Ryan George (00:00)
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So today we’re talking about tabling at your first comic convention. If you’re an indie creator, especially if you’re new, self-publishing, or just trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing behind a folding table for eight hours a day minimum, this episode’s for you. After releasing my first comic, A Debt to the Seaslip Sweeper, in 2024, I set out on tabling my first cons in 2025 and had the opportunity to table at five.
In the past, I’ve attended plenty of cons, big and small. So it was my first time actually getting behind the table and selling my stuff to people. And so I’m going to walk through 10 very practical tips that I learned in my year of tabling conventions that I think anybody who’s new should put into practice. And these are ones that I think really matter while you’re on the floor. So let’s get into it.
So tip one, start small with your first con. So your first instinct might be, if I’m do this, I might as well go big. Don’t. There are plenty of local and regional shows available. Obviously, for someone who’s in a bigger city like New York, as I am, I’m gonna have far more options than if you’re in a much smaller or more rural area. But do your best to find a smaller show. The small local regional shows, they’re cheaper to attend, they’re less overwhelming, and they’re more forgiving.
If you go to a con like New York Comic Con, for example, that’s A, it’s hard to get in, but B, it’s six, $700 just to attend. Who knows how much money you’re going to spend, you know, getting there and setting up your table. And so the, the buy-in is a lot. And then that puts a lot of pressure on you to sell, puts a lot of pressure on you to do well. And I think the smaller cons tend to be attended by people who really want to be there.
It’s not as overwhelming and gives you an opportunity to really sit and talk to people without that pressure of having to sell. that’s the thing, part of it is just the audience at these smaller shows is often more kind of comic literate. There are people who want to be there, they want to talk to creators, and they’re not just wandering in because there’s some movie studio that has a booth. So a lot of times the smaller shows, you’re to have more intimate, interesting.
conversations. My first convention was specifically for indie creators and this was great because almost everybody I met had a passion for indie comics. My second convention was a little bit larger and more broad so a lot of people and a lot of casuals and I think contrary to what you might think I had a much better experience and better sales at the first convention which was much smaller and but had people that were specifically interested in that topic. Smaller conventions they let you experiment.
without pressure, they let you practice your talking to, and they just allow you to make mistakes that don’t cost you thousands of dollars potentially. So to me, I think those small conventions, especially early on, is kind of like a training mode. And so you want to treat it that way. So tip number two, presentation matters a bit more than you think. So I think your table needs to be readable from six feet away.
What I mean by that is that you’re going to have people, depending on the size and scale of the convention, you’re going have people that are walking at a distance and they can be a bit standoffish because again, there’s, there’s dozens, hundreds, thousands of creators all trying to buy for their attention. And so you want to get them, get their attention from a distance and make them see your table and what you have set up and want to stop by and want to at least read. having, you know, big title lettering.
is gonna be really important. And I think having big lettering and big things that draw attention is gonna be better than being too busy, having too many books or having too much text or having too many prints. So I think a clean table with strong focal points, things that really draw the eye or draw attention to me outperforms a very cluttered table. And I experienced this firsthand. I have lots of interest in things. ⁓ in first couple of conventions, I threw everything at it.
And sometimes it gets a little busy. You might get people interested if they take the time to look. But the busyness is going to draw people away versus having like one or two big centerpieces that draw attention. And so I think definitely overwhelming people with lots of stuff can be a challenge. So tighten it up. Have something that just draws the interest, draws the eye, but is not too busy. It’s the same as if you’re an artist and you’re drawing or you’re working on a page that you
You don’t want the page necessarily to always be too busy. You want to be able to control where the eye goes and what the person sees. And then you can control what they’re paying attention to. So just keep that in mind that you want your table to be interesting visually, but not overwhelming. And a little rule is if someone can’t tell what you’re selling or what you’re doing within a couple seconds, then they probably won’t stop. So kind of keep that in mind. I would definitely say practice it, practice it at home, set things up.
