Fan Expo Regina 2017 Post Mortem

Two down, one to go. Why did I think doing three cons in a row was a good idea? Oh yes. Good for business is why.

I am writing this on my flight from Regina to Ottawa, sleep deprived and sniffly from my cold. I’ll be staying in Ottawa for a week until Ottawa Comic Con. I am a little sad to leave Regina – I’d just gotten used to the flat, dusty, warm climate.

To follow my sales journey and to see how I did at past conventions, click here for the full list of articles.
General Impressions

This whole journey required me to do some mental gymnastics when it came to organization. Originally I was going to go to Prince George’s Northern Fan Con but Fan Expo Regina worked out better for my three-con hop extravaganza. Unfortunately, I didn’t find out that I had a table until a month before! That is almost no time. The communication between the vendors and the expo seemed to be extremely disorganized.

I took the Greyhound from Calgary to Regina. They only offer overnight trips, from 11:30pm to 9:30am. Dirt cheap, compared to flying and the cost of luggage. That meant I had to go on a Thursday night instead of a Friday, as getting into Regina at 9:30am Saturday would be too late for setup for this two-day con. I can sleep on a bus, I thought. After all, who the hell wants to go to REGINA on a Thursday night?

Well, turns out, an entire bus load of people. It was jam packed, the air conditioning was on full blast, and I could barely get two hours. Not good for me and my cold. Got some nice pictures of the sunrise at 5AM though.

When I arrived, it was relatively easy to get a cab to my AirBnB—a room in a woman’s house very close to Evraz Place in the Cathedral District. I was a bit early so I dropped my bags and got some breakfast at a local fair trade/vegetarian/vegan coffee shop. It was very tasty. The Cathedral District is an older part of Regina near downtown, similar to Kensington in Calgary but smaller. I’m so glad I stayed there, it was very conveniently located, cheap, and nice overall.

So I took Friday to relax and recover for the two hectic days to come.

Display

On Saturday morning, I got up early, got a cab to the convention centre, and set up. This was straightforward. I packed my display into two suitcases, plus I had my shiny new banner. I always worry when I’m travelling about whether I bring enough. I rationed and counted out my stock this time, bringing exactly what I expected to sell plus a tad extra to pad out the display. Once I had it set up on my 6ft artist alley table, it actually didn’t look too bad.

After Calgary Expo and figuring out how to display in 10×10, I really appreciated the smaller space more this time. There is something to be said for space restrictions fuelling creativity. I returned to my U-shape: putting the Violet Fox Series on one side, and the Sparkstone Saga on the other, elevated to eye level. Within went in the middle next to the newsletter signup.

In general, I was surprised at how TALL the vendors built their displays for this con, even in artist alley. Large towers of prints everywhere you look. In the exhibitor/merchandise area, everyone seemed to have ceiling-hanging banners. In the rules, there were guidelines about height restrictions but those didn’t seem to be enforced here.

Location

I was in artist alley. I actually liked the set up of the con. It’s not a huge show, and very navigable. The artist alley was several rows long near the back of the centre but it received a lot of traffic. I was the first table off the main drag, so my tiger banner was visible and drew people in. Good ol’ tiger.

Sales

This was a two-day con. It’s sometimes hard to say which day will be the better sales day. Generally Saturday is the best. It seemed to vary from artist to artist that I talked to.

Saturday was boiling hot. Regina was having very good weather: 27, 28 degrees the entire weekend. Unfortunately, for some reason the convention centre doesn’t know how to anticipate weather and they didn’t turn on the air conditioning for Saturday. This resulted in a lot of unhappy customers and vendors. In fact, the last few hours of the con were pretty dead as a result.

Surprisingly, I had a good Saturday, but a terrible Sunday. I had a lot of interest on the Sunday, but not a lot of bites. I didn’t end up doing any promotions—no first day sales. This is the first time in a while that I’ve forgone them. But I was a) eager to recoup my costs of the trip and b) had limited stock. Maybe if I had done a sale on Sunday I would have seen a bump in sales. Even with my debit and credit options, people seemed extremely hesitant to part with their money, preferring to buy later. I had a lot of people ask me if I’m in Chapters. I need to get better distro through there.

At the end, I was left with only 2 copies of The Violet Fox left and 4 copies of The Silver Spear, so my careful packing paid off. I sold almost as many Violet Fox bundles (first and second books together) as I did single Violet Foxes, so that tells me that my pricing here is good. In the picture above, you can see how few copies I have left! I also put the Emerald Cloth picture down so I can have a proper cover reveal later