The Daunting Comic Convention: The right convention.

Being an artist is tough, one of the difficulties is garnering an audience. Some are wizards at networking or social media, others not at times it may seem impossible to make dough, even elicit attention for your work. One sure way to garner the attention you need is having a table at a convention, and putting up a sign that says free candy. That's the way to reel'em in... BAIT!

Candy won't be enough if you don't have sufficient content to litter your table with. Having a book or two out even having some free swag or other extras like posters and stickers for sale will help you sell. Not everyone wants the same thing so having diverse merchandise is more certain to earn a sale. "Don't just hit up any convention!" He warned earnestly, as going big or going home can be soul crushing in this industry.

NY Comic Con might be your initial thought. It's one of the best promoted and largest conventions, touting an amount of traffic that would have the BQE jealous. They have an artist's alley for those newbies. Still the table costs are outrageous and your sales skills might be crushed under the pressure of breaking even over the long weekend.

It might be easier to start with cheaper cons like the Garden State Comicfest. At 150 bucks for two days its harder to lose out. Sometimes you can even find smaller inexpensive 1 day events like the recent con in Queens, First Con-tact. These are good testing grounds for what sells, though every convention is a bit different: sketchcards, indie comics, prints, toys, stickers, and anything else your twisted mind can conjure depends on the convention. Over time regularly attending a show can help you learn the audience better and adapt your skills.

In addition certain shows like the one in Boston seem to have attendees with deeper pockets who are into dropping fives for random memorabilia like stickers, or trading cards.

Other things that can help or hinder you at cons could be splitting a table with someone... But we'll talk about that in our next blog about conventions called "Neighbors"

The entity known as Sir Tom Gryphon is at a table in the dark waiting to throw goods onto passerbys for Gryphon Knights Comics. Some of these goods are books he's illustrated like HERO and WOW Signal and lettering books like Getting Away with Murder.