So I did a convention this weekend.

I made a modest profit; I probably would have made a decent profit if I’d had Tarot decks and Rita 2 at the table.

Various happiness-inducing events included:

* Every time I saw Rita peeking slyly at me from the edge of someone’s con book, thanks to Brandon Graham’s decision to draw a cover full of creator-owned characters who were at the con. (There’s a key posted here.) This basically meant that there was no way this con could suck.

* Finally getting to meet Lo. Who does a blueish comic about robots and their robot problems. We’ve kinda been an intermittent mutual appreciation society on a few webcomics boards for a couple years; she was the first person to show up at my table. I went out Friday night with her, her husband, and their friend, got stinking drunk and had an awesome time.

We did an Exquisite Corpse after we were all thoroughly drunk, which is about the right time to do it.

* Hanging with Dana Simpson the whole con. She asked me if I had room to share like two days before, and I said yes. Our table personalities synch up pretty well; there was a lot of giggling and amusement. And scritches because we are both fucking furries.

* The side effects of hanging with Dana. The effects of her winning the Universal talent search were really starting to show this year; because of her, I ended up chatting with folks from Andrews McMeel, the National Cartoonist Society, and various Big Syndicated Strippers. I now have a card from a VP at A-McM after mentioning that I’m hoping to find someone to publish the Rita omnibus, and I mean, my work is probably not a good fit for them, but sheeiit! Who knows? More people at that level knowing about my work means more chances to not have to wrangle the omnibus myself.

* Having some folks from 2000AD make the trek out to the furthest northern hinterlands of the Artist Alley to see me. 2000 fucking AD. I mean that and Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant are basically the places my inner 12-year-old boy would kill to get into.

* Various fans of Rita coming up to tell me how much they love it. I got to have a conversation about the way I’m trying to portray different hive-minds in the comic, ffs. That’s winning right there.

* Chatting with Phil Foglio and trading notes on some of the local cons. He says he hits Norwescon like every four years, giving the field time to go fallow in between, and I think I may start doing the same.

* Giving Jeff Smith a copy of Rita 1 while getting him to sign my giant B&W collections of RASL and having him go “oooh” at his quick flick through it.

* Meeting some new folks doing SF comics and feeling that “hey this is definitely My People” vibe that resulted in book-trading and trading of prints of our Glados fan-art as well.

* Sending off some cover tests to a major comics publisher on Friday morning, getting very enthusiastic initial responses that evening, and having some chatty emails this morning about my con with my contact there.

And then on Sunday morning, something happened. My animation school buddy Gabe was at the show, in what he was calling “the Dungeon”. Perhaps a diagram is in order.

This is the official con map, with the overall traffic flow overlaid. Last year I was in the Triangle of Solitude, and it sucked ass. I think I saw more people passing my table at Rainfurrest, which is like 1/30th the size. You do not want to be there if you’re a solo creator. You probably don’t want to be in the Desert of Back Issues to the right of the fan, either. I haven’t been there and I don’t want to experiment.

Only the most intrepid of con-goers, or the ones specifically looking for YOU, are going to make it through the skybridge, across the Desert of Back Issues, and down to the Dungeon. And when they do they’ve probably spent all their impulse money already. You’re not getting many new fans, which is a lot of what you’re at a comics con for. You are basically fucked.

Gabe posted this to his daily sketchblog on Sunday morning, and it got me thinking. Over the four years I’ve been doing ECCC (only two selling), I’ve seen people a little ahead of me migrate from the hinterlands to the halcyon lands of the first hall you enter. And I see how much traffic is passing them by when I wander in there to get something from a creator I like who’s in there. I was doing a lot better this year by moving to the Alley and asking to be close to a straight line from the central entrance; could I get in there?

Well, yes. I could. By doing what I saw other solo creators doing: ganging up and getting a couple of corner booths, or even a whole island, and becoming a destination. Plus the pricey convention center internet suddenly becomes affordable when you split it eight ways, so no more fighting overloaded cel towers to take credit cards or tweet con photos.

I grabbed the early sign-up sheet and did some quick calculations. If I could get four to six other people together, I could make it cost only slightly more per person than my lonely alley table, with more space for everyone. I put out the call in person and on Twitter, and in a couple hours I had four yesses and three maybes from people I know are pros at this. Enough to make me drop about $2k on two corner booths, and a requested placement of either in the rich fields of the triple-digit booths, or in the center of the second hall. I think in a couple of years ECCC will be as hard to get into as SDCC, and as huge – and as lucrative for the folks who manage to get grandfathered in. Which I am right in the window of opportunity for.

