Debut!, and even after deducting cost of production and fulfillment, I netted about $1,787 in profit. Nothing crazy on its own, but it still is nearly 6x what I made over the course of 4 conventions. Which is really good news for comic creators who can't afford to invest in conventions and travel -- it shows just how much the Internet has really helped change the game.

So...

Despite the numbers not yet being what I'd want, I have no plans to stop doing conventions. I might do fewer next year, and choose my conventions more carefully to minimize costs, but I'm hoping this is just the start of a new tradition for me. Conventions are a lot of fun for their own sake, even if you wind up stuck at your table all day (but don't do that -- seriously -- try and get out at least once!). You get to meet fellow creators and readers face-to-face and bond over niche interests. You'll discover new stories and art and characters. Not to mention there's something wicked fun about setting up your table and trying to hawk your wares. But if for whatever reason conventions are not in your immediate future, that's okay too!

Resources:

• Artist Alley Survival Guide
• "How to Be a Con Artist" Tumblr

You can follow Nika on Twitter @onelemonylime or visit her website at nikacomics.com

Navigating the Kickstarter Interface

When I was planning my first Kickstarter for my webcomic Love Debut, I was nail-bitingly nervous. Part of it, of course, was the big question of whether I’d manage to get the funding I needed, but it didn’t help that I didn’t even know what kind of tools would be at my disposal. I felt like I was going in blind.

So, here I am with an overview of what it looks like to plan and launch a Kickstarter campaign from an administrative perspective. This will NOT focus on the business or marketing side of things. If you’re looking for general advice, I highly recommend shelling out the $5 for Spike’s Let’s Kickstart a Comic!

1) Preparing to Submit for Review

Maybe a few years ago it was more difficult for comics to get approved for go-live, but nowadays, it’s all automatic. The key is to fill out as much information as you can. Some of the sections are required, like your personal information and the project description. Other sections are optional, but highly recommended, like the project video.

Required:

Basics

• Project image
• Project title
• Project location
• Short blurb
• Funding end date
• Funding goal

Rewards

• Gotta have at least one!

More on Rewards: This is where you can break out shipping. Kickstarter lets you customize per country, or give a flat rate, or no rate at all. Money pledged on shipping counts toward your funding goal. Also, logging individual items to each reward tier creates a checklist for backers to use later on.

Story

• Description
• Risks

About You

• Name
• Location

Account

• Email
• Payment Source
• Identity and bank account
• Identity and bank account must be verified

Take your time filling out the sections and reviewing your campaign in Preview mode to see how it all reads. You want to have some basic info pop out at the casual browser while also providing enough detail for those who like to dig into a project and really understand what it’s about. One cool feature? The ability to share a preview with your friends for feedback. If they’re logged into their Kickstarter accounts, they can leave comments directly on the page. Also, they can choose to get an email alert when your campaign launches!

Once you have all the requirements completed, viola! You are ready to launch.

2) The Project Dashboard

Here is how your project will more or less appear after launch. Some differences: the option ‘Edit Project’ is missing in the menu, and you won’t be able to access ‘Reward surveys’ or ‘Page theme’ until after your project has been funded successfully.

Edit Project: You can’t change certain information after launch, like your funding goal or the campaign duration. That said, you can update your project story to reflect new information (like unlocked stretch goals) and add Frequently Asked Questions at the bottom of your campaign page.

With respect to rewards, you can create new reward tiers and edit the number of available spots on existing rewards. Once a reward tier has at least 1 backer, however, you can no longer alter the reward description.

Post Updates: You can post updates that are either public OR targeted toward specific reward tiers. The menu will track the date of your last update. Updates are rich text posts with the option to upload videos and photos. After you’ve previewed your draft, you can either save it for later or hit ‘Publish’. Once you publish, be warned: you have a window of 30 minutes to make any edits before your post is locked. Backers with access to the post will also receive an email update.

Kickstarter Live: Never used this. This is for streaming live video; Kickstarter gives you some extra tools to promote a scheduled stream on your project page.

Dashboard: This is where the magic lives!! Kickstarter tracks backer activity, pledges, and referral traffic all right here. I pretty much lived on this page during the 30 days my campaign was in progress.

A large portion of pledges came from people who discovered me over Kickstarter!

Expect backers to adjust and even cancel pledges throughout the campaign.

Backer Report: Didn’t use this much during the campaign, but afterwards, I found this extremely helpful for messaging groups of backers at a time and following up with any individuals. Data can be exported into a CSV.

Messages: You are going to get a lot of marketing spam in here, but make sure you check back frequently in case any of your backers (or potential backers) have questions for you.

Collaborators: Here you can manage your collaborators, inviting them to join and assigning them permissions.

3) Reporting

When you’re first setting up your project, there’s an option on the “About You” page to enter your Google Analytics tracking ID. I filled this out just because I could, but I ended up not using Google Analytics at all. As I mentioned above, the Kickstarter Dashboard had more than enough data for me to sink my teeth into.

Of particular interest to me was tracking my referrers. I would be posting about my campaign across social media channels, and I wanted to know which ones were the most successful. Because I didn’t know any better, I set up custom referral links for each of my social media channels and used them when promoting the campaign. This is totally unnecessary. Kickstarter will automatically break out the domain names of external referrals, so if you simply want to know how much traffic is coming from Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Tumblr, you’re covered.

IF, however, you want to know which *post* generated a certain amount of revenue, then this is the way to go. I imagine if you did Facebook promoted posts or other types of targeted ad campaigns, it would be a lot more helpful. Instead, I ended up with a bunch of duplicate sources that I had to manually add up. Ah well.

4) Backer Surveys

Once the campaign is over and you’ve (hopefully!) funded successfully, it’s time to think about fulfillment. The last important tool Kickstarter provides are the Backer Surveys.

Backer Surveys are pretty limited; you can only send them one at a time to each reward tier you offer, and once sent, you cannot use them again. (If you need to get more information, you have to go through the Messages channel or look up the backer email addresses.)

When you create a survey, certain questions and information are preloaded for you. Nevertheless, you can customize the form by removing questions and adding your own. The two custom question types available are Text and Multiple Choice. The Address question is a special type; this is the only question that you can let backers update later -- extremely useful if you send out the backer survey early after funding your campaign, but won’t actually ship until much later. Once you’re ready to ship, you can lock the field to prevent further edits.

And that’s it!

Whew, that was a long post! I hope you found the content helpful. If there are any other good Kickstarter resources you recommend, make sure to leave a comment below!

Related Articles:

• So You Want to Write a Graphic Novel by Nika
• Nika Hits The Stage As Her Webcomic ‘Love Debut’ Comes To Print [Back Pages]

You can follow Nika on Twitter @onelemonylime or visit her website at nikacomics.com