work on different setups, take pictures, share it, see what your best thing is, but definitely busier is not always better when it comes to taping. So tip number three, have a conversation starter. So this is kind of connected to presentation, but I think it’s its own thing. So to me, you need something or should have something that invites a question, right? Not necessarily a pitch. It’s not necessarily like a priceless or a hook, but it could be something interesting. If you weird sign or like a provocative tagline or
a visual thing that makes people say, like, wait, what’s that? The goal isn’t necessarily to sell immediately. Your goal really is to make it easy for somebody to talk to you. And so having something that’s a conversation starter can help. I’ll give you an example that really worked for me. I’m forgetting now where I got the idea, but I know that I kind of stole the idea from somebody at ⁓ a convention that I went to and then created this pitch box. So basically the way the pitch box worked was it was a box that had
four tiles on it. The tiles had a very brief thing about a comic of mine. ⁓ You something that was like interesting enough to look at, but not enough to tell you about the comic. And so there are four lights and so what would happen and buttons. So what happens is you go over and you see ⁓ these four titles and then you look and see ⁓ what story do I want or what story would they want me to pitch to them? And so it was great because the person would look at this box and it was interesting because it had these lights on it. They’d read it and then they would decide for themselves
what story they wanted me to pitch to them. And it worked great. And that was a perfect conversation starter. It got people interested, engaged. And then it was funny because it got people to decide what I was going to pitch to them. So I thought it really was great. So think about things like that that are gonna get people interested in engaging with you. Because if you get people interested in engaging with you, you’ve won. That’s a lot of the battle. And especially for people like myself, who can be fairly introverted, having something that gets people to come talk to you.
is gonna be a lot easier than you grabbing them and trying to get them in. So, kind of think about that and what works for you and with your personality and what you have available. So tip number four, know why you’re there. So before the convention starts, kind of decide what does success look like? What does it look like for you and for this weekend? Is it selling books? Is it networking? Are you finding collaborators? Are you building an audience? Because if you don’t decide, the con’s gonna kind of decide for you.
and you’ll feel like you failed, even if you didn’t. So kind of have in mind what you want to do and think you can optimize for everything at once. So, you know, if the goal is networking, really spend time talking to your neighbors. There’s plenty of people there all in the same position. Some further along, some not as far, but it’s a great opportunity to talk to other people and learn. If your goal is sales, then, you know, focus on sales, right? Focus on what’s going to get people in and
What are your goals and your inventory and make sure you’re really keeping track of everything. Um, you know, there’s no wrong way to go about it, but just have an idea of what you want, what success looks like and be intentional about your actions to achieve that. So tip number five, have a pitch and stay on message. So in sales, you need a pitch period. I’ve been in sales for most of my life, you know, and most of us have been in sales. think most careers, even if you don’t think about it.
you are selling, you’re selling yourself, you’re selling a product, you’re selling a system. And so you need to know how to sell it in a way that does not feel like you’re selling and that you’re pushing. And so that’s especially important as I’ve learned when it comes to comics. So your pitch is not necessarily a plot summary. It’s not necessarily your creative journey. It’s something clear and repeatable that you can say. Something you can say a hundred times without getting tired and without.
falling over it and stumbling over it. So something I think worth practicing. During my first two conventions, I had the benefit of tabling next to some really awesome pitchers. Like they had it down and I heard the same pitch over and over and over. And while it might’ve been annoying for me to hear for the hundredth time, it worked for these people because it gave everybody a clear understanding of what they were selling. And just some tips on good pitches, which I’m still learning myself, but ⁓ you know, good pitch is going to lead with the genre.
It’s going to highlight like what the hook of the story is. It’ll share some comparable titles and it invites further conversation. And so I think those are really key points when you’re pitching and it should be pretty quick. You don’t want to be sitting there talking somebody’s ear off. Some people don’t have time or don’t want to listen to you talk for five minutes about your story, no matter how good you think it is, no matter how good it actually is. ⁓ And just some things to avoid, know, kind of, you know, bad pitches might apologize for the story or genre.
might ramble, they start with backstory, exposition, and you don’t want that, right? Pitch needs to be something that you can tell somebody quickly and they get it and they’re interested and they want to learn more. And a lot of times what I started to learn was the better the pitch, the more likely somebody would be to sit, talk to you, ask you more questions. Then all of a you will engage in a story, a chat for 30 minutes about your story and your creative journey. And you get into that because they’re interested and engaged because of your pitch and not necessarily because you just started it, right?