So hopefully next year there will be a decent-sized Collapsar booth (or whatever we call it, that was what I put on the form) with me and my buddies, right there near the front of the con. We will have tons more foot traffic, and some amount of synergy of bringing in the fans of all these people and their various connections. Not a ton – the only thing really unifying this group is “Peggy knows them” – but it’s not like, say, Topatoco or Periscope has much more unifying them than that.

I think I may have just accidentally a comics collective.

I kinda feel like this is my first time really DOING Emerald City Comic-Con. Last year’s appearance in a terribly-placed booth was the dry run. This time I’ve done a few other convention center cons, I’ve got a much better location with actual foot traffic.

This year? I’m sitting with Dana again. She’s having people from a big-time book publisher stop by to talk to her, going out and drinking with the National Cartoonist Society. She’s pretty big time now. And part of me wants to compare myself to her, even though she’s been grinding on this “making comics” thing a hell of a lot longer than I have. She’s way out in front of me because she’s been doing this longer. Honestly there’s a part of me that’s definitely envious, even as I’m mostly delighted to see her getting this far along. This part of me also can’t see the work she put in. Just the results.

And yet. Here I am with Rita as part of the massive set of creator-owned characters on the conbook’s cover. Folks with 2000AD trekking all the way across the con to shoot the shit with me. Sending off some cover tests for a mid-list genre comics publisher on Friday morning and having pretty glowing initial reactions in my inbox at the end of the day. I’m not on the same path as her; she’s a stripper, I do graphic novels (and occasionally take my clothes off on stage). And given that I’ve only been spending five years on this comics thing – hell, three years, if I discount Absinthe* and the time spent working on the Tarot deck and moving – I think I’m doing pretty fucking good. And that’s not counting some other things that kinda started this winter that I’ve been too damn slow to really get on. Plus I’m sitting there trading wisecracks with a big time stripper all day long and drawing scurrilous things to amuse each other between fans.

I’m not holding my breath or anything, but I continue to think there’s a decent chance there’ll be someone ready to publish and distribute the final Rita omnibus for me. Which, given how utterly obscure and unpublishable I felt when I started Rita, is a pretty amazing situation to find myself in.

Anyway I have been sitting in a chair for like pretty much ten hours today talking and talking and selling books and whatnot and I am all out of the talky-talks and I am going to have to get up and do it tomorrow and I am just gonna order an internet pizza and be all uncharismatic for the rest of the night now. Enough introspection.

not that I really can in some ways, I learnt a LOT working on that with Nick – but it was also a piece aimed solely at the furry audience, which is pretty damn limiting.

I’ve been talking to some friends who are not as organized about their con stuff this con. Here, then, is a list of my Con Stuff.

1. A super big suitcase. With wheels. It’s about as big as two of the little wheely ones that fit in an overhead bin. I put pretty much everything I need at my table in it – merch, prints, print books, business cards, fliers, my table sign (and my little price signs), my book display easels, some tape, my pencil case, my tablecloths, everything. I also put my clothes in it, and my little bag of bathroom stuff.

Tablecloths: I have three of these. One goes on the table. Another one gets thrown on top of everything when I leave for the night. The third one, well, it’s a spare. Right now, for instance it’s covering Dana’s stuff, because she’s still on the way to the con from Tacoma. They’re actually just colorful sarongs I got; depending on my mood that spare could become part of what I wear while dancing!

My pencil case: Contains pens and pencils, duh. It also has a Square reader in it and an X-acto knife. The knife comes in handy for chopping up paper when I need to make a new price sign, or for opening the plastic wrap on a Tarot deck so I can sign it. Also there are a few metallic Sharpies in there for signing purposes; the title page of Rita is black so I can’t use a normal pen!

The prints live in a messenger bag of their own that I can check. By pulling them out when I fly, I can save myself a $75 fee for a bag that’s heavier than 50 pounds. All the prints are in several of the cardboard folders the paper came in; I also have my little table sign in there. It’s all wrapped up in one of those tablecloths, tied with string, so it doesn’t shift much in transit.

Clothes: I lay them flat on top of each other, then roll them up into a bundle. It’s more compact and a lot less work than folding them all when I pack to travel to the con and back. They get hung in the hotel room when I get in.

Bathroom stuff: Nail scissors and files and whatnot, because I inevitably break a nail somewhere in transit and probably get a hangnail too. This is in a little bag of its own; I take it out and throw it in the hotel bathroom.

Everything but the clothes and the pencil case stay in the suitcase when I come home! Including unsold merch. All I have to do when I pack for a con is pull the suitcase out of the closet, throw some more books and Tarot decks in, maybe make some more prints, and I’m done.

