Post Fur-Eh! 2018 Con Report - First Time For Everything
I have attended Fur-Eh! for a number of years now, at first as a guest, then as a panelist. But never as a vendor. This year changed that.
This year I went as Armoured Fox Press, a small publication company that specializes in publishing and distributing anime and furry literature. We were carrying a number of furry works from three differing furry publishers (FurPlanet, GOAL Publications & Howl Publications), as well as our own Purrfect Tails.
We were taking 10 books, 11 copies of each title. These were the titles: Purrfect Tails, Heirloom of the Rusks, reWritten, Fang Volume 7, Infurno: The Nine Circles of Furry Hell, Seven Deadly Sins: Furry Confessions, Windfall, Bleak Horizons, Abandoned Places, Intimate Little Secrets.
All in all, only two were all ages (my mistake), and most were horror, though in some of those titles 'horror' is used very loosely so I was able to promote them using their other themes and leave the horror element to Infurno and Seven Deadly Sins, which were soaking in it.
This being a furry con, I expected the erotica to outsell the other books, and specifically for Fang 7 to outshine them all due to it being M/M erotica. Instead, one of the extreme horror anthologies sold well, as did the summer romance novel and science fiction horror anthology. (Later I found out that due to a panel that was run early on Friday, those titles got a big signal boost)
As far as book sales went, they were pretty good, and I was extremely thankful to everyone who stopped by the booth and purchased something. As a big book buyer at conventions, I already expected a lot of people to window shop until the end of the con. That's how it goes, and I was pleasantly surprised that many people who window shopped came back the same day to buy. (where I would have waited until the next day)
I also didn't expect a lot of the backlash towards anthologies that we saw. Only one customer flat out said they loved anthologies. Everyone else wanted novels, which helped me to understand why companies like FurPlanet decided to work exclusively on novels as of earlier this year. It makes sense now, and I honestly wished we had purchased more novels for distribution.
I was also surprised that despite the sign for the extreme horror bearing 'Trigger Warnings', that actually drew people to the books rather than diverted them away. I ended up giving a short talk about why I had that on the sign each time someone picked the books up and only one customer really seemed to have an issue with it. It actually lead to some interesting conversations which I really enjoyed.
Would I have done anything different?
Perhaps I would have chosen different titles to sell. It also geared me up to power through the anthologies that have been lagging behind in editing and get those all finished. There is nothing quite like seeing excited faces as they pick up a title your company has produced and hoping they really enjoy it.
In the end, I really enjoyed everything about this experience. From the novel pitches, to the young (and old) writers who were inspired with us just being there (there previously were no Canadian publishers of furry fiction and no distributors at this convention) and their hopes to get published one day.
So if you were at Fur-Eh! 2018 this year, thank you.
Thank you from everyone of us at Armoured Fox Press for making it such a wonderful convention. We look forward to being there next year and we will have a lot more stock to help save you on shipping from the States.
Until then, keep on reading and writing!!
This year I went as Armoured Fox Press, a small publication company that specializes in publishing and distributing anime and furry literature. We were carrying a number of furry works from three differing furry publishers (FurPlanet, GOAL Publications & Howl Publications), as well as our own Purrfect Tails.
We were taking 10 books, 11 copies of each title. These were the titles: Purrfect Tails, Heirloom of the Rusks, reWritten, Fang Volume 7, Infurno: The Nine Circles of Furry Hell, Seven Deadly Sins: Furry Confessions, Windfall, Bleak Horizons, Abandoned Places, Intimate Little Secrets.
All in all, only two were all ages (my mistake), and most were horror, though in some of those titles 'horror' is used very loosely so I was able to promote them using their other themes and leave the horror element to Infurno and Seven Deadly Sins, which were soaking in it.
This being a furry con, I expected the erotica to outsell the other books, and specifically for Fang 7 to outshine them all due to it being M/M erotica. Instead, one of the extreme horror anthologies sold well, as did the summer romance novel and science fiction horror anthology. (Later I found out that due to a panel that was run early on Friday, those titles got a big signal boost)
As far as book sales went, they were pretty good, and I was extremely thankful to everyone who stopped by the booth and purchased something. As a big book buyer at conventions, I already expected a lot of people to window shop until the end of the con. That's how it goes, and I was pleasantly surprised that many people who window shopped came back the same day to buy. (where I would have waited until the next day)
I also didn't expect a lot of the backlash towards anthologies that we saw. Only one customer flat out said they loved anthologies. Everyone else wanted novels, which helped me to understand why companies like FurPlanet decided to work exclusively on novels as of earlier this year. It makes sense now, and I honestly wished we had purchased more novels for distribution.
I was also surprised that despite the sign for the extreme horror bearing 'Trigger Warnings', that actually drew people to the books rather than diverted them away. I ended up giving a short talk about why I had that on the sign each time someone picked the books up and only one customer really seemed to have an issue with it. It actually lead to some interesting conversations which I really enjoyed.
Would I have done anything different?
Perhaps I would have chosen different titles to sell. It also geared me up to power through the anthologies that have been lagging behind in editing and get those all finished. There is nothing quite like seeing excited faces as they pick up a title your company has produced and hoping they really enjoy it.
In the end, I really enjoyed everything about this experience. From the novel pitches, to the young (and old) writers who were inspired with us just being there (there previously were no Canadian publishers of furry fiction and no distributors at this convention) and their hopes to get published one day.
So if you were at Fur-Eh! 2018 this year, thank you.
Thank you from everyone of us at Armoured Fox Press for making it such a wonderful convention. We look forward to being there next year and we will have a lot more stock to help save you on shipping from the States.
Until then, keep on reading and writing!!
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