James Young is guest posting at the Mad Genius Club today, writing about what is entailed in being an author-vendor at a con-of-size.
The first thing a person should do in order to prepare for any event is do some research. For instance, if you look through previous news clippings, you’ll find that KC Planet Comic Con regularly has 20-30,000 people. On the other hand, another event my fellow vendors only referred to as “Disaster Con,” promised all of them “over 5,000 attendees” but apparently had less than 200. Needless to say, no vendor recouped their $150 booth fee, and that’s the kind of thing that gets around. (I’ll simply say that there are three or four possible culprits for 2014 you can find using Google.) In addition to making sure you don’t get hosed on vendor fees, finding out things like whether there’s an “artist alley” or “dealer’s room,” the type of tables the con uses, what it’s previous rules have been, etc., etc. should definitely factor into your decision making on what to bring. For instance, if the Con has some arcane set of rules that makes its relatively low entry fee suddenly balloon to $400 in order for your booth to be in compliance, odds are this may not be the event for you. Also not helpful is if the Con has all the vendors “in exile” clear across the venue from the celebrity attractions.