2. My big sign. It’s got Rita on it at almost life size. Came with a little folding stand; it goes behind me at the table. Sadly it is too long to fit in the con bag. It lives in the cheap little bag it came in.

The sign’s bag has an airport lost and found tag on it from the last time I accidentally put it down when I was checking in to my flight to a con and forgot to pick it back up. Seeing it there reminds me to avoid the hassle and embarrassment of doing that again.

After seeing how many people the Peter S. Beagle quote on Dana’s new sign pulled in so far this con, I am thinking about making a new one with the lovely quote Phil Foglio gave me..

3. My computer bag. Laptop, travel Wacom, stylus, power brick with a Plug Bug added so I can charge both the Mac and a USB-powered device from one socket. Usually these days what I charge with that is a little USB battery I got that has two outlets on it; I’ll plug my phone and my tablet into it at night and charge all my shit at once. Also Kleenex and some pens and the tape I use to tuck my junk when I’m wearing something tight and some fliers for Rita. And a couple of carabiners on it so I can hook some stuff to it – my hat (which I’ve sewn a D-ring into for this purpose), my coat (two D-rings), and most importantly my water bottle. If you’re gonna sit at a table all day YOU NEED A WATER BOTTLE.

The extra battery is a lifesaver. It lets me make sure I can take credit cards all day, even if I’m running the phone’s battery down providing internet for my computer and/or tweeting like crazy during slow times.

THAT IS IT. The computer bag lives by the front door because I go out and about with it all the time; the big bag and the sign live in the closet between cons. And on the studio floor for about a week after I get home from a con because I’m too damn wiped out to unpack just yet.

If you want to have a ton of prints on display you’ll need to haul more. I find that I like a super minimal setup – I kinda want to be an oasis of calm in the intense visual clutter of a con floor.

Feeling an urge to write a post about my con setup. Over a few years i've honed it to something super minimal that I think works really well. Super tired right now though after a good first day of ECCC.

So I’m packing my stuff for Emerald City Comic Con (table cc-09 in the Artist Alley if you’re going, stop by and say hi!) and I have realized that book 1 of Rita is damn close to being out of print. I’ve got a box and a half of it set aside for backers of book 2, and I’ve got, like, about 20 copies besides that. And my own personal copy sitting on my bookshelf.

This is annoying in the short run, but in the long run I feel like it’s good place to be in! I printed about three times as many books as I got backers for in the initial Kickstarter, and I’ve sold just about all of them over the past year and a half. That makes me pretty happy. Especially given that I figure I’ll sell my entire remaining stock at ECCC. (I’d also better double-check how many people are getting book 1 from the Kickstarter for book 2, and make sure I’ve got that many books in the boxes marked ‘reserved for KS backers’.)

I’ve marked it as ‘sold out’ on my store, and just did a count of unshipped orders – I’ve got all of one copy on reserve right now, so that’s good. Now to double-check the KS2 backer stock. And start deciding how big a run the second printing will be!

(There is a part of me that wishes I’d done a bigger initial print run, but at the time, 400 books seemed like an impossibly huge number that I’d never move. Even with about 140 of them going out to the initial Kickstarter backers.)

Okay yeah I have enough books to cover all the KS2 backers, plus a small margin of error because I know there were a few people who pledged at a ‘sponsorship’ level and wanted book 1 as well. I’m taking 29 books to the con, and that’s it. Good thing I printed up a new batch of fliers. Sadly I won’t have any Tarot decks either, as I haven’t seen the new box of those LS was sending – hopefully it slipped through the cracks on their end, rather than getting lost in the mail. I’ve been putting off dropping them a line about that; I finally did just now.

As self-publishing problems go, this is pretty much the best kind. It’s a hell of a lot better than “I will have five thousand copies of my first book filling up my garage for the rest of my life”.

edit: pondered the print run, sent off a couple requests for quotes at 600/800/1000. My logic? I’ve sold about 300 copies of Rita 1 in the year after the initial KS; I’m still definitely in new fan acquisition mode and feel confident I can expect this kind of sales for a few years more. And if my sales keep increasing, I should be running out about in the middle of the KS for Rita 3. We’ll see how ECCC goes; if I sell out of what I have than I’ll definitely feel like going higher.

Ever since I started dancing, I’ve developed a new habit:when I’m in the bathroom doing something else, I’ll put a leg up on the counter and use it as a half-assed barre. It’s a long one with two sinks, so I’ve got the space to do it. Start brushing my teeth on the left-hand sink, move to the right-hand sink for half of it so I can get my other leg up, then rinse and spit.

I bet I couldn’t get away with this if I was sharing the bathroom with another adult.

Also try filling your bong with warm water. You’ll cough a lot less!