Monday, March 17, 2008

On the Fringe at the Zine Fair

On Day 13 of the Heatwave that Melted Adelaide, the Fringe Zine Fair took place at on old industrial bakery in the middle of Adelaide. It was the first time it had been positioned in a dedicated area as opposed to the first two fairs where it was in a lane just off the main cafe strip.

This lead to the first observation, there were less passer-bys, less traffic BUT those who did turn up were interested enough in zines and DYI publications to make the effort.

I brought the full run of Sureshot Presents and my own VS; 10 copies of each and sold out of Doug's flipbook, sold out of Weber's Crab Allan book and sold 7 copies of VS. I expected the Guide to Australian Comics not to get to many sales - it sold 3 copies. What was most disappointing was Mandy Ord's book which i expected to be right up the alley for alternative hipsters and non-comic people. It grew cobwebs. I discovered that the Sticky stall had copies for sale but I didn't ask if they had sold any. I know that Mandy has sold at least 150 copies and we did a reprint (200 more for her) - I've sold about 130 and have 30 copies left. All in all I sold about half i would sell in a whole supanova weekend or at the first Doujicon which is ok since it cost me a train ticket and 5 hours of time.

I was joined by Owen Heitmann and EvilDan who also sold comics. Jing turned up later to steal my customers. Dan did well selling his Angry Comic Shop guy and Pretty Zombies; Owen did well selling other people's stuff. We left early because we are punk-rock like that (actually i had to scoot home to prepare dinner for 7).

It was a good and I'm feeling like publishing more stuff, so as always if you want to make money from your 32+ page self contained story, let me know

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I sold exactly $300 worth of stuff; most of that was not mine. Personally I did about 70% of the sales I did at last year's fair, despite having three more books than I did then. I may have reached saturation point for the older stuff in the zine market. It was still a good day, though: I had fun, there was a steady stream of interested customers (more than I was expecting) and lots of people I knew dropped by too.

My favourite part might have been the guy who said that Basic Wage Kids #1 was the funniest thing he'd ever read; he liked it so much he actually insisted on paying me more than cover price for it. Unfortunately, my brain had melted so much in the heat that (a) I forgot to be flattered and (b) I didn't think to try and upsell him the other issues.

Mark Selan said...

That's pretty good final total - did you get a cut of the other people's sales?

It was a fun day, except for Sarah stealing my sales.

And always upsell! Haven't i taught you anything!.

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