So, ⁓ you know, when it comes to pitching, would say practice it, practice it out loud. It’s going to feel weird, but that’s fine. Just keep doing it until it’s something that’s just stuck. You got it. You can say it, you know, at any point at any time, you can, you can, you can get your pitch out there for somebody. So, tip number six, don’t hard sell. So for me, what I’ve learned, and this isn’t just in conventions, but I just learned this in life. The best sales often come after you stop trying to sell.
And I’ve just learned this in a variety of forms. think sales can be uncomfortable. so part of the challenge is you have to be selling something to me that you believe in and there’s nothing you’re to believe in more than your own creative work. And so with, with hard sales where you’re the focus is only the sale. I think it comes across as obvious that you that’s what you’re trying to do. trying to get somebody to, to take money and give you.
for whatever it is you’re trying to give them. I’ve always found that more important than that to me is trying to build a connection with somebody, build a connection that involves trust. And to me, that was always far more effective. If I could communicate to that person, here’s what I have, and here’s why it’s useful, and here’s why you can benefit from it, that to me is gonna go a lot further than here’s why you should buy this thing from
And always having in mind, a lot of people aren’t going to buy from you right there. But if you can just, you plant the seed of what they want and you leave them off with a positive experience, they’ll come back, you know, if it’s something they really want or they might buy it on the spot. And so for me, it was always more important to explain the value of whatever it is and why it’s useful and why they might like it rather than trying to get them to sell in a lot of
For me, it was always less about the sale and more about how did the interaction go? Did they go with a positive experience? Did they ask questions? Were they interested? That’s what I want out of it. And I can’t tell you how many times at conventions I would be able to talk to somebody, chat with them for a while. You know, and they’d say, all right, you know, this is great. I think I’m going to come back. I’m going to look around and they would come back. And it was because I wasn’t trying to get them to sell and trying to get them to buy from me, but really just trying to have a conversation. So, you know, things that work for me is once you get past that initial
pitch or an initial discussion where you’re telling your story, if they’re still talking to you. Things that really helped me was talking about writing as a writer. think that got people really interested. If you could talk about the process, about the process of writing that engages people because everybody I think on some level wants to be or is feels like a storyteller. so getting into that, I think really worked for me talking about story in general, not necessarily just my story, although we would, but just talking about storytelling was another thing that really got people interested.
⁓ and just talking about things that influenced me because it’s a point of connection, especially if you both have some series or story or movie in common. I think in general when comes to sales, people really want to buy from somebody they like and they want to buy from somebody they trust. And so if you can build that, that to me is more important than the sale. And give them a card, give them a bookmark or whatever trinket you come up with.
but they might walk away, they’ll think about it, and they’ll come back later. Or at least you’ll have somebody that’s on your side. And to me, hard selling will kill those return visits because they’re afraid to come back. So just keeping that in mind when comes to the hard sell. So tip seven, and this is something I did not expect, bring cash. So of course, digital payments are essential. A lot of people are gonna pay digitally, but I was shocked almost every time at how many people still bring cash.
They bring what they expect to spend and they’re there to spend their cash, especially at the smaller shows. So I would highly recommend bringing cash for change because without it, you’re going to lose some impulse buys. It creates a point of friction and you want to make things as easy as possible. If they want to pay with a card, pay with a card. And when they pay Apple pay, they’ll pay Apple pay. If they want to pay cash, they pay cash.
So definitely something that I would say bring a hundred, couple hundred dollars worth of change just to be on the safe side because you will be surprised at how many people, especially if it’s your first convention, are there with cash ready to pay for whatever, you know, whatever yourself.
