On Saturday, September 14, 2019, I had the chance to table at my first convention, the Catamount Comics Expo in Burlington, Vermont!
It was a fun experience, very rewarding personally, though not so much financially. That’s mainly because there weren’t very many attendees. The showrunner actually put on a nice show, but the one area that seemed a bit lacking was promotion. The venue was nice, and the selection of comics and stuff was pretty good for a show this size, so I think if there had been more awareness of the event it would have been a big hit with fans. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like many people knew about it, so not many fans showed up.
However, those who did got to have a fun time, and I really enjoyed meeting the fans. I also really enjoyed meeting other creators, especially my table mate, Michelle Abreu. We had met once or twice before briefly as members of the Boston Comics Roundtable, but it was really fun to talk to her about her many cool projects, including custom made dice and dicebags that proved to be a big hit with gamers at the convention.
As for me, I went into the show with a few goals, basically none of which were met. But a couple came close! I was hoping to sell 10 copies of The Crimebusters #1, and I was also hoping to get 10 people to sign up to my mailing list. I actually sold 8 copies, and had three people sign up for the mailing list, so I came up a little short. But I’m very happy with that support and interest!
I also tried something new, which is prints. I’ve heard that prints are a big source of income for many small creators a shows, so I made up a bunch of prints. My goal was to sell enough to make back my money for printing them. Alas, this wasn’t even close. I did sell one print, to a friend who surprised me by showing up even though the con was over 3 hours from home for both of us. So that was a great treat! And now I have a bunch of prints, which I will be rolling out on my online shop over the next few days, so that’s cool too.
All in all, though I didn’t make much money, I did meet some cool new people and learned a lot from the experience. And I also met some other creators living their dreams, and even traded comics with some of them. I will be highlighting some of those books on my Instagram feed over the next couple of weeks, so check them out!
This was a cool experience, so I am looking forward to my next show, which I am happy to announce will be at the Northeast Comic Con in Boxboro, Massachusetts, from November 29 through December 1. It’s the holiday weekend, so if you need some gift ideas, come by and say hi! And of course I’ll be posting a lot more details in the weeks to come.
See you there!