Pros and Cons
Finished two weeks of anime conventions~! AnimeBoston last week and A-Kon just this weekend.
AniBos was a blast due to hanging out with ninja_orange and darkr_dragon (and her crazy friends OH GOSH THEY ARE INSANE XD). Crazy sketchy pothead table partner though... table-sitting with him was even WORSE than I thought it would be. Asking people to smoke weed with him, talking on and on about dub actors *SHUDDER*, telling neighboring tables' customers to LOOK AT HIS STUFF while they're CLEARLY browsing my stuff, he was a total failure of a human being, just sitting by him made my skin crawl. Thankfully, I know who I'm table-ing with next year so I'll never have to see that jerk in my life again~
Hetalia obsessees were awesome! I made a lot of one-time-only-at-the-con friends with some awesome and totally spunky cosplayers who would actually come and TALK to me! (I love talking while tablesitting, it's so fun meeting people with the same interests as you) and they kept coming back to buy stuff XD. It's nice to be into a series that everyone else is into as well. There was a Hetalia panel too but that was a little awkward and too yaoitastic for my tastes =n=. Also, I sold out of my Hetalia doujinshi!! I should have printed more ^^ will make a second run IF LULU DECIDES TO COOPERATE WITH ME D:
Made a lot of cash hells yeah~ $822 to be frank, highest ever, totally outsold last year by a ton. Honestly, a lot of that was from the doujin, and without that it'd be close to comparable to last year, but yeah~ if only the economy was better (AKA if I had actually sold more than a handful of prints)...
***
As for A-Kon, which was mostly table-ing with aoineko (which, just in itself, was great~), there was... quite a bit of disappointment. Honestly, after the fiasco of table-ing with Captain Sketchy, I was planning on making A-Kon my "fun" con with AniBos as a "work" con, and that did work out because the table company was infinitely better, but uh yeah. WTF A-Kon? The Artist Alley was run terribly by an apathetic bitch, so our table was upstairs next to the dealer room, away from tons of illustrators downstairs where the table normally is, and we had much shorter hours to boot. Traffic was like halved, it suuuuuucked! I was so looking forward to it but meh. Revenue was just more than HALF AniBos, ridiculous! (Plus I spent like 3 times as much money in the dealers' room orz)
Hetalia fans were still there, met a few awesome people~ not as many as AniBos, don't know if that's just because the traffic sucked.
All in all, I think print sales totally went down, perhaps because people are less willing to pay for high-priced items when they have less money? But there was a serious discrepancy.
So, having gone to two cons around the same time, I made a few interesting observations... Having done this, of course I am going to make sweeping generalizations.
1) Dallas congoers seem to like prints a bit more (but not hugely) than Boston ones. Generalization: People from the Midwest tend to be more generous and free-spending than people in the Northeast, and they have a higher appreciation for beauty. This is probably because New England is so cold that residents become bitter and stingy.
1b) Boston congoers like pins a lot. Generalization: They are stingy =(
2) Boston congoers seem to like things that have stupid jokes on them. Generalization: New Englanders have a heightened sense of humor, particularly tacky humor. But doesn't this contradict point one? Perhaps they are less hoity-toity artsy-fartsy and more LOLOLOL. At any rate, it makes sense since Northeast = more liberal = not so uptight LOLOLOL
3) Dallas congoers tend to consist of a larger percentage of overweight adults and people who want commission of (often somewhat furry-ish) OCs. Generalization: Dallas people are overweight furries. Actually, this makes sense because Boston is a walking city and Dallas ISN'T, but the furry and OC thing is kind of lolwut? Ummm! 100 degree heat destroys brain cells, there.
4) Boston Hetalia fandom > Dallas Hetalia fandom. Generalization: too many to list.
But yeah, I kind of want to go to a con that I don't have to AA for now. Maybe New York Anime Fest, I could just volunteer, it'd be fun~ But I do like having cash =(
AniBos was a blast due to hanging out with ninja_orange and darkr_dragon (and her crazy friends OH GOSH THEY ARE INSANE XD). Crazy sketchy pothead table partner though... table-sitting with him was even WORSE than I thought it would be. Asking people to smoke weed with him, talking on and on about dub actors *SHUDDER*, telling neighboring tables' customers to LOOK AT HIS STUFF while they're CLEARLY browsing my stuff, he was a total failure of a human being, just sitting by him made my skin crawl. Thankfully, I know who I'm table-ing with next year so I'll never have to see that jerk in my life again~
Hetalia obsessees were awesome! I made a lot of one-time-only-at-the-con friends with some awesome and totally spunky cosplayers who would actually come and TALK to me! (I love talking while tablesitting, it's so fun meeting people with the same interests as you) and they kept coming back to buy stuff XD. It's nice to be into a series that everyone else is into as well. There was a Hetalia panel too but that was a little awkward and too yaoitastic for my tastes =n=. Also, I sold out of my Hetalia doujinshi!! I should have printed more ^^ will make a second run IF LULU DECIDES TO COOPERATE WITH ME D:
Made a lot of cash hells yeah~ $822 to be frank, highest ever, totally outsold last year by a ton. Honestly, a lot of that was from the doujin, and without that it'd be close to comparable to last year, but yeah~ if only the economy was better (AKA if I had actually sold more than a handful of prints)...
***
As for A-Kon, which was mostly table-ing with aoineko (which, just in itself, was great~), there was... quite a bit of disappointment. Honestly, after the fiasco of table-ing with Captain Sketchy, I was planning on making A-Kon my "fun" con with AniBos as a "work" con, and that did work out because the table company was infinitely better, but uh yeah. WTF A-Kon? The Artist Alley was run terribly by an apathetic bitch, so our table was upstairs next to the dealer room, away from tons of illustrators downstairs where the table normally is, and we had much shorter hours to boot. Traffic was like halved, it suuuuuucked! I was so looking forward to it but meh. Revenue was just more than HALF AniBos, ridiculous! (Plus I spent like 3 times as much money in the dealers' room orz)
Hetalia fans were still there, met a few awesome people~ not as many as AniBos, don't know if that's just because the traffic sucked.
All in all, I think print sales totally went down, perhaps because people are less willing to pay for high-priced items when they have less money? But there was a serious discrepancy.
So, having gone to two cons around the same time, I made a few interesting observations... Having done this, of course I am going to make sweeping generalizations.
1) Dallas congoers seem to like prints a bit more (but not hugely) than Boston ones. Generalization: People from the Midwest tend to be more generous and free-spending than people in the Northeast, and they have a higher appreciation for beauty. This is probably because New England is so cold that residents become bitter and stingy.
1b) Boston congoers like pins a lot. Generalization: They are stingy =(
2) Boston congoers seem to like things that have stupid jokes on them. Generalization: New Englanders have a heightened sense of humor, particularly tacky humor. But doesn't this contradict point one? Perhaps they are less hoity-toity artsy-fartsy and more LOLOLOL. At any rate, it makes sense since Northeast = more liberal = not so uptight LOLOLOL
3) Dallas congoers tend to consist of a larger percentage of overweight adults and people who want commission of (often somewhat furry-ish) OCs. Generalization: Dallas people are overweight furries. Actually, this makes sense because Boston is a walking city and Dallas ISN'T, but the furry and OC thing is kind of lolwut? Ummm! 100 degree heat destroys brain cells, there.
4) Boston Hetalia fandom > Dallas Hetalia fandom. Generalization: too many to list.
But yeah, I kind of want to go to a con that I don't have to AA for now. Maybe New York Anime Fest, I could just volunteer, it'd be fun~ But I do like having cash =(