Tip number eight, I would pack a con survival kit. So this might be the least like sexy tip, but it may be one of the most important. Make sure to bring water, make sure to bring snacks, bring some painkillers, hand sanitizer, tape, pens, some backup markers. These are all things you’re going to need and very easy to forget to bring. ⁓ And like being hungry or dehydrated or just uncomfortable, ⁓ know, with all the talking even just to start to.
might start bothering you, feeling a little exhausted. Like just having things available will make a big, will have a big benefit and potential need at conventions. You’re talking a lot, you’re pitching, you’re trying to be nice and nothing can affect that if you’re not feeling good. And especially if you’re by yourself, you you may not have a chance or it be hard to find the time to get up and leave your table for a bit. So having things available for you to grab and access in the moment is really important because you just never know.
what foods available, when you’re going to have a chance to go get something. And it’s really easy to go several hours without eating or drinking. And then you realize, oh my God, I’m not feeling good. And I don’t know what I’m going be able to get up and go. So I found it really easy, you know, to go most of the day without thinking about that stuff. And then it just, you have a great table mate. Awesome. But if you don’t, it could be a real challenge. So bring, bring your survival kit. So a tip number nine, network with your neighbor. I know I mentioned it before a little bit, but your table,
Like your neighbors are your allies. They’ll help watch your table if you need to go away. They can recommend your work to other people, you know, cover you for bathroom breaks. They become your friends. They become potential friends for life. really talk to them, learn what they sell. I made it a point for the most part. I tried to buy from my table mates, you know, even if it wasn’t something I was necessarily interested in, although like there was a couple of situations where I’d actually bought from them before or purchased, you know, back to Kickstarter. But I try to become friends with them. They’re going to help.
you know, there people that can help pitch, you know, help send people over to you. If you’re pitching to somebody and something comes up, they might say, that guy next to me has this thing that’s really cool. So I think, especially if your comics overlap, it’s a great source of being able to send people to each other. But I really try to make it a point to engage and make friends. And in this world, it’s small community. And so the more friends you have, the more connections you have can really pay dividends in the long.
So definitely worth making friends with your table mates. Tip number 10, take notes. This is your data. So your first few conventions is not about validation necessarily. It’s not about sales. You know, it’s not, you know, about about getting your book out there to everybody. You know, it’s really about getting information. So keep track, you know, what sold, what didn’t, what do people ask or common questions where where areas of like hesitation, you know, where there’s certain situations where some people are interested, but something stopped them. Watch what people pick up and what they don’t.
Like you might have something at your table, a print or an object, something that you think, this is great. People are gonna love it. And they just completely bypass it. And then there are things that you have there that you think, you no one’s really going to care about it. And that becomes something that’s really an interesting point. So for you, this is kind of like market research and live. And so I think it’s really important to keep, you know, keep a journal, keep a notepad or notes app or whatever it is, but keep track of what’s going on and write it down.
⁓ and it really will help you in the future as you start to narrow down. Like I would like to say that by the, like my fifth convention in the year, it was my best and the most sales. And that was because I really started to figure out what was working, what wasn’t. I kept track of things, not the first one or two, which I wish I did, but we’re really trying to keep track of what was working, what wasn’t. I really had ironed out and kind of tightened things up to the point where I had a really solid setup, solid sales pitch. And so.
You really keep track of what you’re doing and that’ll help, you know, to me, it’s going to pay dividends in the long run.
So if you take nothing else from this, take this, your first conventions, they’re not a test, but kind of like a draft. I think to me, every convention’s gonna make the next one better, especially if you’re paying attention. So just keep, have fun, enjoy it, engage, talk to people. You’re selling something that you’re passionate about and try to learn from it. And if you’ve got your own stories, your own tips or anything, please feel free to share it on whatever platform you’re listening. Obviously on social media is great, but we’re at.
portable underscore hole, or you can feel free to email us at portable hole pub at gmail.com. But thank you for listening and have a great rest of your day.