Artists Alley Information Thread

Selling at Cons is best during the...

Spring	11.6%	[ 83 ]
Summer	30.3%	[ 217 ]
Fall	7.0%	[ 50 ]
Winter	5.3%	[ 38 ]
Any time!	45.7%	[ 327 ]
Total Votes:			[ 715 ]

[Vicemage]

I did too! I just have to work out how I'm going to actually get there (and pay for the table)... blah. ^^

Kasyrrah: Yep, it's Print on Demand... it's really only geared toward books, but both Ka-Blam and ComiXpress offer posters, too, and I think Ka-Blam still offers their flier service as well. (I've been doing all my "fliers" through VistaPrint lately, though, since it's so much cheaper.)

Kyousouka: That's a very helpful list, thanks for doing that!

[Seijaku_Ishida]

I was saving up commission money to pay for my table...

[Vicemage]

I didn't manage to get more than one commission at the last con (time to update my materials and salesmanship, I think)...

I've lost commissions since I expanded what I have at my table. So, for Ohaycon, I'm shrinking it back again. Better to sell more of fewer items, than less overall of more items.

[Seijaku_Ishida]

I still need to order the rest of my buttons. I only have Tei so far, I need to get the rest of the cast.

I'll be taking commissions this con, I think. How do you go about doing it, by the by?

[Vicemage]

For the most part, I put up a sign (which will probably get revised, current sign doesn't seem to be doing the job) with a price list, and put out some samples, and invite people to look through them. Works fairly well overall, other than the last couple of cons.

[Seijaku_Ishida]

I think commissions overall have been a bit difficult to get lately.... sweatdrop

[Vicemage]

It does kind of seem that way... still, I need to get off my a** and update my sample books anyway, so may as well use this as an excuse.

[Jayde Panda]

Vice: Yeah I understand what Print on Demand is. I've been meaning to look up stuff on it for my husband. He's working on a book--not a comic book though, hence why I was asking about that--and we're trying to determine how we want to go about publishing it. PoD is something we've considered, but I don't know much about how it works or whether it would really be economical for the type of book we're doing.

I want to try and take commissions too, but I'm having issues w/ my display without another sign on my table... I'm starting to really look forward to finishing the Tarot Card set so I can retire all those prints and badges to a notebook and focus on selling the card decks. I probably have too much stuff I think. I have too many ideas, so I either need to look at expanding and getting 2 tables or reducing what I put together. It's hard for me to reduce though because I love what I do.

[Vicemage]

Oh, I meant my tutorial was geared toward comics, not that PoD is in general. smile ComiXpress and Ka-Blam are very much oriented toward comics, but Lulu and CreateSpace are more oriented to novels and the like.

A Tarot Deck sounds awesome, good luck with it!

[Jayde Panda]

Heh, our book project doesn't really fit in either the comic category or novel category. It's a gaming supplement, so it's got a lot of text, but there's a lot of illustrations and stuff too. Although I still misunderstood you; I thought you were saying I was asking about PoD for posters. xd Sorry if I caused any confusion there.

[Vicemage]

I misunderstood you somewhere along the line, myself... ^_^ I was thinking you were looking for what you could get other than books from PoD.

I would say that for sure CreateSpace or Lulu could handle something like that, but Lulu tends to be very expensive... at one point I had a longer list of companies, that I hadn't checked out yet, but I'm not sure I got it bookmarked before I switched HDs. But at least with those two, you just submit the pages, they don't really care what's on them.

[Jayde Panda]

S'ok. =)

Sounds like I'm going to really need to do a good bit of research for this project. If you happen to see any good places, I'd love to know. ^_^

[Y4MB4lY4J4MBoR]

Well. You can also make art without it looks like art. Or maybe not. 3 / 4 of all the fanarts I would describe as squiggles, and not as an "art". It is nothing against you and your often good pictures, but there are "black Sheeps" on Gaia which think some Brush-Strokes are still/already art.