VanCAF summary post (Patreon)

You know, I always talk about going to cons, but never about what happened there? Some of you might be convention attendees, convention exhibitors or (like me for the last few years) just people who lurk on the internet trying to find out what goes on at conventions and what it's like. I thought it might be useful to do a breakdown of my con experience and financials since this is my first year of attempting to go to conventions seriously, and I stress about this stuff A LOT. Maybe you're stressed like me too? and maybe it'd be nice to just hear how someone else's experiences were.

In the future I'll take a pic of my table setup as well cuz that would probably be more useful but you'll have to settle for poutine and text for today~

Basic Stuff

VanCAF (Vancouver Comics and Art Festival) is a 2-day comics-centric (not  media-centric) festival held in Vancouver! Which is a lovely port city in British Columbia, Canada, fairly close to the US border... flying out of the CA Bay Area it only took about 2 hours to get there. Table cost was very cheap, around $45USD, but since I'm in the US a lot of the cost would be getting my books and myself across the border. I gave myself a buffer around the weekend in case anything went wrong, so we flew out Friday morning and came back Monday night.

Money Stuff

Well, I did this in a very expensive way, because my goal this year is to learn and not to save or make $$$. I decided to pay for my bf to come with me because 1) I'm terrified of everything 2) I'm too small to carry so much shit by myself. The price of 2 plane tickets there and back was about $650USD, and the hotel for 3 nights was $630USD. That plus the table itself means I was out $1300 before I even went anywhere, yikes. Are there cheaper options?? yes. Hotel, I could have probably picked somewhere less nice? though it was really expensive in that area, most of the stuff (hotel and AirBNB) within reasonable walking distance was in the $250+/night range; the hotel proposed by the con itself was nearly $300/night. Ways to get around this: choose a motel or cheaper hotel, share a hotel with other artists, stay with a friend, sleep in a barrel or whatever. The hotel we picked was about a 1/2 mile walk from the convention place and like I said, I wasn't really coming to turn a crazy profit (this year) so it was like, yeah, I guess. Plane tix, not sure how to get around that. I suppose I could fly to somewhere in the US and carpool up if desperate, or drive, but it would have been an additional cost of car/ gas/ plane/ whatever, maybe could shave some $$ off but it would be a hassle and extra days lost. Last, going by myself would lighten the $$ a lot but like I mentioned, I wasn't really comfortable doing an international con by myself, at least not for my first one. 

Stuff I was Really Afraid Of

Getting across the border, haha. Honestly you always hear horror stories about body searching and people reading your twitter timeline and confiscation and etc... especially nowadays. My mom used to work in Customs (albeit a while ago) so I grilled her for advice.  Section 321 is a shipment type that falls under the Harmonized Tariff System, the "Harmonized" bit meaning that it applies to the US, Canada and Mexico. It basically says that you can carry $800 bucks of stuff over the border without getting hassled (fun fact, the limit used to be $200, but was raised by Obama. And who knows if this is getting changed under Trump but he likes to ruin things for everyone so I wouldn't be surprised). That said, my books were still over $800 just by their regular cost, so you always declare their manufacturing price. For a single book that is in a MUCH lower range, so the final price of stuff I brought over (books, pins, other books, etc) was sub $200. That said, I was still scared of being stopped in Customs, so I prepared a list of tariff classification #s for my stuff just in case (every product that exists has a classification number under the HTS). But actually they didn't give a single shit, they saw my stuff was under $200 and waved me through in about 30 seconds. 

I was also honestly afraid of physically transporting boxes... a single box for me weighs 30 lbs, with a 50 lb cap on luggage, and the luggage itself weighing 10-15lbs... basically I could check 2 bags for $25 with AirCanada so I only brought 2 boxes inside of suitcases and some additional stuff in my carry-on. My plan was to pay for 2 bags on the way there, then either nest one bag in the other and check it back, or use the smaller one as my carry-on. My plan worked out in the end so that was another $75 cost to get my books over the border in a transportable way.

Also, shoutout to the con organizer Andrea Demonakos for answering all my panicky questions XD She really set my mind at ease, and even checked in with me at the con to make sure I was okay going home, which was super nice.

The Con Itself

Would I recc this con? Yes. Everyone was super nice. The convention itself was extremely well organized, I'd had an extra box stored with them and they got it to me with zero hassle, it was really nice to not have to worry about one more thing. Saturday has a great and busy crowd, and Sunday was a little slower but still nice. It reminds me of the only other con I used to do, APE, which took place in SF in the old days and had a great indie vibe. This convention was all comics and comics-fans so everyone was on the same page and really eager to talk about comics. I got to meet some new artists I hadn't met before, and catch up with some old friends too, which was lovely. The convention also was having a train birthday that weekend? there's like, a train in the building, so more people were in the area watching that and wandering in. Really nice weather that weekend too, just overall a good time. 

What Sold?

I didn't actually sell out of books! I was poised too, but the con dropped off in the last few hours so I had to cart a few softcovers (and nearly a box of hardcovers) home. That said, I sold a lot more in these 2 days than I did at my previous local con, SVCC, in 2.5 days. I sold a lot of kid's books on Saturday since a lot of families were in the area, which was nice because I'm trying to get rid of those fucking things. But I was surprised at how well my minis sold, I brought maybe 30 and sold 20-25... at ECCC and SVCC they didn't move too fast compared to the books (which I sold out of at ECCC), but here they were an immediate object of interest. Again, reminds me a lot of APE, which is more about the indie comics thing and getting to know new creators, vs larger cons where maybe the audience has invested a lot to get there and might already know you. I also sold out of my Legschilla resists mini, and sold a lot of sets of the minis in general. Stickers too. My recommendation to anyone going is to do what I did and definitely bring your larger items if you have them, but also don't be afraid to bring smaller, lower-cost stuff as well, for people who only want to spend $5-10 at your table instead of $25+ 

Money Stuff part 2

Overall, I broke even. Actually according to my accounting I made a profit of $7.12 so I can also buy myself a tricked out Starbucks if I really wanted haha. It seems gauche to share my actual numbers but you can probably estimate my cost of getting here and tabling; I also count the associated business costs, including convention food (pictured above), transportation (we had to take a train from the airport) and even con-spend, since I consider it research for my job and write it off on my taxes. I actually didn't buy much, I bought a beautiful copy of The Last Halloween from Abby Howard (fantastic book) and a copy of the last Wasted Talent collection from my friend Angela Melick. Last, there's also a fee for converting USD to CAN and then back again, so you can minus a few more bucks from the take. 

Anyhow, yeah, I came out 7 bucks ahead, living the high life.

Last Thoughts

This was my first international con ever, and I'm glad I focused more on giving myself time to stress (I stressed a lot) and overplan, so now I know sort of better? what to do. If I had to make some changes for next time, to keep my costs down and actually make a profit of any kind, I'd probably try to plan ahead and get my books over the border in an easier way. The biggest problem is my body just can't carry 100+lbs of books without making multiple trips so I need a way to get them to the venue more easily if I'm traveling alone, and to keep costs down it's best to ship several weeks ahead (this time I had planned for a friend to bring them up, but that plan fell through). I would also bring less books, probably only 1/2 a box of hardcovers and 1.5 boxes of softcovers. Overall I sold probably 50-55 books, which is typical for most conventions, and had 80 on hand. The hardcovers were brought up from ECCC so it wasn't a big deal, but it would have been easier to travel home without a full box. So yeah, 50 books of one sort is a good number. In the future I'll also try to bring more variety of books... will probably skip this convention next year since I won't have anything new and because of the stress, but I can see 2019 being a nice year if I have an MI book by then. 

However I definitely would love to come again, it is definitely one of the nicest vibes of any convention I've been to (a whopping 4 lol) and in general, I love going to comic-centric conventions! Everyone there is so happy to talk about comics! And so am I :D

Hope you found this writeup useful~

I'll keep doing these for future conventions as well so you can follow along with me figuring out all this stuff for the first time.